Annual Critical Theory Symposium
The Annual Critical Theory Symposium is a popular event that features talks on a new topic every year, followed by an extensive Q&A discussion over a delicious buffet. The graduating Critical Theory concentrators also receive their graduating presents during this event.
The event typically takes place in the spring semester. In 2026, the symposium will be held on Friday, April 10.
13th Annual Critical Theory Symposium Spring 2026
Structures Marching in the Streets?!
Friday, April 10
5-7:30 p.m.; Buffet Starts at 6:30 p.m. while Q&A continues
CT senior students will receive their graduation presents at the beginning of the event.
Speakers:
Alya Ansari ’19: “Becoming Superfluous: On Work and the Novel”
Tommy Symmes ’13: “Music, Art, and Political Potential”
Co-sponsored by the Departments and Programs of:
American Studies, Anthropology, Arts and Art History, English, French and Francophone Studies, German and Russian Studies, History, International Studies, Latin-American Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Religious Studies, Theater and Dance, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and the Kofi Annan Institute of Global Citizenship
*From the Greek ‘Symposion’
“A convivial gathering of the educated” related to Sympotes: “Drinking Companion,” from Syn-“Together” + Posis-“Drinking”
Reflecting the Greek fondness for mixing drink, food, and intellectual discussion
Plural: Symposia
Leader of a symosium: Symposiarch
Photos from Past Symposia
The Lived Self and Memory
More than 130 students, faculty, and staff attended Macalester’s 12th annual Critical Theory Concentration Symposium on April 11, 2025. This year’s topic was “The Lived Self and Memory,” and the speakers were professors Erika Busse-Cárdenas (Sociology) and Rotem Herrmann (Philosophy). Their respective talks, “Waiting Lives in the U.S. Mexico Border: Deported Mothers and Their Struggles to Return,” and “Between the World and Body: An Embodied Account of Personal Memory,” instigated a lively discussion with the community members.
Authority & Subjectivity: From Absolutism to the Present Carceral State
The 11th Annual Critical Theory Symposium took place on April 19 and lasted almost three hours, including Q&A and buffet! This year’s topic was “Authority and Subjectivity: From Absolutism to the Present Carceral State,” with professors Christina Hughes (Sociology) and Mark Mazullo (Music) as speakers. Our gratitude to all co-sponsoring departments and the KAIGC as well as the approximately 120 students, faculty, and senior administration who gathered to honor this Macalester tradition and engage in inspiring dialogue.
The symposium addressed the question “Is Disney/Marvel a Cultural Industry?” and sparked an exciting discussion among students, faculty, and alumni in attendance.
Island: An Image as Philosophy
Participants gathered on Zoom for the 2021 Critical Theory Symposium.
List of Past Symposia
2025: 12th Annual Critical Theory Symposium
The Lived Self and Memory
April 11, 2025
Speakers:
Erika Busse-Cárdenas (Sociology): “Waiting Lives in the U.S. Mexico Border: Deported Mothers and Their Struggles to Return”
Rotem Herrmann (Philosophy): “Between the World and Body: An Embodied Account of Personal Memory”
2024: 11th Annual Critical Theory Symposium
Authority & Subjectivity: From Absolutism to the Present Carceral State
April 10, 2024
Speakers:
Mark Mazullo (Music): “How Music Makes a Mind: Operatic Recognition (Anagnorisis) and Musical Authority, 1786-1906”
Christina Hughes (Sociology): “From Absolutism to the Moral-Bureaucratic State: Vietnamese Subjectivities from Colonialism to the Cyber Age”
2023: 10th Annual Critical Theory Symposium
April 21, 2023
Speakers:
Jeremy Meckler ’10: “Does Disney/Marvel Constitute a Culture Industry?”
