How is the academic discourse constructed? Academics publish but they also meet in workshops like this!

The School of Criticism and Theory
at Cornell University
2014 Summer Session: June 15 - July 25 

http://sct.cornell.edu/files/2013/08/SCT_Brochure2014.E-view.reduced-19s5svt.pdf

An international program of study with leading figures in critical thought The School of Criticism and Theory was founded in 1976 by a group of leading scholars and critical theorists in the conviction that an understanding of theory is fundamental to humanistic studies. Today, in an unparalleled summer campus experience, the SCT offers professors and advanced graduate students of literature and related social sciences a chance to work with preeminent figures in critical thought—exploring the relationships among literature, history, art, anthropology and the law; examining the role of ideological and cultural movements; and reassessing theoretical approaches that have emerged over the last fifty years. Cornell also offers participants the resources of one of the great research libraries in the United States.