Description of graphic above: a rectangular image that states The Foucault Century Symposium at top and the dates of the conference and institution below. On the right, there is a drawing of a smiling Foucault holding a book.
The Foucault Century
2026 marks the centennial of Michel Foucault’s birth and the 50-year anniversary of the publication of his landmark History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. This two-day symposium offers a renewed assessment of Foucault’s thought.
September 24–25, 2026
Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, 6th Floor
Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania
Free and Open to the Public
The 2026–2027 Boardman Symposium
For full details and registration, see here: https://www.library.upenn.edu/events/foucault-century
Michel Foucault’s influence on contemporary thought is unmatched by any other twentieth-century intellectual. Reputed to be the most widely cited scholar in history, his work has provided a foundational vocabulary in a variety of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. He remains one of the most widely taught figures in institutions of higher education worldwide. Even where Foucault’s name is no longer invoked, the shaping influence of his corpus has been transformative—even revolutionary.
2026 marks the centennial of Foucault’s birth and the 50-year anniversary of the publication of his landmark History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. The Foucault Century, a symposium at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (September 24–25, 2026), offers a renewed assessment of Foucault’s thought.
Forty years after his death, our understanding of Foucault’s scholarship has been enriched and transformed by a wealth of groundbreaking posthumous publications. These include Foucault’s thirteen courses at the Collège de France, lectures and seminars at other institutions around the world from the 1960s to the 1980s, and the fourth volume of History of Sexuality—Confessions of the Flesh. More material is coming out all the time, with Foucault’s 1966–1967 public lectures at the University of Tunis now in press.
The Foucault Century considers the manifold implications of this expanding corpus. And it takes as its premise that the Foucault we already know—or think we know—may need to be reconsidered. What has sometimes been called the “textbook image of Foucault” has become an obstacle to fully grasping the depth, complexity, and tensions of his thought.
The Foucault Century will bring together an international group of Foucault specialists to consider a range of problems in the contemporary assessment of Foucault: What questions are being left unasked in the default interpretation of Foucault that has been passed down? What controversies remain unresolved? Which of Foucault’s many voices and guises can be brought into productive conversation with our contemporary intellectual, political, and cultural controversies? And which need to be criticized or dismantled? Which Foucaults have been remembered? And which have been forgotten and may need to be brought to light again?
Registration
Please register for each day separately. A Zoom attendance option is available for Friday, Sept. 25 only. For those attending in person, a catered, plant-forward dinner will be provided on 9/24 and a catered lunch on 9/25.
Schedule
September 24
2:30–3:00 – Welcome
3:00–4:15 – Public lecture, “Chez Foucault: Rethinking Foucault through the Archives” (Niki Kasumi Clements)
4:15–4:30 – Break
4:30–6:00 – Session 1 (Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson, Daniele Lorenzini, Chair: Samuel Talcott)
6:00–7:00 – Catered dinner for all attendees
7:00–9:00 – Film screening + discussion
Foucault Against Himself
Foucault: Historian of Truth
September 25
9:30 – Coffee
10:00–12:00 – Session 2 (Sabeen Ahmed, Amy Allen, Penelope Deutscher, Chair: Sabina Bremner)
12:00–1:15 – Catered lunch for all attendees and viewing of exhibit
1:15–2:45 – Session 3 (Amy Hollywood, Donovan Schaefer, Chair: Secil Yilmaz)
2:45–3:00 – Break
3:00–4:30 – Session 4 (David Halperin, Lynne Huffer, Chair:Pearl Brilmyer)
4:30–4:45 – Break
4:45–5:30 – Wrap-up discussion
Speakers
Sabeen Ahmed
Amy Allen
Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson
Niki Kasumi Clements
Penelope Deutscher
David Halperin
Amy Hollywood
Lynne Huffer
Daniele Lorenzini
Donovan Schaefer
Public Lecture
Chez Foucault: Rethinking Foucault through the Archives
Niki Kasumi Clements (Rice University)
Thursday, Sept. 24
3:00–4:15pm
In a 1978 interview with Duccio Trombadori, Michel Foucault declared: “I am an experimenter insofar as I write to change myself and to no longer think the same things as before.” Taking a tour through the Foucault archives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, this talk will explore just how much—particularly over his last decade and his History of Sexuality series—Foucault experimented with the limits of what could be thought, done, and felt. His research practices, activist commitments, and personal relationships all contributed to his experimentations with “the history of our present” and open ways of navigating power, knowledge, and ethics—all with the potential to continue to transform us today.
Registration for the public lecture is included with free Sept. 24 registration for the symposium.
Exhibit
The Foucault Century will feature an exhibit of Penn Library holdings exploring Foucault’s career and influences. The exhibit will showcase the monographs that Foucault published during his life, often both in French and in English, as well as most of his posthumous publications, from the thirteen lecture courses at the Collège de France to the most recent editions of previously unpublished manuscripts. It will also feature a section devoted to Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary and Walnut Street Prison, which Foucault famously discusses in Discipline and Punish (1975). The exhibit will be on display at the Lea Library adjoining the Orrery Pavilion.
Film Screenings
The Foucault Century will screen two short documentary films after dinner in the library on Thursday, Sept. 24: Foucault: Historian of Truth (Switzerland, 1978) and Foucault Against Himself (France, 2014).
Registration for the film screenings is included with free Sept. 24 registration for the symposium.
Questions?
Please email doschaef@upenn.edu or danlor@sas.upenn.edu.
BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 