Jonathan
Smith
Professor of English
Department of Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts
University of Michigan-Dearborn
4901 Evergreen Road
Dearborn , MI 48128
(313) 436-9187
(313) 593-1902 (fax)
e-mail: jonsmith@umich.edu
This home page is really a glorified c.v. I've presented the standard
information in the standard way, but I've also included narrative about my
research interests and my teaching, and I've constructed links to some of my
recent scholarship and teaching materials. I hope this adds a bit more vitae
to the curriculum.
Professional Experience ¦ Education ¦ Publications ¦ Works in Progress ¦ Honors and Awards ¦ Grants and Fellowships
¦ Conference Papers and Invited Talks ¦ Teaching ¦ Thesis Advising ¦ Service to the Profession ¦ University
Service ¦ Memberships
Professional Experience:
- University of
Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of English Language and Literature, 2005-
- University of
Michigan-Dearborn, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature,
1997-2005
- University of
Michigan-Dearborn, Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature,
1991-1997
Education:
- Ph.D., English,
Dissertation
Title: "Experimenting with Method: Science and Victorian Literature"
Director: Jonathan Arac
- M.Phil.,
English,
- M.A., English,
- B.A., cum laude,
English/Chemical Engineering (double major)
Publications:
Books:
- Charles Darwin and
Victorian Visual Culture.
- Fact and Feeling: Baconian Science and the Nineteenth-Century Literary
Imagination.
Journal Issue:
- "
Website:
- The
Automobile in American Life and Society: Website and Online Archive. Launched September 2005. I served as
project director for this site, which consists of ten scholarly essays,
illustrated with archival materials from the collections of The Henry Ford
and supplemented with extensive teaching resources and a group of
digitized oral histories of major auto industry designers. I directed a team
of scholars, archivists, curators, and librarians over a three-year
period; edited the essays; and authored all the teaching resources.
Articles:
- “Evolutionary Aesthetics and Victorian Visual
Culture.” Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science, and the
Visual Arts. Ed. Diana Donald.
- "Domestic Hybrids:
Ruskin, Victorian Fiction, and
- “Gender, Royalty, and Sexuality in John Gould’s
Birds of Australia.” Victorian Literature and Culture
35 (2007): 569-87.
- "Picturing Sexual
Selection: Gender and the Evolution of Ornithological Illustration in
Charles Darwin's Descent of
- "Grant Allen,
Physiological Aesthetics, and the Dissemination of
- "Une Fleur du Mal? Swinburne's 'The Sundew' and
- "Philip Gosse and
the Varieties of Natural Theology." Reinventing Christianity:
Nineteenth-Century Contexts. Ed. Linda Woodhead.
- "Charles Darwin,
John Gould, and the Picturing of Natural Selection." The Book
Collector 50 (2001): 51-76.
- "
- "Is There
A Hypertext in This Class?: Teaching Victorian
Literature in the Electronic Age." Online. TLWC: Teaching
Literature With Computers. (TLWC is now
offline, but the article appears here as it did online.)
- "A Grammar of
Dissent: Flatland, Newman, and the Theology of Probability." Victorian
Studies 39 (1996-97): 129-50. (Co-authored with Gerald Baker and
Lawrence Berkove, but I am listed first as the
primary author.)
- "'Fill Up All the Gaps': Narrative and Illegitimacy in The
Woman in White." Journal of Narrative Technique 26 (1996):
274-91. (Co-authored with Gwendolyn MacDonagh,
one of my undergraduate students.)
- "What's All this
Hype About Hypertext?: Teaching Literature with
George P. Landow's The Dickens Web."
Computers and the Humanities 30 (1996): 121-29.
- "'The Cock of
Lordly Plume': Sexual Selection and The
Egoist." Nineteenth-Century Literature 50 (1995-96):
51-77.
- "Heat and Modern
Thought: The Forces of Nature in Our Mutual Friend." Victorian
Literature and Culture 23 (1995): 37-69.
- "Art and Science:
The Method of Ruskin's Modern Painters." Scientific
Methods: Conceptual and Historical Problems. Ed. Peter Achinstein and Laura J. Snyder.
