Duke the Program In Literature

  • Barbara Herrnstein Smith

  • Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English Emerita. Former Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory.
  • Literature
  • 110 Friedl Building
  • Campus Box 90015
  • Phone: 1 919 684 3970
  • Fax: +1 919 684 4871

  • Specialties

    • Critical Theory
    • Comparative Philosophy

  • Research Summary

    critical theory; epistemology and philosophy of science; social studies of science; issues in science and religion; relations between sciences and humanities

  • Research Description

    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.

  • 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

  • Awards, Honors and Distinctions

      • Lifetime Achievement Award,
      • Society for Literature, Science and the Arts,
      • October, 2010
      • Dwight H. Terry Lecturer,
      • Yale University,
      • October, 2006
      • Listings,
      • ongoing
      • Honorary Fellow,
      • American Association for the Advancement of Science,
      • 0 2001
      • Member,
      • American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
      • 0 1999
      • Fellow,
      • Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy,
      • 0 1995
      • Fellow,
      • Shelby Cullom Davis Center, Princeton University,
      • 0 1993
      • Critic's Choice Award for The Politics of Liberal Education (Duke UP, 1991),
      • American Educational Studies Association,
      • 0 1992
      • Fellow,
      • National Humanities Center,
      • 0 1992
      • Award for "best special issue in 1990" for The Politics of Liberal Education," SAQ,
      • Conference of Editors of Learned Journals,
      • 0 1990
      • Honorable mention for "most distinguished book in the social sciences" for Contingencies of Value,
      • AAUP,
      • 0 1989
      • Member,
      • Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ,
      • 1986-87
      • Fellow,
      • Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA,
      • 1985-86
      • Christian Gauss Award for "most outstanding book of literary scholarship or criticism" for Poetic Closure,
      • 0 1968
      • Explicator Award for "best book of explication de texte" for Poetic Closure,
      • 0 1968

  • Selected Publications

      • Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion.
      • The Terry Lectures Series,
      • Yale University Press,
      • Winter, 2009.
      • [web]
      • Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human.
      • Edinburgh UP/Duke UP,
      • 2005/2006.
      • [web]
      • 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.
      • "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
      • (2007)
      • :
      • 227-249.
      • "Reply to an Analytic Philosopher."
      • South Atlantic Quarterly
      • 101
      • .1
      • (Winter, 2002)
      • .
      • Nathan Schneider and BHS.
      • "“Religion, Science, and the Humanities: An Interview with Barbara Herrnstein Smith”."
      • The Immanent Frame
      • (June 21, 2010)
      • .
      • [web]
      • "“Science and Religion: Lives and Rocks”."
      • New York Times
      • (January 25, 2010)
      • .
      • [web]
  • View All Publications

  • Postdoctoral Students

    • Evie Shockley
      • 2004 - 2005
Barbara Herrnstein Smith
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