2022: 9th Annual Critical Theory Symposium
Critical Theory in a Pandemic: Six Short Experimental Talks
April 22, 2022
Speakers:
Erik Davis (Religious Studies): “Interaction Ritual During a Plague: Dialectic or Schismogenesis”
David Chioni Moore (International Studies and English): “Who Needs Foucault’s Panopticon When You’re on Zoom?”
Aram Cavoossi ’22: “Audio Virology and Affect Contagion”
Hannah Kim (Philosophy): “Eternal Recurrence and Covid Time”
David Martyn (German Studies): “Un-Commoning Knowledge: Expertise as Capital in the Age of the Virus”
A. Kiarina Kordela (German Studies): “Hate in the Time of Corona”
2021: 8th Annual Critical Theory Symposium
Island: An Image as Philosophy
April 16, 2021
Speakers:
Brad Stiffler (Media and Cultural Studies): “When Adam Ant ‘Signed Up with Margaret Thatcher to Sing at the Falklands Ball’: ‘Islands of No Return'”
Joëlle Vitiello (French and Francophone Studies): “Trans-Island Networks: Ecotonic Spaces and Archipelagos from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean”
2019: 7th Annual Critical Theory Symposium
Humans and Others
April 5, 2019
Speakers:
Olga González (Anthropology, Latin American Studies): “The Scapegoat and the Homo Saucer in the Construction of the Enemy as Terrorist”
Bill Hart (Religious Studies): “Antiblackness and Critical Theory”
2018: 6th Annual Critical Theory Symposium
Critical Theory Against Authoritarianism
April 6, 2018
Speakers:
Morgan M. Adamson (Media and Cultural Studies): “Italian Feminist Collectives and the ‘Unexpected Subject'”
Althea R. Sircar (Political Science): “Political Life Beyond Abstraction: Michel Henry’s Critique of Politics”
2017: 5th Annual Critical Theory Symposium
April 21, 2017
Speakers:
Zeynep Gürsel (International Studies): “Exposing the Masses to History in the Making: Belief, Motion and Truth in Istanbul 2016”
Taylor Schey (English): “The Post-Truth Era, in Theory”
2016: 4th Annual Critical Theory Symposium
Orientalism, Postcolonialism, Globalization
April 27, 2016
Speakers:
Khaldoun Samman (Sociology): “What is Orientalism and What Does it Do?”
Julia Chadaga (Russian Studies): “What’s the Matter with Russia?: Toward a Thing-Theory of Post-Soviet Protest Art”
David Blaney (Political Science): “Postcolonialism and the Walls We Hit”
2015: 3rd Annual Critical Theory Symposium
Real-Imaginary
April 16, 2015
Speakers:
Erik Davis (Religious Studies): “Violence in Unlikely Places: Real and Imagined Human Sacrifice in Cambodian Buddhist Temple Inaugurations”
Diane Michelfelder (Philosophy): “World in Object-Oriented Philosophy: Slip-Sliding Away?”
Andrew Billing (French and Francophone Studies): “Production, Property, and Possessive Individualism in Althusser and Rousseau”
2014: 2nd Annual Critical Theory Symposium
Biopolitics + Ideology
April 25, 2014
Speakers:
Bruce Braun (University of Minnesota; Geography, Environment, Society): “The Separation of Life from Its Form”
Stuart Mclean (University of Minnesota; Anthropology): “Lifeless Politics: Ideology, Biopower, and the Challenge of the Anthropocene”
Christian Haines (University of Minnesota; Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature): “But My Body Says It’s True: On Criticism in Biopolitical Times”
2013: 1st Annual Critical Theory Symposium
April 5, 2013
Speakers:
David Chioni Moore (International Studies and English): “An African Classic in Fourteen Translations: World Literature on a Planetary Scale”
David Martyn (German Studies): “The Invention of Monolingualism: Toward an Archaeology of the Mother Tongue”
A Kiarina Kordela (German Studies): “Religious—Secular: A Matter of Translation?”
Contact Prof. Kiarina Kordela ([email protected]) for posters and recordings from past Critical Theory symposia.