- "De Quincey's Revisions to 'The System of the
Heavens.'" Victorian Periodicals Review 26 (1993): 203-12.
- "The 'Wonderful
Geological Story': Uniformitarianism and The Mill on the Floss." Papers on
Language and Literature 27 (1991): 430-52.
Reviews and Short Articles:
- Review of Darwin’s Camera: Art and
Photography in the Theory of Evolution, by Phillip Prodger.
- “Darwin and the
Aesthetes.” Review
of
- Review of Literary
Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature, by Joseph Carroll.
Victorian Studies 48 (2006): 573-74.
- “Elizabeth
Gould,” for Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists,
ed. Bernard Lightman (
- Review of Victorian
Relativity: Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery, by Christopher
Herbert. Clio 32 (2003): 222-27.
- Review of Charles
Darwin: The Life of a Revolutionary Thinker, by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent. Quarterly Review of Biology 77
(2002): 175-76.
- Review of Frankenstein's
Children: Electricity, Exhibition, and Experiment in
Early-Nineteenth-Century
- Review of Erasmus
Darwin: A Life of Unequalled Achievement, by Desmond King-Hele. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 25.1
(2000): 69-71.
- Review of Darwinian
Myths, by Edward Caudill, and Paul Ekman's
edition of Charles Darwin's Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals. Nineteenth-Century Prose 27 (2000): 101-04.
- "The Cuckoo's
Contested History," Trends in Ecology and Evolution 14
(1999): 415.
- Review of Seeing New
Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Natural Science, by
Laura Dassow Walls. Annals of Science 55
(1998): 434-35.
- Review of Meredith
and the Novel, by Neil Roberts. Studies in the Novel 30 (1998):
601-03.
- Review of G.H.
Lewes: A Life, by Rosemary Ashton. Configurations 2 (1994):
365-67.
- Review of Thomas
Henry Huxley: Communicating for Science, by J.
- Review of Flatland,
by Edwin A. Abbott, ed. Thomas Banchoff. Victorian
Studies 36 (1992-1993): 94-95.
Works in Progress:
- “The Novel and Science.”
- Negotiating
Boundaries. Vol. 1 of Victorian Science and Literature.
General Editors Gowan Dawson and Bernard Lightman. A collection of annotated primary sources on
the relationship between science and literature in Victorian Britain, co-edited
with Piers Hale. In production with Pickering and Chatto.
- “The Luckiest Man: A Brief History of Time
and The Pride of the Yankees.”
Honors and Awards:
- Distinguished Faculty
Research Award. University of Michigan-Dearborn, 2008.
- Jack Williamson
Visiting Endowed Chair in Science and Humanities, Eastern
- Nominee, Modern
Language Association Prize for a First Book, 1995. For Fact and Feeling.
- NEH Summer Seminar.
"Methodological Debates in 19th-Century Physics," The
- Schachterle
Prize, The Society for Literature and Science,
Best Essay in Literature and Science by an Untenured Scholar, 1992.
Awarded for "The 'Wonderful Geological Story': Uniformitarianism
and The Mill on the Floss."
Grants and Fellowships:
- NEH Education
Demonstration and Development Grant. "The Automobile in American Life
and Society: A Web Site and Online Archive." $220,000 ($210,000
outright; $10,000 matching) for the creation of a web site and oral
history archive of auto industry engineers and designers to accompany
UM-Dearborn's Program in Science and Technology Studies of the Automobile.
A collaboration with The Henry
Ford. 2002. $10,000 in matching funds for this project secured from
DaimlerChrysler Corporation Fund.
- NEH Humanities Focus
Grant. "Science and Technology Studies of the Automobile."
$24,370 for a faculty reading group, external consultants, and course
development stipends to initiate a program at UM-Dearborn in Science and
Technology Studies with special attention on the automobile's impact on
American life, labor, and culture. (With Greg Field and Bruce Pietrykowski.) 2000.
- Rackham Faculty Grant.
"Seeing Things:
- NEH Fellowship.
"Seeing Things: Image, Text, and Victorian Culture in the Darwinian Debates."
$24,000 for salary support in 2000. 1998.
- Visiting Fellowship,
- ACLS Fellowship.
