Literature, Media, and Culture Program collaborates with Society for Critical Exchange to host Winter Theory Institute conference
The Society for Critical Exchange Theory Institute returns to the Tallahassee area for a two-day symposium that begins Thursday, Feb. 15, hosted at The Lodge at Wakulla Springs, inside Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park.
The University of Houston-Victoria, the society’s home institution, and the Literature, Media, and Culture Program of Florida State University’s Department of English are co-sponsoring the 15th-annual gathering of scholars from the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
This weekend’s 14 participants, including three English department faculty members, are given one hour each for a presentation and discussion on a topic that addresses the conference’s theme, Critical Environments.
Jeffrey Di Leo has been the SCE’s executive director since its beginning, and he appreciates that the institute’s format has stayed consistent over the 15 years.
“The participants like the idea of everyone having the same amount of time and attention for their ideas,” says Di Leo, who also is a professor of English and philosophy at the University of Houston-Victoria. “This is enough time to both give a deep presentation and to have a great discussion about it.”
Aaron Jaffe, the Frances Cushing Ervin Professor of Literature at FSU, is one of the faculty members who is a panelist for the conference.
“Di Leo is a real impresario for interdisciplinary humanities scholarship, an O.G. in theory-world,” Jaffe says. “Under Di Leo’s leadership the SCE has consistently put a premium on the virtues of intellectual discussion, diversity, and dissent at its Theory Institute. Faculty always come away with new ideas.”
This is the second time in five years that the SCE has joined with FSU’s English department to host the conference, after Jaffe and FSU English Professor Robin Goodman proposed the topic to Di Leo.
“We agreed that Critical Environments was a rich and timely subject, and that the ability to run it at The Lodge in Wakulla Springs would give it a different flavor than hosting it again on the FSU campus,” Di Leo says.
Jaffe agrees that the subject matter allows for deep discussions.
“Critical environments gets at two crucial issues: What the theoretical humanities can bring to the ongoing ecocrisis, and what sustainable habitats for life, critical, intellectual, human or otherwise, can look like,” he says.
The Winter Theory Institute is one of the most rigorous, exciting, and vibrant conferences I know about. There are no keynotes, yet every speaker is treated as a keynote to give a serious scholarly intervention, instigating conversations that bring a variety of critical orientations, perspectives, and disciplines into the fray for two full days.
— Robin Goodman
Goodman says the English department is fortunate to work with Di Leo bring the Institute back to FSU.
“The Winter Theory Institute is one of the most rigorous, exciting, and vibrant conferences I know about,” she says. “There are no keynotes, yet every speaker is treated as a keynote to give a serious scholarly intervention, instigating conversations that bring a variety of critical orientations, perspectives, and disciplines into the fray for two full days.”
“Since Critical Theory is foundational for developing thought conceptually in the Humanities and Critical Social Sciences,” she adds, “Winter Theory is able to bridge between disciplines and areas of study and address how what we do as scholars is relevant and necessary for engaging political and social problems.”
Goodman’s title of her paper is “World Literature at the World’s Limit.” Her discussion will contrast two ecologically themed texts, Australian Charlotte McConaghy's 2020 novel Migrations with Shanuak Sen's Academy Award-nominated 2022 documentary from Delhi, All That Breathes.
“Both works are about birds falling from the sky as a sign of the end of nature as we know it, and I address them through critical psychoanalytic theory to talk about subjectivity in relation to climate crisis,” says Goodman, whose research focuses on critical and cultural theory, feminism, and cultural studies.
Goodman and Jaffe asked new Assistant Professor of English Alison Sperling to participate in the Institute.
“I’m really grateful to be invited to participate in the Winter Theory Institute, which has a reputation internationally for its intensity and rigor across disciplines and fields,” says Sperling, whose research explores science and weird fiction, queer and feminist theory, the Anthropocene and the environmental humanities, and contemporary art. “It’s major to be included among these thinkers, and to have them all here is an exciting opportunity for me to meet new and established folks and to have conversations with them on what we together perceive as the pressing theoretical questions in our respective fields today.”
Her presentation “Nonbinary/Natures” explores recent work “about ‘nonbinariness,’ as distinct from nonbinary as a gendered or sexed identity category, taking as its starting point the recent and somewhat prickly claim that ‘we are all nonbinary.’”
