Advanced Symposia

The DCII sponsors Advanced Symposia/Workshops with the goal of promoting communication and interaction among scholars at SMU and around the world who are at a critical stage of research on a shared topic of interdisciplinary interest and impact.

The events focus on cutting-edge topics that are of interest to a group of faculty at SMU who wish to interact with external leaders at the forefront of relevant fields. They involve activities that generate concrete outcomes, such as workshopping an edited book project, coordinating on a special issue of a scholarly journal or the publication of conference proceedings, finalizing the development of a research project, or undertaking data analysis for an ongoing research project.

Please see below for Advanced Symposia for the 2025-26 academic year. 

What Are the Limits of Presidential Power?

November 6-7, 2025

This interdisciplinary symposium examines and reconsiders Article II of the United States Constitution and the limits, or lack thereof, of executive power. Debates about the nature of the executive and presidential power have shaped American politics and life since the ratification of the Constitution, but they have become increasingly relevant in a rapidly evolving political world. With the majority decision in Trump v. United States which held "the nature of Presidential power" entitles the President to "absolute immunity" in the exercise of his "core constitutional powers," and the Polity Project's recent downgrading of the United States to a non-democracy based on a "Presidential Coup," we can think of no better time to reconsider the legal and political history of presidential power. This symposium, whose end results will include a published volume titled A President, Not a King: Contesting Executive Power in American History, aims to identify and explain the development of the "core constitutional powers" granted in Article II, including the appointment power, pardon power, war powers, and emergency powers, and demonstrate how the potential and uncertainty of constitutional limits shaped executive power and American politics.

For questions or more information, contact Heather Carlquist Walser. 

Cat/People

Friday, February 27 - Saturday, February 28, 2026

The feline presences in the visual arts, and in human lives, has a long history, one fraught with questions about the fuzzy boundaries between species, the nature of freedom, and the definition of human and animal selfhood. These debates — which spring from interdisciplinary discourses on posthumanism, animal studies, and ecocriticism — are at the cutting edge of inquiry in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. They are also at the forefront of popular culture, from books on the history and behavior of cats on the New York Times bestseller list to the barrage of cat videos and memes on social media. Cat/People, a two-day workshop convened by Amy Freund, Associate Professor and Kleinheinz Endowed Chair in Art History, will gather an interdisciplinary group of scholars to debate those big questions and to analyze the image of the cat in the Americas and Europe from 1600 to the present.

For questions or more information, contact Amy Freund.