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Events

May. 20 | 2013 Gabriel Prize
Nominations for 2013 Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in American Studies due

Jun. 30 | 2013 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2013 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due

Jun. 30 | 2013 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2013 Turpie Prize for Outstanding Teaching, Advising, and Program Development in American studies due

Annual Meeting

Submit a Proposal (Closed)

Annual Meeting: Call for Proposals
"Beyond the Logic of Debt, Toward an Ethics of Collective Dissent" November 21-24, 2013: Hilton Washington, DC

The 2013 ASA Program Committee invites current individual members of the ASA (or an affiliated international American studies association) to submit proposals for individual papers, entire sessions, presentations, performances, films, roundtables, workshops, conversations, or alternative formats described below on any topic dealing with American cultures.

All submitters will need to create a new All Academic user account. If you had a user account for the 2012 All Academic submission site, you must nevertheless create a new account for the 2013 submission site. This is intentional.

Register here to submit a proposal (current members only).

Submitters: note that the user name and password you currently use to enter any other ASA site will not work with the All Academic site until you have also created your 2013 submitter profile and registered the same user name and password.

All panelists, including chairs and commentators, must be current individual members of the ASA (or an affiliated international American studies association) in order to participate.

Access the ASA membership directory (current members only)

All participants are expected to pay their conference registration fees early by June 1, 2013. All participants must buy *both* a membership and a registration in order to be properly registered for the conference.

All proposal submitters must be current members of the ASA (or an affiliated international American studies association) at the time of submission.

Each panel submission should also include a second current ASA ( or affiliated international American studies association) member in addition to the panel organizer at the time of submission.

All other participants are expected to pay their membership dues to the ASA (or an affiliated international American studies association) by April 1, 2013, if their proposal is accepted.

Only current members will be listed in the annual meeting program.

All participants are expected to pay their conference registration fees early by June 1, 2013.

Only registered participants will be listed in the annual meeting program.

Membership includes subscriptions to American Quarterly, the Encyclopedia of American Studies Online, and the ASA Newsletter (quarterly publication). Membership also includes discounts on conference registration and hotel. Membership is available for a calendar year only. Duration of membership is January 1 to December 31.

Register here to begin or renew an ASA membership and for the annual meeting. There is no log in required.

The submission site will open on December 1, 2012. Follow the submission instructions precisely and start the application process early. Emailed, faxed, scanned, or posted proposals will NOT be accepted. It is not possible to extend the submission deadline or accept late submissions for any reason. The submission site will automatically shut down at 11:59 PM (Pacific) on January 26, 2013.

Meeting Theme

Beyond the Logic of Debt, Toward an Ethics of Collective Dissent

From college students graduating with crushing loans to millions of retirees facing foreclosures, from the still neglected residents of New Orleans to Asian and African women targeted by micro lenders, from the suicides of so many suffering economic loss to those made desperate by their utter lack of options, including deaths that set off the Tunisian uprisings of the "Arab Spring," the ubiquity of debt defines our current historical moment. We thus call for discussions of "debt" in its many historical, contemporary, and allegorical dimensions, and invite everyone to offer insights on not only the dominant logic of debt, but also the alternative practices of collective dissent that disrupt and deregulate its coercive power.

The convention theme takes our conference location, Washington D.C., as an opportunity to explore debt. Myriad debts are managed in D.C., including student, home, credit card, healthcare, and national debts. In addition to being the "seat of democracy" it is the "seat of finance," a combination well represented by the city's famous nationalist monuments and the landmarks of global finance (the World Bank, the IMF, the FRB). In many ways, D.C. has come to represent the financialization of everything, and the empowerment of the profits, security, and needs of the 1%.

The topics below are intended as just the beginning of further-ranging investigations of the relations between logics of debt and collective dissent.

A Capitol/Capital Location--As the capital of the United States and one capital of finance, D.C. stages the sovereign debt crisis and the global austerity regime that has emerged in response; the location itself highlights the demise of an earlier form of state sovereignty, as sovereignty has paradoxically become defined by its capacity to abdicate power to creditors. How do debt and financialization undermine electoral politics and what kinds of dissent emerge outside of electoral politics? How might focusing on debt provide new critical perspectives on sovereignty broadly conceived? How, for example, have regimes of debt served to transform or displace indigenous models of sovereignty, exchange, and land? Our conference location thematizes the limits of liberal democracy in the service of capitalism, and we invite submissions on its pitfalls in various contexts, forms, and times.

The Structural Readjustment of Social Space and Time -- In recent history debt has contributed to black flight from D.C. and allowed for neoliberal gentrification to occupy the city, resulting in the dramatic transformation of urban space. In this way, D.C. may serve as an example of the consequences of neoliberal restructuring on cities and a guide to the processes of racialized capitalism: from withdrawal of state provisions for social welfare and expansion of its repressive functions (policing, prisons, the military) to foreclosure and imprisonment as means of dispossession. While the 2008 debt crisis has led to the increasing financialization of all sectors of life, including urban space, such dynamics have long, complicated histories in various locations. We invite investigations into the social, historical and cultural significance of different speculative bubbles and financial "panics"-- 1792, 1797, 1819, 1837, 1857--the list goes on.

