Office Location: 110 Friedl Building
Office Phone: (919) 684-3970
Email Address: bhsmith@duke.edu

Office Hours:

Wednesdays 11:00am - 12:00pm, in 110 Science Bldg;
and by appointment

Education and Interests:

After studying at City College in New York, where her interests centered on biology, philosophy and experimental psychology, Professor Smith transferred to Brandeis University, redirecting her academic focus to the study of literature and receiving her degrees there in English and American Literature. Before coming to Duke (in 1987), she taught literature at Bennington College and, later, at the University of Pennsylvania where she was University Professor of Literature and Communications, with positions in the Annenberg School of Communications, the English Department, and the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature. Her most recent book, Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human (Edinburgh UP, 2005; Duke UP, 2006), is an account of constructivist epistemology and an examination of related debates over truth, relativism, "the two cultures," evolutionary psychology and human-animal relations. Professor Smith's current teaching and research focus on 20th-century views of science, contemporary accounts of knowledge and cognition, the relations between the sciences and the humanities, and naturalistic accounts of religion. Her current professional activities include co-editing, with E. Roy Weintraub, a book series, Science and Cultural Theory, for Duke University Press.

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1.  Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human. Edinburgh UP/Duke UP, 2005/2006. [books.php3]
2.  Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy. Harvard UP, 1997.
3.  Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. Harvard UP, 1988.

More Information:

Professor Smith also holds the position of Distinguished Professor of English at Brown University.

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