"Seeing Things: The Visual and Textual Languages of Victorian
Science." $20,00 for sabbatical-year salary
support in 1997-98. 1997. (Alternate)
- Chancellor's Technology
Iniatives Award. University of Michigan-Dearborn.
$625 for purchase of network upgrade of Storyspace
hypertext software for use in Victorian literature classes. 1997.
- Faculty Research Grant.
"The Almighty Designer: The Victorian Search for God in the
Architecture of Man and Nature." University of Michigan-Dearborn.
$1000 to support archival research in
- Rackham Faculty
Fellowship. "John Gould's Bird Books and the Visual Response to
Darwinism."
- Rackham Faculty Grant.
"John Gould's Bird Books and the Visual Response to Darwinism."
- NEH Summer Stipend.
"Scientific Image and Literary Text in Victorian Representations of
Nature." $4000. 1994.
- NEH Younger Scholars
Award. "Alchemy, Romanticism, and Frankenstein." $2500 to
support a student research project. (With Jennifer O'Meara.) 1994.
- Faculty Research Grant.
"John Gould's Bird Books and the Visual Response to Darwinism."
University of Michigan-Dearborn. $800 to support archival research in the
- Faculty Research Grant.
"Scientific Image and Literary Text in Victorian Representations of
Nature." University of Michigan-Dearborn. $1500 to support archival
research in
- Preliminary/Small Scale
Project Grant. "The Eye's Mind: Scientific Image and Literary Text in
Victorian
- Research Assistance
Award. "Architecture and Induction: Whewell
and Ruskin on Gothic." University of Michigan-Dearborn. $535 to hire
a student research assistant. 1993.
- Educational Enhancement
Grant. "Science and Literature." University of
Michigan-Dearborn. $883 for materials to support a new course in science
and literature. 1992.
- Educational Enhancement
Grant. "Literature on Video." University of Michigan-Dearborn.
$451 for purchase of educational videos to support the teaching of
Restoration drama and Romantic poetry. 1992.
- Elliot Dobbie Dissertation Grant.
Conference Papers and
Invited Talks:
- “Charles Darwin,
Evolutionary Aesthetics, and Victorian Visual Culture.” University
of Michigan-Dearborn Graduate Liberal Studies Conference, May, 2010,
- “Charles Darwin, Evolutionary Aesthetics,
and Victorian Visual Culture.”
- “Charles Darwin, John Gould, and Australian
Birds.” Gould Centennial Lecture.
- “Audubon and John Gould.” Picturing John James Audubon: NEH Summer Institute. July,
2009,
- “
- “Charles Darwin, Evolutionary Aesthetics,
and Victorian Visual Culture.”
- “1859: A Tipping Point for
Evolution?” Jane Stedman Lecture, Midwest Victorian Studies
Association, April, 2009,
- Respondent, “The
Uglies of Nature: Observation and Aesthetics in
the Oceans.” History of Science Society, November, 2008,
- “Evolutionary
Aesthetics.”
- “Picturing
Natural Selection: Charles Darwin and Victorian Visual Culture.”
- “Darwin and the
Sensation Novelists.”