Gentrification has challenged D.C. as a capital of black/queer social, political, and intellectual life, and the presence of creditors and financial elites overwhelm the memories of an earlier heterogeneous "chocolate city." Do the racial and economic processes that diminish black queer social spaces also threaten even prominent institutions like Howard University as centers of black culture and ideas? As debt erases the past and colonizes the future, limiting our social visions of alternatives, it is urgent to claim other repertoires of value, intimacy, learning and community not based on the logics of debt.

Hemispheres of Debt and Violence--As both the seat of national government and home of international finance, D.C. suggests questions about how debt shapes or mediates relationships between the global South and North, and between the agents and victims of U.S. imperialism. To what extent have strategies deployed in the South been extrapolated among the poor in New Orleans, the deindustrialized Midwest, and the urban unemployed and underemployed (including students) in the U.S itself? Does the "debt" of the colonial world now "haunt" the imperial West? What is the relationship between, on the one hand, the economic indebtedness of the colonial and developing worlds to Western nation states, and on the other hand, the history of discourses about civilization, religion, philosophy, etc. that have framed Asia, Latin America and Africa as culturally "in debt" to the modern, and in need of development and cultivation? And how might such histories be similarly haunted and overturned in the current moment? Furthermore, European and U.S. imperial ventures have been built on debt, whether the history of extracted revenues, or the credit systems financing warfare. Can we think of the 2001 invasion of Iraq in such terms, as a U.S. attempt to command the region in order to resolve a crisis of U.S. sovereignty stemming from economic debt? How might centering debt change our view of the history of U.S. imperialism and militarism?

Collective Dissent to Debt-- Regimes of debt can also lead to new, extra-electoral alliances and promote new opportunities, an increasing awareness of the failures of capitalist democracy, mass protests, and the growth of transnational solidarities. The history of D.C. includes significant instances of urban resistance to dispossession. The recent D.C. city council refusal to implement federal immigration enforcement, as well as anti-war and "Occupy" protests, are good recent examples. Washington D.C. is also a crossroads for multidimensional, transnational organizing that express new concepts and practices of social justice. In this spirit, we invite submissions about all forms of debt rebellion and critique, past, present, and future: critical defaults, social movements for reparations and jubilee, alternative, nongovernmental centers of participatory democracy (recently Occupy movements and the Arab Spring), old and new modes of dissent, alternative forms of sociability, cultures of the commons, incalculable economies of pleasure, "unlikely coalitions" (Davis) and "strange affinities" (Ferguson and Hong). Noting the long history of indigenous and migrant resistance to debt and dispossession, how have writers, poets, scholars, and activists articulated the anti-capitalist possibilities of indigenous and migrant aesthetics and knowledges?

Ideology, Labor, Culture, Embodiment--D.C. is a fitting location to examine debt as a strategy of rule that infiltrates, shapes, and determines U.S. political governance, social hierarchies, and everyday intimacies. If we conceive of political sovereignty as founded on debt, then the political contract that obligates citizens to the state is a foundational indebtedness. Extending this notion to belonging and social forms more generally, we can think of debt as organizing the metaphorical contracts between subjects and communities, children and parents, and wives and husbands. Patriarchal family, inheritance, pedagogy and genealogy are all articulated to debt. Normative citizen subject-formation thus creates a hierarchy of value in which non-normative immigrants, unpropertied, illegal, marginalized or queer others are cast as in debt or as "failed" subjects. As such, the critique of debt involves a critique of fidelity to the normative. How can ethnic studies, queer theory, and disability studies broach the normativity and ableism that constitute discourses of debt? To what extent is debt accompanied by an affective economy of pity that reproduces inequality by turning indebted folks into racialized and "disabled" subjects? And how might we understand health care debt as mediating racialized inequality, ability/disability, and normative embodiment?

D.C. has long been a central node in networks of laborers. We call for discussions of the relationships between debt and labor, from slavery, indenture, and forms of debt peonage, to sweatshop labor and refugees from U.S. imperial adventures. How do women migrants coming from countries with strong union, indigenous and collective traditions represent a vital source of contemporary resistance?

How has debt been figured in literature, film, performance, music, and other cultural forms? What are the cultural components of logics of debt? How have market logics infiltrated culture and what resources do cultural productions offer for opposing such logics? How does debt inform commodity cultures? How does digital remix culture interact with or transform ideas about debt, value, creativity, or historical memory?

