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Barbara H. Smith, Braxton Craven Professor,Comparative Literature & English. Director, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Distinguished Professor of English, Brown University (fall semesters)

Contact Info:

Office Location:
Email Address:

Office Hours:

on leave fall 2004

Education:

Ph.D.	Brandeis University	1965
M.A.	Brandeis University	1955
B.A.	Brandeis University	1954

Specialties:

Critical Theory
Critical Theory
Science and Literature
Comparative Literature
Modern to Contemporary

Research Interests: 20th Century Intellectual History ; Science Studies

After initially training in biology, experimental psychology and philosophy at City College in New York, Smith attended Brandeis University, where she received her doctorate in English and American Literature. Before coming to Duke in 1987, she taught literature and literary theory at Bennington College and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1988, she was elected president of the Modern Language Association. Smith's works include Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago UP, 1968), an edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets (Avon and NYU Press, 1969), On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Literature to Language (Chicago UP, 1978), Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory (Harvard UP, 1988), and Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy (Harvard UP, 1997). Her current teaching and research focus on twentieth- century critical theory and contemporary accounts of language, science and cognition. Smith is an honorary fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Areas of Interest:

20th-century intellectual history
Relations between sciences and humanities
Epistemology
Science studies

Keywords:

U.S. • Britain • English • Theory • Science Studies • Shakespeare

Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. Smith, BH, Practicing Relativism in the Anthropocene On Science, Belief, and the Humanities (October, 2018), pp. 152 pages, Open Humanities Press, ISBN 9781785420702 [available here]  [abs]
2. Smith, BH, Scientizing the humanities: Shifts, collisions, negotiations, Common Knowledge, vol. 22 no. 3 (September, 2016), pp. 353-372, Duke University Press [doi]
3. 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]
4. Smith, BH, Anthropotheology: Latour speaking religiously, New Literary History, vol. 47 no. 2-3 (March, 2016), pp. 331-351, Johns Hopkins University Press [doi]
5. Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human (2005/2006), Edinburgh UP/Duke UP [books.php3]  [abs]
6. Smith, BH, What Was "close Reading"?: A Century of Method in Literary Studies, Minnesota Review, vol. 2016 no. 87 (January, 2016), pp. 57-75, Duke University Press [doi]
7. Smith, BH, Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy (1997), Harvard UP
8. Smith, BH, Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory (1988), Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-16786-4  [abs]
9. Smith, BH, Cutting-edge equivocation: Conceptual moves and rhetorical strategies in contemporary anti-epistemology, South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 101 no. 1 (January, 2002), pp. 187-212, Duke University Press, ISSN 0038-2876 [Gateway.cgi], [doi]
10. Smith, BH, On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Literature to Language (1978), U of Chicago P
11. Smith, BH, Animal Ralatives, Difficult Relations,", Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, vol. 13 no. 1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 1-15, Duke University Press (Special issue, "Man and Beast," ed Elizabeth Weed and Ellen Rooney.) [doi]
12. Smith, BH, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (1968), U of Chicago P
13. Smith, BH, Unloading the self-refutation charge, Common Knowledge, vol. 25 no. 1-3 (January, 2019), pp. 76-91, Duke University Press [doi]  [abs]
14. 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]
15. Schneider, N; BHS, “Religion, Science, and the Humanities: An Interview with Barbara Herrnstein Smith” (June, 2010) [religion-science-and-]
16. Smith, BH, "Naturalism, Otherwise", The Immanent Frame (June, 2008) [%3E]
17. Smith, BH, “Science and Religion: Lives and Rocks”, New York Times (January, 2010) [science-and-]  [abs]
18. Smith, BH, Sewing Up the Mind: The Claims of Evolutionary Psychology, in Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology, edited by Rose, H; Rose, S (2000), pp. 129-143, Jonathan Cape
19. Smith, BH, "Evaluation" and "Value", in The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, edited by Kelly, M (1998), New York: Oxford UP