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IN THeory 8 Fall 2013The School of Criticism andTheory is sometimes describedas an academic conferencestretched out over six weeks,and there is some truth in this.The intensity of discussion, the senseof urgency and freshness in establishedscholars presenting new work and workin progress, and the remarkable feelingof participating in a larger conversation,with palpable stakes, are features that theSCT has in common with a greatconference. Many conferences, as well,share with the SCT the sense of adventurethat comes from being thrown into a newplace with new people, and that gives riseto exuberant post-seminar socializing, aradical openness to new perspectives, anda willingness to take risks (intellectualand otherwise).Yet in a few key ways, the School ofCriticism and Theory is nothing like anacademic conference. For one thing, a realcommunity develops over the six weeksof SCT, whereas conferences tend toreinforce or draw on previously existingcommunities. For another, conferencestend to be either tightly focused orinclusively hodgepodge, where SCToffers something in the middle—a fewsalient lines of thought that speak to andilluminate each other. Most important, forthe few weeks you’re at SCT, you’re noton the market. You’re not competing insome subtle game of departmental ordisciplinary ranking. You’re notpositioning yourself in a field. When youwalk into a seminar at SCT, you are thereas a thinker engaging with other thinkers.The appeal this idea held for me wasalmost physical. The promise of pureintellectual exploration seemed idyllic,even utopian. Still, as I consideredapplying to SCT, I was concerned thatnone of the seminars spoke directly to mydissertation topic, and I worried aboutwhat six weeks would cost me in termsof my own research. I was anxious thatI might be choosing a kind of dilettantismover the more rigorous demands ofexpertise.My dissertation, The Lost War: World WarII in American Literature, 1945-1975,investigates the dominance of traumaticnarratives in canonical literaryrepresentations of World War II, andworks to recuperate an “other tradition”that abjures trauma in favor of moreambiguous, resistant, and complexunderstandings of power, violence, andsocial identity. I wasn’t entirely sure howIan Baucom’s seminar, “PostcolonialStudies in the Era of the Anthropocene,”would illuminate my topic, but I thoughtit would be helpful for me to learn moreabout postcolonial theory and to thinkthrough theoretical problems aroundhistoricity, the concept of an epoch or era,and the idea of the Event. As it turnedout, the questions we asked in seminarabout the anthropocene were oftendirectly related to contextual questionsI was asking about World War II: Howdo we understand the relation between aglobal event and local politics? How doesthe historical apprehension of humanityas a mass or a species affect humanistthought and aesthetics? As technologicaldevelopment exceeds comprehensibility,rationality, and even agency, how do weuse art and literature to represent ourunstable imaginings of the future—and ofthe present? And does the threat ofhuman extinction require a wholesalerethinking of history, culture, andpolitics?“When you walk intoa seminar at SCT,you are there asa thinker engagingwith other thinkers.”As we read the work of DipeshChakrabarty, Bruno Latour, TimothyMorton, Donna Haraway, and JaneBennett, wrestling with questions ofethics, ontology, and politics on a worldwidescale, Ian Baucom encouraged us tobring our own work and interests to bear.Our already rich discussion grew richeras my fellow participants folded in queertemporalities, Inuit knowledge, the art ofSpencer Tunick and Edward Burtynsky,Kropotkin, film studies, Sri Lankanliterature, and Christian Bök’s geneticpoetry. The seminar joined critical rigorand cosmopolitan heterogeneity in a waythat manifested the very best of whatinterdisciplinarity can mean.Ian Baucom’s seminar, for those of usin it, inflected and colored everythingelse we did, from “Anthropocene MovieNight” to the kinds of questions we raisedin the weekly lectures and mini-seminars.As the weeks went on, conversationsgrew deeper and more nuanced as we allattended the same talks and consideredthe same problems. Amanda Andersonand the rest of the faculty fostered asense of cooperative seriousness, pushingparticipants and each other on difficultpoints, attending to each other’s workwith generosity and rigor, and sharingwith us their doubts and concerns. Itseemed not just that we were creating acommunity, but that we were engaging ina rare and potent kind of critical collectivethought—a real “school.”At the same time, some of my mostvaluable experiences in Ithaca took placeoutside the formal rubric of seminarsand lectures: running along Fall Creekand around Beebe Lake, talking aboutphilosophy with Ian Baucom and postwarliberalism with Amanda Anderson,meeting with an informal reading groupon “War, Conflict, and the Event,” andgetting to know some of my fellowstudents one-on-one. I found plenty oftime, as well, to do my own research. Infact, I came to my own work refreshedand energized by the enthusiasm, acuity,and diversity of thought all around me.It was, I believe, the very strength of thesense of collective endeavor that createdsuch a productive space for my ownresearch. My thinking about my projectwas challenged, expanded, refined, andenlivened by the lush intellectual cultureformed at SCT.The School of Criticism and Theory issometimes described as an academicconference stretched out over six weeks,but that’s not quite right. Even the bestconference remains a concatenation ofindividuals with their own agendas: youput on your nametag, you deliver yourpaper, and you return home safely thesame person you were when you arrived.For six weeks every summer at Cornell,though, the SCT offers something else: thepotential and opportunity for change.Roy ScrantonPrinceton University
