Education and Career
Smith graduated from Haverford College in 1960 with a B.A. in philosophy, and took his Ph.D. in the history of religions from Yale University in 1969; with a thesis on anthropological thought, focused on Frazer, "The Glory, Jest and Riddle: James George Frazer and The Golden Bough." After holding positions at Dartmouth College and UC Santa Barbara, he began teaching at the University of Chicago, where he served as Dean of the College from 1977–1982 and was appointed Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities. He still holds this position as of 2008, and is still active in undergraduate teaching as of Autumn quarter 2011, teaching the course titled "Introduction to Religious Studies". He was elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000, and served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2008.
Intellectually, Smith has been influenced by neo-Kantian thinkers, especially Ernst Cassirer and Émile Durkheim. He has also been influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss. Smith's dissertation focused on James Frazer's The Golden Bough and the method that Frazer used in the comparison of different religions. Since then much of Smith's work has focused on the problem of comparison and how best to compare data taken from societies that are very different from one another.
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