“My talk locates the tensions and possibilities of theorized nonbinariness. I ultimately hope to gesture toward the ways in which nonbinariness might contribute to the already rich field of queer ecology,” Sperling adds. “What might nonbinariness as an orientation to the world offer eco-political relations that refuse forms of corporeal legibility that demand gender (or race) as a primary vector of being?”
Sometimes people don’t realize just how interdisciplinary and deeply engaging professing English really gets.
— Aaron Jaffe
According to Jaffe, this year's Institute promises some “mind-bending” humanities scholarship.
“Sometimes people don’t realize just how interdisciplinary and deeply engaging professing English really gets,” he says. “This Institute will take on ecological crisis, infrastructure, contagion, infection, contamination, deep time, and, indeed, in my talk, the ecological forms, languages, and metaphors implicit in critical thinking itself.”
Discussing the risk-addled signs taken for wonders in ecocide, Jaffe’s presentation called “Risk Horizons and Slag Heaps” revisits old controversies about form versus medium central to literature and ecological thinking.
“Take only memories, leave only footprints is the bumper sticker version of the problem,” he says, but “taking form by leaving media can be a risky enterprise, a relic of a past that may no longer guarantee future results.”
Presenters for the two-day symposium represent multiple scholarly disciplines. The environment is exactly the type that Di Leo fosters for the annual institute.
“This weekend is an opportunity for experts interested in the topic of Critical Environments from all over the country and abroad to convene to enrich their theoretical understanding and to learn from each other through several days of intense discussion,” he says. “The presentations and discussions have always been amazing. I expect the same this year as well.”
For the full list of scholars and their topics, visit the Society for Critical Exchange’s website here.
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Society for Critical Exchange: Fifteenth-Annual Theory Institute
Schedule of events/presentations
Thursday, Feb. 15
6-9 p.m. Opening Reception
Friday, Feb. 16
8-8:50 a.m. Breakfast
8:50-9 a.m. Welcome remarks
9-10 a.m. JANE GALLOP
“Eli Clare: Outsider Theory, the Environment, and Brilliant Imperfection”
10-10:15 a.m. Break
10:15-11:15 a.m. ALISON SPERLING
“Nonbinary/Natures”
11:15-11:30 a.m. Break
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. ROBIN GOODMAN
“World Literature at the World’s Limit”
12:30-1 p.m. Lunch
1-1:45 p.m. Boat Tour
1:45-2 p.m. Break
2-3 p.m.CLINT BURNHAM
“Mari Ruti: Climate Change, Sublimation, and Eco-Sabotage”
3-3:15 p.m. Break
3:15-4:15 p.m. NICOLE SIMEK
“The Plantationocene, or Critique under a Black Horizon”
4:15-4:30 p.m. Break
4:30 to 5:30 p.m. ZAHI ZALLOUA
“The ‘Real’ Neighbor and the Politics of the Faceless”
5:30 to 5:45 p.m. Break
5:45-6:45 p.m. JEFFREY R. Di LEO
“The Jargon of Critical Environments”
7 p.m. Dinner
Saturday, Feb. 17
6:30-9 a.m. Breakfast
9-10 a.m. KEN SALTMAN
“The Disaster of Resilience”
10-10:15 a.m. Break
10:15-11:15 a.m. EDWARD DALLIS-COMENTALE
“Total Admin: The College Campus as Critical Environment”
11:15-11:30 a.m. Break
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. – AARON JAFFE
“Risk Horizons & Slag Heaps”
12:30 to 2 p.m. Lunch
2-3 p.m. CRISTINA IULI
Complexity Re-ordered (Critical Environments as Theoretical Pedagogy)”
3-3:15 p.m. Break
3:15 to 4:15 p.m. DEREK WOODS
“Abstract Carbon”
4:15 to 4:30 p.m. Break
4:30 to 5:30 p.m. MICHAEL F. MIILER
“Technical Rationality and the Ecological Turn”
5:30 to 5:45 p.m. Break
5:45 to 6:45 p.m. CARY WOLFE
“The Dreams of Sympoiesis”
7 p.m. Closing Reception
Sunday, Feb. 18
Departure from The Lodge