Barbara Herrnstein Smith lectures on evolutionary psychology Sept. 27

By Franklin Crawford

Barbara Herrnstein Smith of Duke University will deliver a University Lecture at Cornell titled "Sewing Up the Mind: The Claims of Evolutionary Psychology," Monday, Sept. 27, at 4:30 p.m. in 700 Clark Hall. It is free and open to the public.

Smith is the Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory at Duke.

"Professor Smith is one of the few scholars in the academy who combines an interest in the analysis of literature with an interest in the analysis of science," said Trevor Pinch, professor and chair of the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell. "Her talk on evolutionary psychology will engage anyone who shares Professor Smith's broad vision of how to cross the 'two cultures.'"

Smith began teaching at Duke in 1987. Prior to that appointment, she taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was University Professor of Literature and Communications and chair of the graduate program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. In 1985-86, she was a fellow at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the following year served as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Smith was elected president of the Modern Languages Association in 1988 and in 1999 became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Smith has authored and edited numerous articles and books on language, literature and critical theory. Her more recent publications include two books published in 1997: Mathematics, Science and Postclassical Theory, a collection of essays co-edited with Arkady Plotnitsky (Duke University Press), and Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy (Harvard University Press).

Her current work focuses on the history of criticism and literary theory, 20th-century theories of language and communication, and contemporary accounts of knowledge, science and cognition.