- Barbara Herrnstein Smith
Barbara Herrnstein Smith is an American literary critic and theorist, best-known for her work "Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory". She is currently the
Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory atDuke University , and also Distinguished Professor of English atBrown University .Biography
Smith briefly studied at
City College of New York , studying biology, experimental psychology, and philosophy. She then earned her B.A. ("summa cum laude") in 1954 and her Ph.D. in 1965, both fromBrandeis University .From 1961 to 1973, Smith taught at
Bennington College . She accepted a faculty position at theUniversity of Pennsylvania in 1973. In 1987 she joined theDuke University faculty, and also joinedBrown University in 2003.Smith has also occupied numerous short-term and honorary posts. She was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at
Stanford and at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.cholarship and work
Smith is a well-known writer, most particularly for her 1988 work on
critical theory , "Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory". In this work, she attempts to situate the various liberal, conservative, and other views of "values" within her "metametatheory" of contingencies, aneconomics -influenced theoretical approach. She uses her theory to address literary, aesthetic, and other types of values, attempting to discern whether any objective standards may be applied.Other works include "Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End", "Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy", and an edition of
Shakespeare 's sonnets; she has published numerous books and articles onlanguage ,literature , andcritical theory .In recent years she has been doing considerable work on the science and the humanities, including "Scandalous Knowledge" and her 2006
Terry lectures at Yale, "Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion."Published works
*"" (
1968 ) ISBN 0-226-76343-9
*"Shakespeare's Sonnets" (ed.) (1969)
*"On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Literature to Language" (1978 ) ISBN 0-226-76452-4
*"Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory" (1988) ISBN 0-674-16785-6
*"The Politics of Liberal Education" (ed., withDarryl J. Gless ) (1992 ) ISBN 0-8223-1199-2
*"Mathematics, Science, and Postclassical Theory" (ed., withArkady Plotnitsky ) (1997 ) ISBN 0-8223-1863-6
*"Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy" (1997) ISBN 0-674-06492-5
*"Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth and the Human" (2006 ) ISBN 0-8223-3848-3Awards and recognitions
*
Christian Gauss Award (1968) for "Poetic Closure"
* Explicator Award (1968) for "Poetic Closure"
* Guggenheim Fellowship, 1977-78
* President,Modern Language Association in 1988.
* Member (elected) (1999),American Academy of Arts and Sciences
* Honorary Fellow (2001),American Association for the Advancement of Science ("for distinguished contributions to ... a common scientific and humanistic understanding of knowledge and its advancement")Further reading
* [http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/English/faculty/bhsmith Duke University Faculty Profile]
* [http://research.brown.edu/research/profile.php?id=10029 Brown University Faculty Profile]
* [http://www.yale.edu/terrylecture/smith.html Smith's 2006 Terry Lectures at Yale]
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