Faculty: Barbara Herrnstein Smith  

Barbara Herrnstein Smith
Title: Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English Emerita. Former Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory.
Office Location: 110 Friedl Building
Office Phone: 1 919 684 3970
Email Address: bhsmith@duke.edu
Web Page:

Research Interests:  

Smith's past research has 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 sciences and the humanities.

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

Books

  •  Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion.  The Terry Lectures Series Yale University Press, Winter, 2009 . [book.asp]
  •  Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human.  Edinburgh UP/Duke UP, 2005/2006 . [books.php3]
  •  Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy.  Harvard UP, 1997 .
  •  Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory.  Harvard UP, 1988 .
  •  Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End.  U of Chicago P, 1968 .
Articles in a Journal
  • "Relativism, Today and Yesterday." Common Knowledge Special double issue, “A ‘Dictatorship of Relativism?’: The Intellectual Community Responds to Cardinal Ratzinger’s Last Homily”.13.2-3 (Summer, 2007): 227-249.
  • "Reply to an Analytic Philosopher." South Atlantic Quarterly 101.1 (Winter, 2002).
Articles Online