- “
- “Domestic
Hybrids: Sensation Fiction, Sexuality, and
- Invited Keynote
Speaker, Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs, October, 2004,
- “John Ruskin,
Charles Darwin, and the Threat of a Naturalized Aesthetics,” North
American Victorian Studies Association, October, 2003,
- "Royal Figures:
Gender, Sexuality, and Domesticity in John Gould's The
Birds of
- Grant Allen,
Physiological Aesthetics, and the Dissemination of
- Respondent,
"Sexual Selection and Victorian Narrative," Modern Language
Association, December, 1999,
- "Classification
and Culture:
- "
- "The New Uses of
Texts," Midwest Meeting of the American Association of University
Presses, "Text and Technology," September, 1999,
- "Image and Text:
John Gould, Charles Darwin, and the Picturing of Natural Selection,"
Society for the History of Natural History, "Drawing From Nature:
Illustration in the Natural History Sciences," April, 1999,
- "Queer Plants:
Sexuality, Sensation Fiction, and
- "Picturing
Natural Selection: Illustration in
- "Science,
Culture, and History: P.H. Gosse and
- "
- "The Birds of
Darwin and John Gould: Sexual Selection and Victorian Culture,"
Society for Literature and Science, October, 1996,
- "The Engineer as
Humanist," Alpha Pi Mu (
- "Is Science
Social?: John Gould's Bird Books and the Visual
Response to
- "The Implications
for Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century British Debates on the Methods of
Science and Literature," International Association for the Study of
Emile Zola and Naturalism, September, 1995,
- "Birds of a
Feather?: John Gould's Bird Books and the Visual
Response to Darwinism," Northeast Victorian Studies Association,
April, 1995,
- "Alchemy,
Romanticism, and Frankenstein," Society for Literature and
Science, November, 1994,
- "Hypertext and
the Victorian Serial," Society for Literature and Science, November,
1994,
- "Architecture and
Induction: Whewell and Ruskin on Gothic,"
British Society for the History of Science, "Science and British
Culture in the 1830s," July, 1994,
- "Using
Independent Study and the NEH Younger Scholars Program to Facilitate
Faculty-Student Research Collaboration in the Humanities,"
- "The Master of
the Proceedings: A Brief History of Hawking," Society for Literature
and Science, November, 1993,
- Facilitator,
"Meaningful Writing Assignments in Chemistry,"
- "Heat and Modern
Thought: The Forces of Nature in Household Words, All the Year
Round, and Our Mutual Friend," Research Society for
Victorian Periodicals, October, 1993,
- "Eyes on the
Skies: John Herschel, Thomas De Quincey, and the
Great Nebula in Orion," University of Michigan-Dearborn, Department
of Humanities, Humanitas Lecture, February,
1993.
- "'The
Abysses of the Heavenly Wilderness': Thomas De Quincey,
John Herschel, and J.P. Nichol Confront the Great Nebula in Orion,"
Midwest Modern Language Association, November, 1992,
- "Intruding in the
Garden of Eden: The Rhetorical Transformation of Nature in Gosse's Father
and Son," Society for Literature and Science, October, 1992,
- "Interdisciplinarity and the English Curriculum,"
- "'The Abysses of
the Heavenly Wilderness': Thomas De Quincey,
J.P. Nichol, and the Earl of Rosse Confront the
Great Nebula in Orion," Northeast Victorian Studies Association,
April, 1992,
- "'
- "'Seeing Through
Lyell's Eyes': The Uniformitarian Imagination and The
Voyage of the Beagle," Society for Literature and Science,
October, 1990,
Teaching:
My normal teaching load is three
courses per semester. I'm responsible for all courses in nineteenth-century
British literature, so I teach one upper-level course in the Romantics or the
Victorians each semester. As the list below indicates, I've taught a wide
variety of nineteenth-century courses, topics courses as well as standard
period/genre surveys. My other two courses generally consist of some
combination of an introductory literature course (the second half of the
English literature survey or Introduction to Drama), a course for one of our
interdisciplinary programs (such as our new undergraduate Science and
Technology Studies Program or our master's program in Liberal Studies), a
topics course in literature (such as Classical Literature in Translation).
My research interests in Literature and Science
and Science and Technology Studies have led not only to the creation and
teaching of new courses in these areas but to program development. I taught an
undergraduate course on Literature and Science in 1993 that I subsquently re-vamped as a graduate seminar on
"Literature, Science, and Science Studies" for our master's program
in Liberal Studies. In 1991 and 2000 I taught a course I developed on Darwin
and Victorian Culture. In 2000 I spearheaded the effort to create a Science and Technology Studies
Program at UMD with a special focus on the automobile and automobile
industry. With funding from the NEH, we brought together an interdisciplinary
group of faculty for reading, discussion, and program design. The STS Program
and Minor were approved in early 2002 and launched in the Fall
of that year. I designed and taught the inaugural offering of the introductory
course for the Program on "The Automobile in American Life and
Society." I am currently serving as the Director both of the STS Program
and of a second NEH-funded project to create a web site that will accompany the
Program but will also be available to teachers and students elsewhere. Working
with The Henry Ford, we are constructing a site that includes overview essays
and case studies by five distinguished scholars on the automobile and labor,
gender, design, the environment, and race. In addition, the site will include a
collection of oral histories taken from auto industry designers.
