The Society for Critical Exchange will be hosting its fourth Winter Theory Institute February 7-10, 2013 at the University of Houston at Victoria.
The topic of this year's WTI will be
Is this a new era of the public intellectual or is the practice outdated? Has the cult of the pundit irrevocably destroyed the critical potential of the public intellectual? How have conservative assaults on higher education deflated the credibility of the public intellectual? Can academics be public intellectuals in the emergent neoliberal university? Or are they further examples of corporatization? What is the link between the blogger and the public intellectual? Has the rise of digital communication radically changed the meaning and role of public intellectuals? How has the public intellectual changed over time? Is this a new era for the public sphere? Or are we witnessing a break from the past? How does the post-theory moment influence the theoretical project of public intellectuals? Are recent shifts in literary and cultural criticism relevant to the discourse of public intellectuals? Or are they increasingly less meaningful?
Third SCE Winter Theory Institute: Criticism after Critique February 9-12, 2012 abstracts, agenda
Second SCE Winter Theory Institute: Neoliberalism's Cultural Work February 2011 abstracts, agenda
First SCE Winter Theory Institute: terror.edu February 2010 (abstracts)