Society for Critical Exchange

THEORY INSTITUTE

March 20-23, 2025

FOURTEEN DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS FROM ACROSS THE U.S. IN THREE DAYS OF ENGAGING DISCUSSION.

About SCE The Society for Critical Exchange is North America’s oldest scholarly organization devoted to theory. Our various interdisciplinary projects, conferences, and symposia serve to advance the role of theory in academic and intellectual arenas. Our projects encompass a broad spectrum of disciplines, most prominently literary and cultural studies, legal studies and practices, economics, philosophy, and pedagogy.

The 2025 Institute The Society for Critical Exchange (SCE), this year co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies, School of International Affairs, and Department of Comparative Literature at Penn State, and the University of Houston, Victoria, is pleased to announce the topic of its sixteenth annual Theory Institute:

Insurrection

José Álvarez Lara

José Álvarez Lara is Associate Professor of Spanish at South Dakota State University. He specializes in contemporary Latin American literature and culture, and inter-American studies. He is currently searching for an academic press to publish his recently completed monograph titled Spanish American Gothic.

Democracy Undead: Apocalyptic Politics, Survivalisrn, and Infectious Freedom

José Álvarez Lara

Sophia A. McClennen

Sophia A. McClennen is Professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature at Penn State University and founding director ofilie Center for Global Studies. She has published four teen books including Trump Was a Joke; Pranksters vs. Autocrats with Srdja Popovic; and Globalization and Latin American Cinema.

Satire is Revolting, but is it Revolutionary?

Sophia A. McClennen

Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Jeffrey R Di Leo is Professor of English and Philosophy at the Uni versity of Houston-Victoria. He is founder and editor of symploke and Executive Director of the Society for Critical Exchange and its Theory Institute. His recent books include Vinyl Theory; Happiness; Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory; and Dark Academe.

Barbarians, Insurrection, and the University

Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Jodi Melamed

Jodi Melan1ed is Professor of English and Race, Etlulic, and Indigenous Studies at Marquette University. She is the author of Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Capitalism. Her current book project is Operationalizing Racial Capitalism: From its Command Powers to its Undoing (with Chandan Reddy).

Palestine as a Joining Power (with Chandan Reddy)

Jodi Melamed

Jonathan P. Ebume

Jonathan P. Ebume is a professor of Comparative Literature, English,and French and Francophone studies at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of several books, including Exploded Views: Speculative Form and the Labor of Inquiry; Outsider Theory; and Surrealism and the Art of Crime.

Is There a "Sur" in "Insurrection"?

Jonathan P. Ebume

Paul Allen Miller

Paul Allen Miller is Carolina Distinguished Professor at tl1e University of South Carolina and Distinguished Guest Professor at Ewha Womans University. He has authored eleven books, and numerous articles. His latest books are Theory Does not Exist and Truth in the Late Foucault.

"You are right to revolt": The Possibility of Another Life

Paul Allen Miller

Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson

Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson is a critical theorist whose ,vork is situated at the intersection of political theory, philosophy, history, and conflict/terrorism studies. She is currently writing abook about whitesupremacist terroris1n, which sho,vs that throughout U.S. history, terrorism has been a central tool of securing ,white supremacy.

State of Insurrection: A Brief Genealogy of U.S. Counter/insurgency

Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson

Chandan Reddy

Chandan Reddy is Associate Professor in the departments of Gender, Women andSexualityStudies and the Comparative History of Ideas at the University of Washington. His books include Freedorn With Violence:Race, Sexuality and the U.S. State and, as co-author, Abolishing Poverty: Towards Pluriverse Futures and Politics.

Palestine as a Joining Power (with Jodi Melamed)

Chandan Reddy

Christian Haines

Christian Haines is Associate Professor of English at Penn State University. He is the author of the book, A Desire Called America: Bio-politics, Utopia, and the Literary Commons.

Lenin with Lacan, or, the Desire Called Insurrection

Christian Haines

Mitchell Smith

Mitchell Smith is the Director of the School of International Affairs and Professor of International Affairs at Penn State University. His work focuses on comparative and international political economy. Smith earned his B.A. in Economics from UC Berkeley and his MPA and PhD at Princeton University.

“Brexit: A Governing Party's Self-Insurrection

Mitchell Smith

Peter Hitchcock

Peter Hitcl1cock is a professor of English at CUNY. Recent publications include essays on the postcolonial pastoral,the labor of migrant subjectivity, decolonizing aesthetics, and"living the city" (on Samuel R Delaney). He is currently editing a collection on parasitical logic, and his book on seriality and social change is forthcoming.

Constellations and Critique: Praxis and the Politics of Event

Peter Hitchcock

Nicole Simek

Nicole Simek is Cushing Eells Professorof Philosophy and Literature at Whitman College. Her publications include, most recently, Alchemies of Blood and Afro-Diasporic Fiction: Race, Kinship, and the Passion for Ontology

Insurrectionists of the Imaginary: The Case of Palestine

Nicole Simek

Noelle McAfee

Noelle McAfee is professor and chair of philosophy at Emory University and president-elect of the Emory University Senate. She is the author of over 80 articles and essays in political philosophy, feminist theory, pragmatism, and continental philosophy, and five books, including Ferninism: A Quick Immersion, and Fear of Breakdown.

From Sublimation to Revolt: Castoriadis's and Kristeva's Radical Imagination

Noelle McAfee

Zahi Zalloua

Zahl Zalloua is Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature and a professor of Indigeneity, Race, and Ethnicity Studies at Whitman College. His most recent ,works are The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment, and Solidarity and the Palestinian Cause: Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Promise of Universality.

Becoming Object

Zahi Zalloua

The Institute will take place from Thursday, March 20 to Sunday, March 23 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in State College, Pennsylvania. Additional details regarding the Society for Critical Exchange or the upcoming Theory Institute can be found at the Society for Critical Exchange’s website (http://societyforcriticalexchange.org/) or by contacting Executive Director Jeffrey R. Di Leo (dileo@symploke.org).