SOLIDARITY: WHAT LOVE LOOKS LIKE IN PUBLIC 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association SUBMISSIONS DUE TONIGHT (2/1/23) AT 11:59PM PACIFIC TIME PLEASE SUBMIT AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE TO AVOID TECHNICAL PROBLEMS If you encounter technical difficulties with the ASA website, the JHUP website, or All Academic website, please see the information below for possible assistance and contact info. MEMBERSHIP AND LOGIN: Remember to renew your ASA membership before you submit through All Academic For all login and password matters, please contact the ASA member support team at Johns Hopkins University Press during Eastern Time business hours: jrnlcirc@jh.edu or phone (410) 516-6987. PROGRAM APPEARANCE LIMIT: Generally, you can only appear once as a presenter on any kind panel, and once as a chair and/or commenter on a second panel of any kind. VIRTUAL PRESENTER ACCOMMODATIONS: Please read the submission guidelines and directions on All Academic to request accommodations for members who are prohibited from attending in person, as noted below. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES (CLICK ON LINKS BELOW FOR MORE INFORMATION) The ASA uses All Academic as our proposal submission and conference management site. Please note that submissions close on February 1, 2023 (11:59 PM, Pacific). While we do NOT recommend waiting until the 11th hour, as long as you login to All Academic before 11:59pm, you should be able to complete your submission even after midnight. If you encounter technical difficulties with All Academic and you have confirmed your membership is paid, please report your issues to annualmeeting@theasa.net. If you experience a documented problem that can’t be resolved before the deadline, you can send us a report of your problem and request an extension. We strongly encourage all members to review the frequently asked questions before entering the proposal submission site. 1) Preparing Your Proposal NOTE: The “submitter” is a non-presenter role and will not be included on the program unless added as participant with a selected role (i.e. chair, comment, panelist). 2) Using the Proposal Submission Site All Academic has some quirks, so read the link above for technical assistance. 3) Planning for Your Panel 4) In-Person Attendance and Virtual Acccommodations: Based on prior decisions and commitments, the 2023 Annual Meeting will be a primarily in-person event with accommodations provided for members who cannot attend in person. All full panel submissions are in-person by default, except for “virtual” sessions to be scheduled 11/10/23 to 12/10/23. If panelists qualify to present virtually based on medical condition, disability, incarceration, or special circumstances (e.g. prohibition on international travel), in-person sessions with up to 5 persons may include one virtual accommodation participant and sessions with 6 or more persons may include two virtual participants. The ASA is committed to implementing rigorous Covid safety protocols and providing travel grants to offset costs for qualified students, contingent faculty, and community-based and unemployed scholars. For reference, the Covid protocols for 2022 can be viewed here.   Click for All Academic Submission Site

 

SOLIDARITY: WHAT LOVE LOOKS LIKE IN PUBLIC

2023 Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association
November 2-5, 2023
Le Centre Sheraton Montreal, Canada
Submissions will open 1/1/2023 and close 2/1/2023

A well-known scholar once said that justice is what love looks like in public. Our theme for the ASA annual meeting in Montreal opens up questions of connection among “solidarity,” “love,” “justice,” and “public life.” Solidarity (across class, race, indigeneity, gender/sex, ability, nation, or phenotype) emphasizes horizontal networks of care rather than hierarchical ones mandated by the state or made necessary  by common philanthropic giving. By moving away from this structure – which emphasizes shared suffering so that it puts the onus on vulnerable groups to become legible to outsiders, caregivers and not-for-profits – solidarity emphasizes that when we put our stories beside one another and engage in direct action, we grow our communities and enhance our sustained well-being. In homage to this grassroots movement across the globe, this year’s conference theme is centered upon solidarity and all of its permutations within and without the institutional homes we occupy.

