June 13–24, 2016
Application deadline: March 21, 2016
University of Kent at Paris
Reid Hall
4 Rue de Chevreuse
Paris 75006
France
“[A]n intense and amazing experience of interdisciplinary formation.” –2015 attendee
The Kent Summer School in Critical Theory will run for the second time in 2016, from June 13 to 24 at the University of Kent’s centre in Paris, offering PhD candidates and early career researchers the opportunity to work intensively for two-weeks with either Professor Samantha Frost (Illinois, USA), Professor James Martel (San Francisco, USA), or Professor Bernard Stiegler (Centre Pompidou, France).
The 2016 seminars are:
–Samantha Frost: “Matters of perception: objects and materialities of affect”
–James Martel: “How to be a bad subject: misinterpellation and the anarchisation of the soul”
–Bernard Stiegler: “From German ideology to the Dialectic of nature: Reading Marx and Engels in the age of the Anthropocene”
For more information about the seminars, please visit the KSSCT website.
Applications close March 21. The application process is straightforward, requiring only a CV, and a letter of no more than two pages outlining your research and intellectual interests, why you would like to attend the summer school, and which seminar program you would like to attend. More information on applications, several available tuition scholarships, and accommodation options in Paris can be found online at kssct.org.
Last year marked the inaugural meeting of the KSSCT, featuring intensive seminars from Professor Peter Goodrich (Cardozo, USA: “Inventing Law”) and Professor Davide Tarizzo (Salerno, Italy: “From Democracy to Fascism”), as well as guest lectures from Professors Davina Cooper, Geoffrey Bennington and Roberto Esposito.
Like last year, the Kent Summer School in Critical Theory invites applications from PhD candidates and early career researchers from across all disciplines and critical approaches.
The school was created to offer a unique intellectual experience to early career academics and research students—as well as to the scholars who come to lead seminars each year. We believe it is increasingly important to proliferate and defend spaces for critical thinking in the contemporary academy. Equally important is the maintenance of spaces within the PhD and early career calendar to pursue the kind of academic practice that engenders genuine and sustained intellectual activity. This pursuit potentially offers a transformational educational experience. As the 2015 attendees remarked:
“[A] phenomenal experience.”
“[The KSSCT] broke me out of my academic/institutional shell, and re-energized my interest in academia and my doctoral studies.”
“It exceeded my expectations. I expected to be challenged, but I found that I learned more, and was able to contribute more, than I expected… The two week duration meant that we could get really immersed in the material.”
The thinkers who are invited lead seminars at the KSSCT are carefully selected from year to year, for the contemporary significance of their work and their ability to enrich the ethos and experience of the school. The school has been arranged to create the conditions for an intimate and intensive collaboration between students and teachers, outside the formal institutional frame, so as to bring together participants who may not otherwise encounter each other.
Successful applicants will work with just one of the seminar teachers for the duration of the school, but will also have the opportunity to hear lectures by each of the seminar teachers, in addition to other invited guests, and mix with all of the 2016 attendees. Participants will of course also be able to make the most of the school’s location in Paris.
