Past Theory Certificate Events
2024-2025
Bobby Benedicto (McGill University, Departments of Art History and Communication Studies and the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies), Lecture: "The Form of Non-meaning: Race, Sex, Suicide, and the Art of Ren Hang", November 19, 2024
2023-2024
Mary-Jane Rubenstein (Wesleyan University, Religion, Philosophy, College of Science and
Technology), Lecture: “For All Humanity: Chinese Transvaluations of American Space
Rhetoric,” April 29, 2024
Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús (University of Southern California, Departments of Latin American and
Iberian Cultures and Comparative Literature), Lecture: “Dangerous Constellations: The
Catastrophic Modernity of Julia de Burgos,” March 26, 2024
---. Close-reading, poetry, and theory “workshop,” March 25, 2024
Cecilio Cooper (Folger-Shakespeare Library Long-Term Fellow), Lecture: “Hadal: On Depth,
Bioluminescence + Demonological Volumetrics,” November 8, 2023
---. Post-lecture discussion, November 9, 2023
2022-2023
Rocío Zambrana (University of Puerto Rico, Philosophy), Lecture: “Metamorphosis of Value:
Epistemic Protocols in the Long 17th Century,” February 28, 2023
Rei Terada (University of California, Irvine, Comparative Literature), Lecture: “Hegel’s Slaves,”
November 15, 2022
2021-2022
Patricia Stuelke (Dartmouth University, American Studies), Book Talk: The Ruse of Repair: US
Neoliberal Empire and the Turn from Critique, April 12, 2022
“Interventions” Panel in Haitian and Dominican Studies of historiography, aesthetics, and black critical
theory, March 29, 2022
Anne Eller (Yale University, History)
Emmanuel Lachaud (Yale University, History)
Jerry Philogene (Dickinson College, American Studies)
Dixa Ramírez-D’Oleo (Brown University, English)
Benjamin Brewer (Emory University, Philosophy), Lecture: “Essential Others, Aberrant Others:
Heidegger’s Nationalism and the Logic of Essence,” November 30, 2021
2020- No SCCTC events during the pandemic
2018-19
Hwa-Jen Liu (National Taiwan University, Sociology), Lecture: “Leverage of the Weak in a Time of Disinformation,” April 2, 2019
Robert Stolz (New York University, History), Lecture: “Tosaka Jun and The Japanese Ideology,” February 5, 2019
Siraj Ahmed (Lehman College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, English & Comparative Literature), Lecture: “Genealogies of Emergency,” November 18, 2018
Jameliah Shorter-Bournahou (Georgia College & State University, Philosophy), Lecture: “The Illusion of Equality in Kantian Cosmopolitanism,” October 2, 2018
2017-18
Neil Roberts (Williams College, Africana Studies), Lecture: “Why Marronage Still Matters,” October 17, 2017
2016-17
Contours of the Present Crisis Lecture Series (Spring 2017)
Marguerite Nguyen (Wesleyan, English), Lecture: “Refuge and Refugees,” May 4, 2017
Jordan Camp (Brown University, Watson Institute), Lecture: “Incarcerating the Crisis,” March 30, 2017
Suleiman Mourad (Smith College, Religion), Lecture: “Truths and Fictions of Islam,” March 6, 2017
Ryan Fics (Emory, Comparative Literature), Lecture on Melville, Derrida, and Non-Human Animals, December 2016
Axelle Karera (Wesleyan University, Philosophy), Lecture: “Blackness and the Politics of Apocalyptic Imaginaries,” November 30, 2016
Jason W. Moore (Binghamton University, Sociology), “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and the Origins of Planetary Crisis,” September 29, 2016
2015-16
Josefina Saldaña-Portillo (New York University, Social & Cultural Analysis), “Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States,” April 22, 2016
John Plotz (English, Brandeis University), “Semi-Detached: The Aesthetics of Partial Absorption,” February 23, 2016
2014-15
