Research Interests for Barbara H. Smith

Smith's research is largely theoretical and interdisciplinary. Her major publications have been concerned with literary theory, poetry and poetics, ideas of value and judgment, and intellectual controversies over science and knowledge. Her current work focuses on developments in cognitive science and the philosophy of biology, intellectual issues involving science and religion, and the historical, intellectual and institutional relations between the humanities and the sciences.

Keywords:

Critical theory, 20th-century intellectual history, Science studies, Philosophy of science, Science and religion

Current projects:

Article on the term/concept "Scientism"

Contribution to book about Bruno Latour

Representative Publications

1. Smith, BH, Natural reflections: Human cognition at the nexus of science and religion, The Terry Lectures Series (Winter, 2010), pp. 1-206, Yale University Press, ISBN 9780300140347 [book.asp] [abs]
2. Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human (2005/2006), Edinburgh UP/Duke UP [books.php3] [abs]
3. Smith, BH, Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy (1997), Harvard UP
4. Smith, BH, Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory (1988), Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-16786-4 [abs]
5. Smith, BH, On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Literature to Language (1978), U of Chicago P
6. Smith, BH, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (1968), U of Chicago P
7. Smith, BH, THE CHIMERA OF RELATIVISM A Tragicomedy, COMMON KNOWLEDGE, vol. 17 no. 1 (Winter, 2011), pp. 13-26, Duke University Press, ISSN 0961-754X [Gateway.cgi], [doi]
8. Smith, BH, "Naturalism, Otherwise", The Immanent Frame (June, 2008) [%3E]
9. Smith, BH, “Science and Religion: Lives and Rocks”, New York Times (January, 2010) [science-and-] [abs]
10. Smith, BH, "Evaluation" and "Value", in The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, edited by Kelly, M (1998), New York: Oxford UP