My teaching style in the literature classroom
blends Socratic questioning and discussion with individual and small-group
activities. I lecture when I feel I need to, but I try to keep it to a minimum.
I treat writing assignments as I do in my composition classes: students are
required to write rough drafts and to critique the drafts of other students in
their peer group.
For over a decade I have incorporated technology
into my literature classes fairly extensively, employing email and bulletin
boards for out-of-class discussion, utilizing Web sites in paper assignments
and homework exercises, and, in some cases, requiring students to conduct a
research project that is conceived hypertextually and
becomes part of a class-constructed web on a particular work, with links among
the various individual projects. When the Web was in its infancy, I used Storyspace hypertext software and George Landow's Storyspace webs on Great
Expectations and In Memoriam. Now these classes build webs directly
on the WWW. In 1997, my class on the Victorian Novel launched a web on Bronte's
Jane Eyre entitled "Charlotte's
Web" and in 1999 the same class used that web as both a resource and a
model for their own web, called "Pip's World,"
on Great Expectations. Classes in 2001, 2003, and 2005 have added to
those original webs. For the one in 2007 I moved to a wiki on Charles
Kingsley's The Water Babies; that project, however, is not available on
the web.
My use of Storyspace is
related to another of my pedagogical interests: undergraduate research. I've
been actively involved in the annual "Meeting of Minds" conference on
undergraduate research held with students from our campus, the University of
Michigan-Flint, and Oakland University; I've worked closely with our librarians
and Writing Program on ways to enhance research across the curriculum; and I
try to work with talented individual students on independent research projects
whose goal is national conference presentations and publications. I've directed
an NEH-funded student project on alchemy and Frankenstein and presented
a paper with the student at the Society for Literature and Science conference,
co-authored a journal article on The Woman in White with another, had a
third publish an article in ISLE, and have directed roughly a dozen
independent study projects. At the graduate level, I directed the Master's
Thesis of Carolyn Reese on "Anne Bronte and Universal Salvation,"
while another student's independent study project resulted in an article on
Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe in Public Understanding of
Science.
I've been creating web sites for all my courses
since 1998. In some cases, particularly when creating an online coursepack, I utilize our library's Electronic Reserves
system; these course spaces are password-protected and thus not accessible.
- Literature,
Science, and Science Studies (Graduate) (This course is
password-protected, so the link is to the syllabus only.)
- Science and Literature
(an undergraduate topics course taught both at UM-Dearborn and
- Introduction to
Science and Technology Studies: The Automobile in American Life and
Society (This course is password protected, so the materials are not
accessible.) (Taught in both traditional and online versions.)
- Car Culture (a seminar
for first-year students; this course is password protected, so the
materials are not accessible)
- What Are You Going To
Do With That? The Liberal Arts and the Professions (a seminar for
first-year students, linked with a career-planning course)
- Hypertext and the
Victorian Novel (My first use of Storyspace
software, offered before the WWW existed.)
- Women and the English
Novel, 1792-1869
- The
Pre-Raphaelites (Part of this course is password-protected, but the
bulk of the course materials is accessible.)
- The Radical Romantics:
The Godwins, The Shelleys,
and Byron
- Nineteenth-Century
English Novel
- Survey of
Victorian Literature
- Survey of English
Literature in the Romantic Era
- English
Literature 1660 to Present
- Classical
Literature in Translation
- Introduction to
English Studies (gateway course for English majors)
- Introduction to
Literature: Drama
- Composition I and II
(Computer Aided)
- Honors Composition
(linked with both Western Culture II: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
and Western Culture I: The Ancient World)
- Basic Composition,
Expository Writing, and Advanced Composition (
Thesis Advising:
- Jennifer De Long, “Alchemists, Epics,
and Heroes.” Ph.D. in English,
- Carolyn Bacon, “Anne Bronte and
Universal Salvation.” Master’s of Liberal
Studies. Completed December 2005.
