Nathaniel Smith
Instructor, English
Degrees:
B.S., West Point
M.A., Belmont University
ABD, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Office Location: Memorial Hall, 200-A
Phone: 615.547.1368
E-mail: nsmith@cumberland.edu
Degrees:
B.S., West Point
M.A., Belmont University
ABD, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Office Location: Memorial Hall, 200-A
Phone: 615.547.1368
E-mail: nsmith@cumberland.edu
Nathaniel “Buck” Smith joined the faculty at Cumberland University in the spring of 2010. His teaching responsibilities include Composition, Sophomore Literature, Introduction to Literary Studies, and upper level courses in American Literature.
Professor Smith earned a Bachelor of Science from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1994 with a major in International/Strategic History (focusing on Middle Eastern History) and a minor in Systems Engineering. He served 9 years in the Army as an infantry officer and later as a Special Forces team leader, and he deployed to Haiti, Egypt, Afghanistan, and other Middle Eastern countries. He spoke about his experiences in January 2010 as a part of Cumberland University’s iRead program. After the Army, Professor Smith began pursuing advanced degrees in English. He earned his Master of Arts in English Literature from Belmont University in 2004, and then moved on to doctoral study at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he completed coursework in 2009 after specializing in American Literature.
Professor Smith’s areas of interest primarily fall in American Literature. He is currently working on his dissertation for the Ph.D., titled “Transversal Movement and Transitive Figures: Gender and Ecology in the Nineteenth Century Novel of the Town.” He typically engages texts from a perspective heavily influenced by eco-criticism, post-structuralism, and gender theory.
In the classroom, Professor Smith encourages his composition students to think rhetorically by carefully considering their purpose for writing and the needs of their reader, and he expects them to devote equal time to all the phases of the writing process: invention, drafting, revising, and editing. In literature courses, he holds free-ranging discussions in order to get students to think critically about texts by considering the historical, cultural, and environmental factors that influenced the author and audience.
Outside of CU, Professor Smith’s life revolves around his wife Lori and their two daughters, their local church, and their small farm. When he is not tending to their garden, cows, or chickens, his favorite activity is hiking and exploring the natural world around the farm and at local state parks with his family.