What is solidarity among us? Reterritorialization, reparation, restoration, wealth redistribution, networks of care? What is solidarity’s chief practice? How does it look in public? How does it bend toward or create justice in real time? What is solidarity when tempered by love; what is love when its edges are sharp and occluding? What if our affective lives don’t always bend toward a normative script of respectability, one that is attune to the needs of civil society? In what idea of community does our solidarity live? Is it time to change those currents, move some structures, breach some boundaries?

Love relations are so often ensconced in property. What do they look like without this scaffolding? What does a practice of love look like? Most important for our program committee was that this call invite colleagues – writers, visual artists, and activist scholars – to contemplate radical failure. There is always failure in the gestural, but what happens if we see that failure as part of the practice, part of the work, rather than as crisis? The Program Committee would like our colleagues to think about those times when solidarity and love as central ethics in justice work, on the page and in the streets, fail. The word “public” here is intended as a reminder to us that the public-facing work we do produces that accountability and turns love into a practice of justice. We hope to bring forward proposals from the national body that produce and reflect upon alternative practices, especially from those of us who labor in other ways parallel to or even in contestation with our work in institutional spaces. Solidarity work, especially in historically PWIs and neoliberal spaces, is often dangerous work.

The ASA has always represented a fierce community of critics, scholars, and visionaries who create bold pathways for nurturing and sustaining our collective intellects. As an Association, we have a unique opportunity to think through what institutional intellectual life will look like for our students and colleagues in the very near future as we craft a vision for ourselves out of the still-smoldering fire of multiple pandemics and their consequences. If we provide space for thinking outside the box – for moving from hallowed hallways and closed doors to more equitable and open spaces for “work” itself, for redefining what labor and rest are, we might be able to shape how we work, forging not just an undercommons, but an other common altogether.

Our annual meeting’s location in Montreal presents the perfect opportunity to put some pressure on the meaning of solidarity across a number of communities, modes of engagement, and national boundaries. We invite our colleagues in Canada and the Americas, writ large, as well as those beyond to join us as we think through these engagements. We want to actively participate in building a practice (of love, of solidarity, of justice) in the space of contestation and radical difference. Building on the momentum of previous meetings, the 2023 Program Committee seeks submissions that reflect thoughtful and creative efforts to enhance our collective (and individual) capacities to engage in public-facing scholarly/pedagogical/creative work in support of the ASA’s mission.

We are especially keen to engage community organizers, educators, and scholar-activists who are conducting solidarity work. Proposals from these entities might include skill-sharing, critical solidarity making, activist research, and artistic renderings. We embrace the work of our organization’s multiple and overlapping intellectual communities and encourage proposals that think within and across our multiple communities (including but not limited to Indigenous, Latinx/e, Black, Asian American, Pacific Islander, feminist, queer, trans*, disability, environmental, settler colonial, postcolonial, transnational American, and (critical) ethnic studies, among other critical interdisciplinary fields). We recognize and want as many participants/members at this conference who are from community, K-12, Tribal, First Nations, and historically Black institutions to bring forward proposals on our theme, “Solidarity: What Love Looks Like in Public,” for Montreal.

Please note: While the 2023 conference is currently planned as a primarily in-person event, the ASA will continue to host online sessions through our Freedom Courses and offer accommodations for members with disabilities or medical conditions that preclude travel or in-person attendance. Complete guidelines will be forthcoming.

Sharon P. Holland
President Elect and Committee Chair – UNC Chapel Hill

Co-Chairs:
Jodi Byrd – Cornell University
Lisa Marie Cacho – University of Virginia
Heidi Kim – UNC Chapel Hill

Committee Members:
GerShun Avilez – University of Maryland
Stefanie Dunning – Miami University
Chad B. Infante – University of Maryland
Soo Ah Kwon – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
L. Joyce Zapata Mariano – University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Koritha Mitchell – The Ohio State University
Dory Nason – University of British Columbia
Nitasha Tamar Sharma – Northwestern University
Ruby Tapia – University of Michigan