- Jennifer Gerstel, "Sexual Selection and Mate Choice in Darwin,
Eliot, Gaskell, and Hardy." Ph.D. in English,
Service to the
Profession:
- Foreign Corresponding
Editor, Journal of Victorian Culture (2001- ).
- Evaluator for
MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Program, 2010.
- Panelist, NEH Grants
for Teaching and Learning Resources and Curriculum Development, 2006.
- Manuscript Reviewer
for PMLA, Cambridge University Press, Victorian Studies,
Isis, Ohio State University Press, Journal of Victorian Culture,
Journal of Narrative Theory, SEL: Studies in English Literature,
1500-1900, McGraw-Hill.
- Proposal reviewer for
Cambridge University Press, NEH Collaborative Projects, Broadview
Press, The Library of
- Promotion Reviewer for
- Editorial Board, TLWC:
Teaching Literature With Computers. 1997-98.
University Service:
English Discipline:
- Member, Curriculum
Review Committee, 2002-05 (Chair 2003-05). Led a complete overhaul of the
English major.
- Coordinator, English
Discipline Self-Study, 1995-96
- Coordinator, English
Discipline Assessment Plan, 1994-95
- English Discipline
Library Liaison, 1992-97
- English Discipline
Faculty Advisor, 1993-95
- English Discipline
Assistant Library Liaison, 1991-92
- Member, Composition
Advisory Committee, 1991-92, 1995-96
Humanities
Department/Department of Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts:
- Chair, American
Literature and Culture Search Committee, 2003-04
- Chair, 18th-Century
Studies Search Committee, 2002-03
- Member, Medievalist
Search Committee, 2001
- Associate Chair,
1998-99
- Member, Promotion and
Tenure Committee, 1997-
- Ex-Officio Member,
Department Executive Committee, 1998-99
- At-Large Member,
Department Executive Committee, 1995-96, 1997
- Member, Composition
Search Committee, 1992-93, 1996-97
- Associate Dean,
2006-09. Primary responsibility for interdisciplinary programs,
undergraduate research and learning opportunities, distance learning,
technology support and web site.
- Director, Science and
Technology Studies, 2002-06
- Chair, Distance
Learning Advisory Committee, 2006-09
- Member, Reconstituted
Promotion & Tenure Committee (for promotions to full professor), 2005
- Member, Full Professor
Review Committee, 2003
- Member and Coordinator,
Pilot First-Year Seminars Committee, 2003-04
- Member, CASL Executive
Committee, 1998-2000 (voting), 2006-09 (ex officio)
- Member, CASL
Administrative Council, 2006-09
- Member, "Meeting
of Minds" Steering Committee, 1994-97, 1998-2000
- Attendee, Council on
Undergraduate Research Institute, "How to Institutionalize
Undergraduate Research,"
- Member, Academic
Standards Committee, 1993-95
- Faculty Marshall,
Commencements of Fall 1991, Winter 1995, and Winter 2007
University of Michigan-Dearborn
Campus:
- Chair, CASL Dean Search Committee, 2009-10
- Member,
Provost’s Ad Hoc Advisory Committee for a Faculty Lounge, 2002-03
- Member, Graduate
Board, 1998-2000
- Member, Research
Support Committee, 1996-99
- Member, Values Team,
FUTURES Strategic Planning Initiative, 1998-99
- Member, Search
Committee for Information Services Librarian, 1998
- Member, Committee on
PREMIER Research Education Initiative, 1996-97
- Member, Ad Hoc
Committee on UM-Dearborn Agenda for Women, 1996
- Member, Library and
Information Technology Advisory Committee, 1994-97
- Member, Library
Advisory Committee, 1992-94
- Panelist, New Faculty
Orientation, 1994, 1995, 1997
- Member, Ad Hoc Library
Committee on Serials, 1993-94
- Member, Selection Committee, Jackie Lawson Memorial Faculty
Governance Award, 2003-05
- Member, Rackham
Divisional Board (Humanities and the Arts), 1997-99
Memberships:
- Modern Language
Association
- North American
Victorian Studies Association
- Northeast Victorian
Studies Association
- Interdisciplinary
Nineteenth Century Society
- Society for
Literature, Science, and the Arts
- History of Science
Society
- British Society for
the History of Science
- Society for the
History of Technology