Henry Nash Smith (September 29, 1906 – June 6, 1986) was a scholar of American culture and literature. He was co-founder of the academic discipline "American studies". He was also a noted Mark Twain scholar, and the curator of the Mark Twain Papers. The Handbook of Texas reported that an uncle encouraged Smith to read at an early age, and that the boy developed an interest in the works of Rudyard Kipling, Robert L. Stevenson and Mark Twain. Life Smith was born in Dallas, Texas to a father, an accountant who was a native of Kentucky, and a mother who was a native of Alabama. In 1922, he enrolled in Southern Methodist University (SMU), where he studied under John Hathaway McGinnis. In 1926, Smith received his Bachelor's degree at SMU, then enrolled at Harvard University, where he earned the Master of Fine Arts degree. He returned to SMU in 1927, where he began teaching in the English Department. He was also appointed as editor of the Southwest Review, a position he held until 1937. He left SMU again in 1941 to begin teaching as a Professor of English and history at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas (UT-A), where he became a friend with J. Frank Dobie. Smith was reportedly happy with his work, his colleagues and his students. However, turmoil embroiled UT in the years following the end of World War II in 1945. He wrote a paper entitled, "The Controversy at the University of Texas, 1939–1945," which he presented to the student committee on academic freedom on August 13, 1945. Smith accepted a position as professor of English at the University of Minnesota (UMinn) in 1947, where he joined the American Studies program. Gossett wrote that while still employed by UMinn, Smith took an active role in protests defending academic freedom at the University of Washington. This became the basis for publishing an essay titled "Legislatures, Communists and State Universities, in 1949, arguing against firing faculty members who had become members of the communist party. The Smith family left Minneapolis in 1953, when Henry accepted a position at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB). He served as chairman of the UCB English Department from 1957 to 1961, and also served a term as national president of the Modern Language Association in 1969. A decade after he moved to Berkeley, Smith immersed himself in a series of political