We had a very productive meeting of Center for Theory last week, attended by faculty and grad students. It really helped me clarify my thinking about what role the CfT can play at UTA, and beyond. I'd like the Center, once capitalized appropriately, to do at least 4 things-award graduate fellowships in order to recruit national grad students to UTA for work in theory; recruit grad students and help nurture intellectual culture at UTA by designing a state-of-the-art Web page, which can double as a virtual newsletter; launch a speakers series, coupled with informal theory presentations by local faculty and grad students, that will enrich the intellectual culture of this place; provide faculty with summer research money. To do these and other things, we obviously need money. Richard Cole, Dean of Liberal Arts, has graciously agreed to get us started. Richard is providing Web-design money for this year, and money with which to start a speakers series for next yr. I hope that we can bring both Doug Kellner and Tim Luke to campus for presentations and discussions next fall and/or spring. And I have already contacted Zizek to see if he might be interested in making a visit. Many other excellent names were suggested at last week's meeting and we should seriously pursue some of them, esp if we can identify people who are already traveling to the area for other reasons. In the meantime, the fiscal crisis of U.S. higher education requires us to seek some outstanding funding for all this. I have made a tentative inquiry that could conceivably lead to funds with which to endow the center. I'd like to see $100K a year flow into the Center for these various purposes. That, of course, will require a substantially bigger endowment. But the DFW area is full of Internet-related firms which could conceivably become interested in making the CfT a significant site of research on the impact of the Internet on society and culture. I'll call one more meeting later this semester and discuss progress on the Web page, whose re-design will be spearheaded by Robert Leston of our English Dept, and discuss the outlines of an outside speakers series for next yr, as well as a series that will showcase work-in-progress by local talent. Ben