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.
Read more about this topic: Jonathan Z. Smith
Famous quotes containing the words education and, education and/or career:
“He was the product of an English public school and university. He was, moreover, a modern product of those seats of athletic exercise. He had little education and highly developed muscles—that is to say, he was no scholar, but essentially a gentleman.”
—H. Seton Merriman (1862–1903)
“Individually, museums are fine institutions, dedicated to the high values of preservation, education and truth; collectively, their growth in numbers points to the imaginative death of this country.”
—Robert Hewison (b. 1943)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)