Barbara Herrnstein Smith
Distinguished Professor of English
Office: 70 Brown St., Rm. 204
Phone: (401) 863-3522
Courses '09-'10
Sem I:
On leave
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Degrees
Ph.D. Brandeis University
B.A. Brandeis University
Research Interests
Critical theory, 20th-century intellectual history, philosophy of science, social studies of science, contemporary theory and research on language and cognition, issues in science and religion.
Professional Accomplishments
Before coming to Brown in 2003, Smith taught literature and literary theory at Bennington College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Duke University, where she is currently also Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural theory.
Her publications include Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (1968), an edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1969), On the Margins of Discourse: the Relation of Literature to Language (1978), Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory (1988), Belief and Resistance:
Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy (1997), Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human (2005/6), and Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion (forthcoming, 2009). In 1988, she was elected president of the Modern Language Association. Smith is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an honorary fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
