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The four-piece band, led by famously miserable singer Morrissey, will be analysed by scholars from around the world for two days next week.
The symposium, called Why Pamper Life's Complexities, will aim to assess the band's social, cultural, political and musical impact.
The Smiths are considered one of the most influential bands of the decade.
The academics will reflect on the influence of Morrissey's lyrics on gender and sexuality, race and nationality and the imagination of class.
The band will also be discussed in terms of aesthetics, fan cultures and musical innovation at Manchester Metropolitan University on 8 and 9 April.
Dr Justin O'Connor, an expert on the Manchester music and cultural scene, said the band had a "singular impact" on popular culture.
"They looked like nobody else and sounded like nobody else, and their music had an emotional depth that moved people in a way that no band has managed before or since."
He said that, in spite of their enormous cultural significance, the band had not yet received sustained academic attention.
"This conference aims to put that right," said Dr O'Connor.
Championed by BBC Radio DJ John Peel during their early career, the band built their sound on Morrissey's angst-ridden lyrics and guitarist Johnny Marr's complex compositions.
From 1984 to 1987 they gained both critical praise and commercial success - particularly with the 1986 album The Queen is Dead.
But familiar rock and roll frailties - artistic differences, changing band line-ups, car crashes, drug problems and litigation - resulted in a definitive split in August 1987.
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