For 35 years, the School of Criticism and Theory (SCT) has offered faculty members and advanced graduate students in the humanities and social sciences a chance to work with pre-eminent figures in critical thought. This year's SCT students have the opportunity to debate trends in literature, political theory, history, philosophy, art and anthropology with some of the world's leading scholars. They'll also have a chance to reassess theoretical approaches that have emerged over the last 50 years.

"We have a terrific session this year, with a diverse range of seminars and an excellent series of public lectures," said Amanda Anderson, director of SCT, which runs June 19 to July 28.

SCT's stellar reputation attracts students from all over the world, said Anderson. One-third of this year's 92 students are from outside the United States; participants come from 61 different institutions of higher learning.

Cornell assistant professor of history Claudia Verhoeven is returning as an SCT student in the hope of getting an "intellectual jolt." Her first time participating, in 2001, had an enormous impact, she said, "because of the high and intense level of discussion among the participants and because I was introduced to a text that really became the most important intellectual resource for me for the next several years."

It's productive, added Verhoeven, to actively explore the more explicitly critical/theoretical concerns of other fields. "SCT offers a unique opportunity to do so."

The program includes four six-week seminars: "Early Modern/Post Modern: Political Theology, Secularism, Literature" (Victoria Kahn, University of California-Berkeley); "Rethinking Ethics: Cognitive and Ethnographic Approaches" (Webb Keane, University of Michigan); "Theorizing Modernism: Philosophy and Criticism" (Robert Pippin and David Wellbery, University of Chicago); and "Sexuality and Childhood in a Global Frame: Queer Theory and Beyond" (Kathryn Stockton, University of Utah).

Participants also attend four one-week mini-seminars: "Cosmopolitanism After Kant" (Seyla Benhabib, Yale University); "Archives and Counter-Archives" (Brent Hayes Edwards, Columbia University); "Person and Human Life" (Roberto Esposito, Italian Institute for Human Sciences); and "Enthusiasm and Critique" (Amy Hollywood, Harvard Divinity School).

Among the 13 public lectures offered during the session are "The Future of Futurity: Time Travel, Parallel Worlds and 21st-Century German Literature by Alexander Kluge and Yoko Tawada" presented by Leslie A. Adelson, Cornell professor of German studies and director of the Cornell Institute for German Cultural Studies, July 25, and "Pastoral in Palestine" presented by Neil Hertz, professor emeritus of the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University, July 26.

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