[1] Donald E. Pease, Professor of English at Dartmouth College, founded, organizes, and directs the annual Institute.
[2] After the School of Criticism and Theory left Dartmouth for Cornell University in 1995, Dartmouth faculty member Donald E. Pease started the Futures Institute as an alternative summer program for faculty and graduate students.
Speakers in the plenary sessions typically examine the relation between emergent and residual practices in the field of American Studies from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives.
The Institute welcomes participants who are involved in a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields and who are interested in current critical debates in American Studies.
Faculty included Lisa Lowe, Dana Nelson, Cindi Katz, Branka Arsic, Christian Haines, Alan Nadel, Susan Strehle, Patricia Stuelke, Russ Castronovo, David Golumbia, James E. Dobson, Eng-Beng Lim, David Eng, Rachel Lee, Karen Shimakawa, Soyica Diggs Colbert, Ronald Judy, Donatella Izzo, Heike Paul, Liam Kennedy, Winfried Fluck, Hortense Spillers, John Carlos Rowe, Tim Melley, Heike Paul, Liam Kennedy, Eric Lott, Hamilton Carroll, Annie McClanahan, Colleen Boggs, and Dana Luciano.