Welcome to the World Wide Web home of the Society for Critical Exchange. The SCE, North America's only academic society devoted to Literary Theory, has been in existence for over 20 years. Its various projects, conferences, and symposia serve to advance the role of theory in academic and intellectual arenas, and encompass a broad spectrum of disciplines, including literary studies, legal studies and practices, economics, composition and pedagogy. The Society's primary mission is to foster discussion, and this website will become, we hope, one of the prominent features of those discussions. In addition to providing a repository of information about the SCE and its activities, this site provides a dynamic venue for SCE members and non-members to engage in dialogue about any and all aspects of literary theory.
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Join the Society Our website marks the beginning of what we expect to be a period of fertility and expansion in the kinds of projects the SCE undertakes and the range of intellectuals to whom it can provide a base of operations, so to speak. It offers an interactive and dynamic arena for substantive discussion and for generations of new initiatives.
Since our site is relatively new, its initial contents will be weighted toward representions of activities which are carried out predominantly in non-Internet venues. What we hope to offer, however, is an easily accessible and technically uncomplicated means for the Internet to facilitate new forms of inquiry as well as new topics. It is our goal to provide an environment both for synchronous and asynchronous discussion--the latter through providing a comprehensive source of information about SCE activities and productions, the former through the several forum areas on this site.
Less technically cumbersome, and more readily available, than MOO or MUD rooms, and more structured than the ECOT format, we hope these forum rooms will provide a magnet for important discussion. Several of them focus directly on SCE projects--the NEC, IPCA and SofW--and are presided over by a moderator whose function is to shape discussion and ensure the lively flow of ideas. In addition, there is an unmoderated forum, which will accomodate a wide range of discussion, sometimes leading to spin-off discussion areas as new areas of investigation emerge.
We have envisioned these forum areas as the successor to the Electronic College of Theory, which will continue to exist, but in a less central capacity--as one college within an electronic university of theory, one might say. ECOT continues to function, and will continue to send postings on a regular basis. Those postings will digest the goings-on within the Website forums, and will provide a means for communication within the SCE membership.
We invite you, whether SCE member or not, to read through the forums and to contribute to them. We also invite you to learn more about the SCE's activities, past, present, and future, and to consider joining the SCE if you haven't already done so.
