Reflections on the School of Criticism and Theory, Summer 2023
In the throes of my dissertation proposal writing and fieldwork, Cornell’s School of Criticism and Theory (SCT) was the perfect opportunity for me to recenter and gain perspective. Not only was I transposed for six weeks into deeply inspiring and provocative theoretical debates and discussions, but I also found myself steeped within the natural landscape of Ithaca’s endless gorges, waterfalls and rivers, homeland of the Cayuga Nation. Within the walls of Cornell’s A. D. White House, home of SCT, with its magnificent High Victorian Gothic exterior surrounded by perfectly manicured flower gardens and sophisticated interior adorned with mid-19th century paintings, glorious Persian carpets and intricate wooden sculpting, our elevated intellectual journey began.
The warmth of SCT’s 70+ participants, coming from across the world and a vast array of disciplines, soon filled these halls with radiant energy, endless conversations and enthralling excitement. In these bustling lecture halls, peaceful sunset-hour receptions and serendipitous afternoon walks and swims, I’ve built beautiful camaraderie and friendships with some of the strongest, most insightful and empowering women I have ever met. Our friendship became my solace, in the face of the constant upward battles of academic research and performativity, with its slew of anxieties and challenges that are often especially strongly experienced by women, and more so first-generation women of color, as myself. The conversations and friendships I made at SCT not only inspired and empowered me at this decisive stage of my academic and research journey, they also brought a lot of what first appeared to be very abstract, metaphysical and detached theoretical conversations back down to the ground in the experiences of local worlds and peoples outside the Anglo-American white, male, privileged gaze that still dominates the halls and cannons of critical theory itself.
For my major seminar, I choose to participate in Professor Sandra Laugier’s “Concept of the Ordinary.” Centered on ordinary language philosophy, we got steeped in dense philosophical texts by Wittgenstein, Austin, Emerson, Thoreau and Cavell. Coming from Sociology and a training in social theory, these texts opened up new ways and avenues for me to think about my own research on crises and the everyday in Lebanon. Following Professor Laugier’s brilliant design and wide-ranging research, that spans ordinary language philosophy, cinema and popular culture, gender studies and the ethics of care, we soon transitioned into readings on violence and the ordinary by Veena Das, the ethics of care by Carol Gilligan, Joan Tronto, and film and popular culture by Stanley Cavell and Robert Warshow. Our theoretical almost metaphysical conversations on language, experience and meaning always brought us back to the ordinary, lived experience and realities, notwithstanding references to the classical films we indulged together over pizza and wine, including Gaslight, Philadelphia Story, It Happened One Night.
Participating in Cornell’s School of Criticism and Theory was by far one of the most enriching and exciting personal and academic experiences I have had in my academic journey so far. I am indebted to Illinois’ very own prestigious Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory for awarding me the Nicholson Fellowship to fund my tuition and stay at Cornell. My interests and engagements in critical theory have further intensified and expanded over the past years thanks to our Unit’s support and formidable lecture series and events.
