The emerging field of posthumanities will be explored at Cornell in an international symposium Nov. 5-6 in Kroch Library. “Expanded Communities and Posthumanity” will feature scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including primatologist and psychologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, known for her work with bonobos.

Posthumanities essentially begins with a critique of theories that put the human at the center, explains Laurent Dubreuil, professor of Romance studies, comparative literature and cognitive science in the College of Arts and Sciences. The symposium will explore such questions as what happens to the humanities if humans are no longer central to its studies. As editor of diacritics, Dubreuil has devoted several of the journal’s issues to these questions, which are gaining increasing attention among scholars.

A central thread in posthumanities reconsiders the philosophical, artistic and social roles of animals, and it often sees humans as simply one of many natural species. Cornell library curator Laurent Ferri and comparative literature assistant professor Antoine Traisnel, as well as Rodrigo Andrés, professor at the University of Barcelona, each will speak during the symposium on topics pertaining to “animal studies.”

Practitioners in the posthumanities also reassess the goals of the discursive disciplines in a world where science and technology seem to be the driving forces. This approach encompasses new interdisciplinary research beyond the divides of the “two cultures” and enriches the current debates on biopolitics, as in the symposium talks by David Wills (Brown), Helena González (Barcelona) and Eloi Grasset (Harvard).

A third posthumanist perspective is to shift emphasis away from the human to the object, the hybrid, the cyborg or the alien, as will be the case in Marta Segarra’s (Barcelona) and Isabel Clúa’s (València) presentations.

The “communities” in the symposium title refers to the larger context of objects, animals and agency as addressed by posthumanities scholars. The three keynote lectures, to be delivered by Dubreuil, Savage-Rumbaugh and Rice professor Cary Wolfe (author of “What Is Posthumanism?”) will reflect the convergence of such questions.

Segarra, organizer of the symposium, was a visiting scholar last year with Cornell’s Department of Comparative Literature. She stresses the international relevance of “expanded communities.” “[The symposium] favors a dialogue between some of the most relevant thinkers on posthumanity, such as Dubreuil, Wills and Wolfe, and researchers from the Center Dona i Literatura, one of the most dynamic centers of Southern Europe on gender and sexuality studies and critical and cultural theory,” she says. “The rise of posthumanities and animal studies is only beginning there, and this symposium is, therefore, a step toward the development of the field.”

The symposium is sponsored by the French Studies Program, the Department of Comparative Literature and the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell, with the Center Dona i Literatura at the University of Barcelona. The symposium also received support from the Institut Ramon Llull, Icrea, and Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad.

Linda B. Glaser is a staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.