Research Interests for Barbara H. Smith

Smith's 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.

Keywords:

epistemology , philosophy of science, science studies, science and religion, 20th-century intellectual history, humanities and sciences

Current projects:

Critical and historical study of efforts by humanities scholars to import ideas, models, methods and aims from the natural sciences into their own disciplines.

Areas of Interest:

epistemology
philosophy of science
developments in cognitive science
developments in philosophy of biology
sociology and history of science
issues in science and religion
relations between sciences and humanities
20th-century intellectual history

Representative 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, Anthropotheology: Latour speaking religiously, New Literary History, vol. 47 no. 2-3 (March, 2016), pp. 331-351, Johns Hopkins University Press [doi]
4. 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]
5. 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]
6. Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human (2005/2006), Edinburgh UP/Duke UP [books.php3] [abs]
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, Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy (1997), Harvard UP
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, Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory (1988), Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-16786-4 [abs]
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, On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Literature to Language (1978), 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, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (1968), U of Chicago P
15. Schneider, N; BHS, , “Religion, Science, and the Humanities: An Interview with Barbara Herrnstein Smith” (June, 2010) [religion-science-and-]
16. Smith, BH, “Science and Religion: Lives and Rocks”, New York Times (January, 2010) [science-and-] [abs]
17. 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