Five Fundamental Concepts Lecture Series (Spring 2015)
“Utopia,” Eirene Visvardi (Classical Studies, Wesleyan), April 8, 2015
“Difference,” Amy Tang (American Studies & English, Wesleyan), March 25, 2015
“Harmony,” Steven Angle (Philosophy & East Asian Studies, Wesleyan), February 25, 2015
“Meaning,” Joseph Fitzpatrick (College of Letters, Wesleyan), February 18, 2015
“Alienation,” Ulrich Plass (German and College of Letters, Wesleyan), February 11, 2015
Amanullah DeSondy (University of Miami, Religion), Lecture: “The Crisis of Islamic Masculinities” (co-sponsored with Religion), date unknown
David Scott (Columbia University, Anthropology), Book Discussion: Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice (2014), with Lily Saint (Wesleyan University, English), March 5, 2015
Uli Plass (Wesleyan University, German Studies and COL), Lecture on work of Theodor Adorno, October 12, 2014
“A Public Conversation with Silvia Federici,” Silvia Federici and Matthew Garrett (Wesleyan, English and American Studies), September 25, 2014
2013-14
Jill Morawski (Wesleyan, Psychology) and her student research assistants, Ethan Hoffman '14 and
Nick Myerberg '14, presented their work on Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience, May 9, 2014
Brian Britt (Virginia Tech University, Religion and Culture) “Walter Benjamin’s Anarchism,” April 4,
2014
Ellen Brown, Reading and book discussion of Master Kierkegaard: The Complete Journals (2013),
September 12, 2013
Jonathan Cutler (Wesleyan, Sociology), Presentation on work-in-progress, date unknown
Eelco Runia (University of Groningen, Metahistory), Book Discussion: Moved By the Past: Discontinuity and Historical Mutation (2014) (co-sponsored by History and Theory Journal), date unknown
2012-13
Judith Butler (University of California, Berkeley, Rhetoric), Lecture: “Parting Ways: Jewishness and
the Critique of Zionism,” February 13, 2013
In Theory Lecture Series (Fall 2012)
Amy Hollywood (Harvard Divinity School), Lecture: “Apophasis and Ecstasy, at the Limits of Gender,” November 7, 2012
Karen Barad (UC Santa Cruz, Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness), Discussion of pre-circulated paper, October 24, 2012
Panel: Teaching Heidegger, November 19, 2012
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Stanford, French, Italian, and Comparative Literature)
Marci Shore (Yale, History)
Ethan Kleinberg (Wesleyan, History and COL)
Joe Rouse (Wesleyan, Philosophy)
2011-12
In Theory Lecture Series (Fall 2011) (*Series ran in conjunction with Prof. Joseph Fitzpatrick’s seminar, “Introduction to Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory”)
November 30, 2011 Kari Weil (COL) on Luce Irigaray
November 16, 2011 Sonali Chakravarti (GOV) on Hannah Arendt
November 9, 2011 Jill Morawski (PSYCH) on Erving Goffman
November 2, 2011 Laura Stark (SOC, SIS) on Max Weber
October 26, 2011 Jonathan Cutler (SOC) on Karl Marx
October 19, 2011 Ethan Kleinberg (History and COL) on Jacques Derrida
October 12, 2011 Ulrich Plass (German Studies and COL) on Theodor Adorno
October 5, 2011 Mary-Jane Rubenstein (REL, PHIL, SIS) on Martin Heidegger
September 28, 2011 Joseph Rouse (PHIL, SIS) on G.W.F. Hegel
September 14, 2011 George Shaw (HIS) on George Herbert Mead
September 7, 2011, Michael Roth (President) on Sigmund Freud
Erik Vogt (Philosophy, Trinity College and University of Vienna), Lecture on Slavoj Žižek andFrantz Fanon, date unknown
Ian Baucom (Duke University, Professor of English and Director of the Franklin Humanities Institute), English Department Lecture and Theory Certificate faculty seminar (co-sponsored with English), October 2010
*The SCCTC was formally inaugurated in April 2010 by a majority faculty vote.