Lani Guinier, Houston Baker and Stanley Fish are among more than a dozen prominent guest speakers who will present public talks as part of the 1999 summer session of the School of Criticism and Theory (SCT) hosted by Cornell University beginning June 14. The session's events are free and open to the public (see listing below).

Designed as a hothouse for intellectual discourse, SCT was founded in 1976 by a group of leading literary scholars in the conviction that an understanding of theory is fundamental to humanistic studies. The SCT offers professors and advanced graduate students of literature and related social sciences a chance to work with pre-eminent figures in critical thought. Together they explore literature's relationship with history, art, anthropology and the law, examine its role in ideological and cultural movements, and reassess theoretical approaches that have emerged over the last 50 years.

"Each year's session of the School of Criticism and Theory has a distinctive dynamic based on the intense interactions among faculty, participants and the larger Cornell community," said Dominick LaCapra, SCT associate director and the Bowmar Professor of Humanistic Studies at Cornell. "This year, SCT director Steve Nichols and I tried to provide an added attraction by supplementing the program's traditionally strong representation of critical theory and the study of literature and art with an equally strong representation of social science and sociopolitical as well as legal theory."

In an intense course of study, SCT participants work with a core faculty of distinguished theorists in one of four six-week seminars. Each faculty member offers, in addition, a public lecture and a colloquium (based on an original paper) that is attended by the entire group.

The program also includes three mini-courses taught by scholars who usually visit for two weeks. These mini-courses consist of lectures, follow-up seminars and extensive office hours. Finally, throughout the six weeks, distinguished theorists, critics and cultural analysts visit the SCT as lecturers or respondents.

The following is a list of the SCT lectures that are free and open to the public. All events will be held at 4 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall:

• June 14: Stephen Nichols, the James M. Beall Professor of Humanities, Johns Hopkins University, "Gothic Rules: Theories of Law and Gothic Architecture in Restoration France."
• June 15: Dominick LaCapra, the Bowmar Professor of Humanistic Studies, Cornell, "Holocaust Testimonies: Listening to the Victim's Voice."
• June 21: Lani Guinier, professor, Harvard Law School, "Rethinking Power: The Work that Race and Gender Do."
• June 22: Naomi Schor, professor of Romance languages, Harvard, "Pensive Texts and Thinking Statues: Balzac with Rodin."
• June 23: Howard Bloch, professor of French, Yale University, "Images of Seduction and the Seduction of Images in the Medieval Manuscript."
• June 28: Benedict Anderson, professor of government, Cornell, "Cultural Survival in Our Time: The Gamble of Nationalism."
• June 29: Natalie Davis, professor of history, University of Toronto, "Rethinking Cultural Mixture: The Travels of 'Leo Africanus.'"
• July 5: Seyla Benhabib, professor of government, Harvard, "Citizens, Aliens and Residents in a Changing World."
• July 6: Houston Baker, director, Center for the Study of Black Literature & Culture and professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, "Turning South Again: Re-thinking Black Modernism/Re-reading Booker T."
• July 12: Fredric Jameson, the William A. Lane Professor of Comparative Literature, chair of the Program in Literature and Center for Critical Theory, Duke University, "Myths of the Modern."
• July 13: Houston Baker, "Mobility, Nationality and Citizenship: Tuskegee's Prolepsis."
• July 19: Amanda Anderson, professor of English, Johns Hopkins University, "The Flight to Power: Gender, Modernity and the Problem of Detachment."
• July 20: Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois, Chicago, "The Trouble with Principle."