The Society for the Humanities hosts a major conference on its 2012-13 focal theme, "Risk @ Humanities," Oct. 26-27 at the A.D. White House.

In a call for scholarly reflections on this year's theme, the society welcomed interdisciplinary projects and proposed possible approaches to risk, including the consideration of "how risk might be inherent to the humanities" and the dependence of scholarly and artistic practices on risk.

The goal for "Risk @ Humanities" stated in the call to scholars is "to open the question of how risk shapes the humanities and how the humanities might dialogue with broader biological, ecological, economic and technological approaches to risk."

Conference topics range from disaster and insecurity in Sri Lanka (Vivian Choi, a Mellon postdoctoral fellow in science and technology studies) to photographic documentation of the housing crisis (Annie McClanahan, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) to an analysis of love and anarchy in the works of Henry James and Joseph Conrad (Michael Jonik, University of Sussex).

Plenary speakers are visual arts scholar Ricardo Dominguez (University of California-San Diego) on Oct. 26 and senior invited fellow William Leiss of the University of Ottawa's McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment, Oct. 27.

"We recruit one or two senior invited fellows annually whose work in the area of the theme will be attractive for prospective applicants to our international fellowship competition," said Timothy Murray, director of the Society for the Humanities.

Invited and society fellows from other institutions join faculty fellows, Mellon graduate and postdoctoral fellows, and American Council of Learned Society new faculty fellows from Cornell each year. Fellows gather at weekly colloquia, take part in conferences and other society-sponsored activity around the focal theme, and present their own work.

Past focal themes include "Sound: Culture, Theory, Practice, Politics" (2011-12); "Global Aesthetics" (2010-11), "Water" (2008-09) and "Improvisation" (2007-08).

Themes "are chosen with an eye toward broad interdisciplinary and historical range as well as toward emergent areas of research," Murray said.

The society's annual focal themes are chosen by a humanities council, an elected body composed of College of Arts and Sciences faculty from humanities and interpretive social science (such as history, anthropology and government) departments.

Work on the sound studies theme last year produced collaborative events across campus and "helped Cornell lead the way in developing cutting-edge theoretical research [in] an emerging interdisciplinary field," said Thomas McEnaney, assistant professor of comparative literature.

The theme "also converged with the publication of two key anthologies in the field," McEnaney noted. Cornell faculty fellow Trevor Pinch (science and technology studies) and music faculty member Ben Piekut contributed to "The Sound Studies Reader" (2012), and Pinch edited "The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies" (2011).

"The society greatly enriches intellectual discussion and exploration across the disciplines at Cornell," said Ph.D. student in information science Nick Knouf, a 2011-12 Mellon graduate fellow. "The society is the rare place where this can happen, where our other commitments can be set aside for a period of time in order to fully take part within this intellectual community. Within the focused study of a particular theme, fellows are able to intensely engage with a multitude of approaches to a particular topic."

This academic year there are 21 fellows, including one sponsored by Cornell's Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, anthropologist Gaspar Mairal of Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain.

The "Risk @ Humanities" conference concludes Oct. 27 with a summary panel at 5 p.m. with Murray, Mairal and Cornell faculty fellows Patricia Keller, Romance studies, and Matt Smith, comparative literature.