IN THeory 9 Fall 2013White House receptions, the gourmetpicnic at Taughannock Falls State Park,the outings to the lush farmer’s market,or simply stretched out in the “cocktaillounge” on rainy days, engrossed inour Whitehead. I have never felt suchcamaraderie with a group of colleaguesand new friends whose kindness,generosity, and authenticity warmed myheart. Among the waterfall dips, drinks,steep climbs, and scenic walks, futurecollaborations took flight, Deleuzian style!SCT participants enjoy a picnic at Taughannock Falls State Park.Critical vitalisms, disability narratives, wonder and indifference, the secondcoming of animism, enchanted critiques, the anthropocene, onto-sympathy,dwelling, Shakespeare and dessert...these were the sensual themes mulledover, always in the spirit of suspicion, at this year’s School of Criticism andTheory session. As the odd student out coming from an information studiesdepartment, I initially felt disoriented among the articulate Victorianists, medievalists,and literary scholars. However, by the end of this six-week program of deep cerebralcontemplation, dynamic intellectual exchange, and joyous camaraderie amidst thelushness of Ithaca and the elegance of the Cornell University campus, I was flushed withintellectual energy.SCT must be lived and experienced. I would suggest some prerequisites: an infinite loveof theory and its myriad nooks and crannies and a ravenous appetite for intellectualkinship that spills over into coffee, beer, dancing, and waterfalls. Be warned orpleasantly surprised: the inevitability of theory and the week’s intellectual dilemmasflooding your daytime and nocturnal activities is to be highly anticipated. As youperuse the organic cereal aisle, your mind is swept away by Chakrabarty’s climatehistory project on the anthropocene (the focus of Ian Baucom’s memorable SCTlecture). Contemplating cereals must wait.I am a game studies scholar exploring the nexus of digital identity, creative playpractices, and disability in gaming cultures. I had the privilege to partake in MichaelBérubé’s outstanding seminar: “Narrative, Intellectual Disability, and the Boundariesof the Human.” I jumped at the chance to explore the nuances, slippages, and tensionsof disability as a category of analysis. A remarkable scholar of literature and disabilitystudies, Bérubé graciously led this enriching seminar. We eagerly debated the theoreticalframeworks of the seminar: Darwinist approaches to literary analysis, theory ofmind, disability aesthetics, and disability metaphors. We interrogated Ato Quayson’s“aesthetic nervousness.” We passionately disputed “evocriticism.” We exploredevery facet of disability as lived experience, philosophical concept, and master trope ofdisqualification. It was deep-tissue intellectual massage.My wildly talented colleagues and friends, some of whom recited Walt Whitman byheart, enchanted me beyond measure. They expanded and guided the discussionswith their reflections, evocations, resonances, and dissonances. Our conversationsebbed and flowed, at times turning into rapids, pulling us into assorted currents andvortexes of speculation. This was after all Ithaca, NY, a place of wild waters. I missthose wild waters of intellectual and creative intensity. Not only did we engage with thegermane tangents of the day’s readings, idea sprouts, and conceptual inclinations in theintellectual spaces of the SCT, but we also engaged with them...over coffee, drinks, orwhile visiting a waterfall (or two). Not to mention the fun we had at the sumptuous A.D.We also witnessed world-class scholarsgraciously defend their projects at theweekly lectures, mini-seminars, andcolloquia. The lectures of the four sixweekseminar leaders included JaneBennett’s playful connections betweenhuman postures, Whitman, anddemocracy, Julia Reinhard Lupton’scompelling insight on dessert as anarchitectural affordance for belonging,Ian Baucom’s radiant angle on theanthropocene, temporal accumulation,and multi-species politics, and MichaelBérubé’s inventive exploration of thefiction-reality frontier in disabilitynarratives.Also, there was Rita Felski’s invitationto soften the sharpness of the “r” in“crrritique” and acknowledge ourenchantment with texts. CatherineMalabou encouraged us to wonderat wonder and the lack thereof incontemporary sociopolitical spheres.In his mini-seminar, Achille Mbembe’sriveting Deleuzian reading of FrantzFanon’s selected works captivated us.Amanda Anderson’s nuanced analysisof contemporary forces reshaping thehumanities emphasized the power ofimagination, inspiration, and criticalreflection. Anderson’s lecture remindedme that humanist work is an art andcommunion of ideas: an openness andgrace, a creative-intellectual largesse tothe immediate community, the world, andbeyond – exactly the spirit of SCT.The intellectual jet fuel that was SCTwill power and empower me for yearsto come. I turn to my archived treasuryof SCT memorabilia – my photographs,saved readings, papers and notes,YouTube reading group sessions, scribblesand doodles; I turn to the social mediaposts and emails of my dear SCT friendsand future collaborators, and here I amat School of Criticism and Theory atCornell…Sandra DanilovicUniversity of Toronto
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