Janneken Smucker
- Professor of History
- 717 Wayne
- 610-436-2345
- JSmucker@wcupa.edu
- Website
- Twitter: @jannekensmucker
- Curriculum Vitae
Courses Taught
- AMS 200: American Civilization
- HIS 100: Global History since 1900 (fully distanced delivered)
- HIS 300: Varieties of History
- HIS/AMS 365: American Popular Culture
- HIS 390: History on the Web
- HIS/AMS 367: American Material Culture
- HIS 400: Seminar - Globalization
- HIS 480: Digital History
- HIS 601: Topics in United States History - Digital History
- HIS 650/651/652: Graduate Seminar - Cultural History
About Me
Janneken Smucker is a professor and historian specializing in digital history, public history, and material culture at West Chester University. Publications include Amish Quilts: Crafting and American Icon (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) and A New Deal for Quilts (International Quilt Museum, 2023), exploring the federal government’s practical and symbolic uses of quilts during the Great Depression, which one the 2023 New Deal Book Award from the Living New Deal. A former co-editor of the Oral History Association’s journal, Oral History Review, she hosts and co-produces Running Stitch: A QSOS Podcast, drawing on oral histories with contemporary quiltmakers. She is a consultant for Pattern and Paradox: The Quilts of Amish Women, which opened in April 2024 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and authored the catalog of the same name. She lives in Philadelphia with her 13-year-old daughter, where she is an avid cyclist, yogi, and participant in civic life.
In the classroom, she integrates technology and the humanities, working with her students to create websites, blogs, podcasts, digital archives, and online exhibitions. With Professor Charles Hardy and students in HIS 601 and HON 452, she created Goin' North: Stories from the First Great Migration to Philadelphia, which won the Oral History Association's 2015 award for best non-print project and the 2016 American Historical Association's Roy Rosenzweig Award for Innovation in Digital History. She and Dr. Hardy also were co-recipients of WCU's 2015 Holman Award for innovation in teaching. Other classroom/archival partnerships include Philadelphia Immigration and West Chester University Vietnam War Oral History Project,