Photography: Professor W. J. T. Mitchell and Professor A. Puigarnau. Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 2016

The event took place between 19 June and 29 July at the School of Criticism and Theory (SCT) at Cornell University (Ithaca, New York), ranked 8th domestically and 10th internationally in the 2015 Centre for World University Rankings (CWUR). With a 14% acceptance rate in 2016, it boasts 45 Nobel laureates in various disciplines and in 2015 managed an endowment of $6.03 billion.

The lecturer in Aesthetics at UIC Barcelona is one of the few Spanish academics to be accepted into this seminar, which the SCT has organised every year since it was founded in 1976, in the conviction that an understanding of theory is fundamental to humanistic studies. The SCT is the only institution in the United States that explores the relationship between critical thinking and humanistic specialisations.

Over the course of these weeks, conferences were also delivered by Professor Branka Arsić (Columbia University): Material Life: Vitalism from Spinoza to Deleuze, Professor Warren Breckman (University of Pennsylvania): The Machiavellian Moment of Radical Democracy and Professor Renata Salecl (University of London): The Right to Ignorance: Psychoanalysis and Secrets in Times of Surveillance.

There were also other prominent participants from internationally acclaimed universities in the United States (Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, New York, Rutgers), Europe (Oxford, Warwick, Zurich, Copenhagen, Warsaw), Canada (Toronto) and Asia (Hong Kong, Jiangnan University in China, Razi University in Iran).