'Coming to Terms with Human Finitude' with Martin Hägglund
Listen to SCT 2023 Faculty Martin Hägglund discuss 'Coming to Terms with Human Finitude' on the What's Left of Philosophy Podcast
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A six-week summer intensive with leading figures in critical thought
School of Criticism and Theory
Founded in 1976, the School of Criticism and Theory brings together a diverse group of scholars from around the world, addressing an ever-expanding arrangement of cultural, political and social movements, theoretical axes and intersecting debates across the humanities and social sciences.
Summer 2023 Session
In an intensive six-week course of study, faculty members, graduate students and independent scholars from around the world, in the humanities and social sciences, explore recent developments in critical theory. The 2023 Session is scheduled for June 11 - July 20, 2023.
Participants work with the SCT’s core faculty of distinguished scholars and theorists in one of four six-week seminars. Each faculty member offers, in addition, a public lecture and a colloquium (based on an original paper) which are attended by the entire group.
The program also includes mini-seminars taught by scholars who visit for shorter periods. Finally, throughout the six weeks, distinguished theorists visit the SCT as lecturers.
Click here for more detailed information on the 2023 session.
Popular Destinations
A Welcome from the Director
From its inception, almost half a century ago, SCT has played an important role as an annual scholarly and intellectual platform on which the drama of the somewhat fruitless theory wars and the questionable virtue of vain polemics is resolutely sidestepped.
SCT News
Celebrating 2023 SCT Faculty, Dianne M. Stweart's new book, Obeah, Orisa, and Religious Identity in Trinidad: Africana Nations and the Power of Black Sacred Imagination
We are thrilled to share 2023 SCT Faculty, Dianne M. Stewart's new book, as well as announce her 6-week major seminar topic for 2023's summer session: "The Ties that Bind: Global Black Feminisms and Womanisms"
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More than $12M donated to support students in 24 hours
On Cornell’s eighth Giving Day, held March 16, 15,905 alumni, students, faculty, staff, parents and friends from more than 80 countries made gifts totaling a record-breaking $12,268,629.
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Support Arts & Sciences on Giving Day March 16
Gifts allow the College to fulfill its mission: preparing students to do the greatest good in the world.
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Critique on the Couch: Why Critical Theory Needs Psychoanalysis
Read upcoming 2022 SCT faculty, Amy Allen's most recent publication, Critique on the Couch: Why Critical Theory Needs Psychoanalysis"Amy Allen works with many of the central authors in the field of critical theory to make the case for psychoanalysis, the analytic potential of the death drive, and th...
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Dereliction, Due Process, and Decorum: The Crises of Title IX—an essay by SCT Senior Fellow Catharine R. Stimpson
"As a participant/observer, I am offering a narrative about the evolution of Title IX from 1972 to early 2021. I have three lessons. First—and who can disagree?—sex discrimination is one of the brute enforcers of patriarchal gender systems. ... Second, as Title IX evolved, a feminist consensus about...
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George Yancy: A Critical Introduction
With a Foreword by Judith Butler and edited by Kimberley Ducey, Clevis Headley and Joe R Feagin, this book is published by Rowman and Littlefield - please click here to read more about this important work. The book can be ordered here: George Yancy: A Critical Introduction.
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SCT Alumni Book Announcement—The Geschlecht Complex: New and Selected Essays on Gender, Genre, and Ontology
We are thrilled to join Oscar Jansson and David LaRocca in celebrating their new book with Bloomsbury Academic, The Geschlecht Complex: New and Selected Essays on Gender, Genre, and Ontology, which grew out of an SCT seminar in 2017. Thank you to Oscar and David for sharing a few words with us below...
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