Getting Schooled in Debt--Debt has a stranglehold on education. States triage public education and private universities become global corporate ventures. University education reproduces rather than mitigates class inequality. Debt shackles students to the status quo. We call for American Studies to confront this situation thoroughly and forthrightly. How has debt and financialization impacted American Studies as a critical project, as knowledge production, as a professional association? What renewed or overdue engagements are called for between American Studies and the field of economics, the work of culture warriors, the attacks on ethnic studies, the precarious-making of academic labor, and the diminished status of scientific and humanistic knowledges? Finally, we invite discussion of debt as a metaphor for our engagements with past and current critical, aesthetic, and theoretical traditions. How might we think debt in relationship to practices of intellectual genealogy and influence? How might we conceptualize "debts" to historical personages, research subjects, communities, and social movements? Unlike other kinds of obligations, debts can be quantified, and therein lie their potential for violence. Can we instead articulate an alternative ethics of obligation and promise?

Proposal Submissions

We encourage you to consult Getting on the ASA Meeting Program: A Practical Guide before you submit a proposal.

Please carefully read the proposal submission requirements and guidelines below before proceeding to use the online submission site. Follow the submission instructions precisely and start the application process early. The help menu on each page of the submission site should answer your site related questions.

The ASA staff is eager to help people navigate the submission site, but that work is possible only when the staff is not pushed up against the deadline. Contact us at least 72 hours before the submission deadline if you need technical assistance. The ASA staff will also respond to emailed questions until 2 PM (Pacific) on January 26, 2013 at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). It is not possible to extend the submission deadline or accept late submissions for any reason. The submission site will automatically shut down at 11:59 PM (Pacific) on January 26, 2013.

Submit a proposal through the ASA's 2013 submission site.

There are a number of ways that our membership could help both themselves and the program committee when using the on-line system. First, ASA guidelines clearly state that a member may appear only once on the program. When members do not heed this advice, they create more work for the program committee as well as jeopardize both of the panels for which they have committed themselves. Second, we encourage members who have agreed to participate in a panel or have submitted a paper not to then double register as commentator and chair. Third, ASA guidelines state that sessions should reflect institutional and disciplinary diversity. One of the benefits of attending a national conference is to interact with scholars from institutions and fields other than our own. So, when proposals arrived with presenters from only one institution or field they are less attractive to a program committee regardless of content. Fourth, you may submit only one proposal. Finally, it is important to remember that the competition for these slots is extremely competitive.

Proposal Types

Proposals on any topic dealing with American Studies may be submitted for traditional paper sessions. Proposals may be submitted for sessions with alterative formats including sessions with papers and sessions without papers (see below). Proposals may also be submitted for individual papers.

Proposals for sessions with papers, including traditional paper sessions, as well as those in talk, online, or exhibit formats, should indicate in a one-page description the session subject/s and the proposed format. Such proposals should also include all relevant information requested below in the submission guidelines and instructions and must include abstracts for each individual presenter.

Proposals for sessions without papers, such as workshops, dialogues, and performances, should indicate in a one-page description the session subject/s and the proposed format. Such proposals should also include all relevant information requested below, though they need not include individual presenter abstracts.

Proposed presentations should represent work in progress, rather than published work. Presentations should offer unique, original work not presented elsewhere.

Standing Committee, Caucus, Taskforce, and Program Committee members are authorized and encouraged to submit session proposals. Proposals from organizations affiliated with the ASA are also welcome.

All Standing Committee, Caucus, Taskforce, Affiliated Society, and Program Committee member proposals must adhere to the same conditions, deadlines and restrictions as other session proposals, and are subject to review by the Program Committee.

Alternative Proposal Formats for Washington, DC, 2013

The Program Committee supports innovative formats that disrupt the conventional "three people reading papers" format.

The Program Committee believes that we cannot think about new, powerful connections between the academy and the world if we use only conventional academic forms. The Committee is proposing, therefore, several formats different from conventional paper-reading sessions. The Committee urges you to consider them if they seem appropriate and useful.

In order to broaden the modes of presentation and discussion in the Annual Meeting program, we invite proposals in two broad categories of non-traditional formats:

A. Sessions with Papers.

Although these resemble conventional sessions in having a chair, presentation of papers to an audience, and commentary, papers in these sessions will not be read aloud, allowing more time for informed, informal, and engaged discussion. These sessions require an abstract.

"Talk" format. Presenters will write papers, as usual, and distribute them to the chair, commentator, and other panelists by the deadline. But in the session they will "talk" their paper from notes, speaking directly to the audience rather than reading line-by-line.

On-line format. Presenters will post their papers on the Internet one month before the meeting. These sessions will be prominently marked in the program as intended primarily for an audience that has read the papers in advance and followed whatever on-line discussion they may have generated. The session will be devoted to formal commentary and group discussion. The panel will set up the web site on their own server, post the online papers, and provide the forum for discussion of them. The ASA will publicize the on line sessions and install the links from the on line program to the panel's web site and discussion blog.

Exhibit format. Presenters will post their materials on a large bulletin board that can accommodate text pages in large type, graphics, primary source extracts, etc. Video and audio clips can also be used. These sessions will feature three or four such presentations grouped around a common theme. The first half of the session gives the audience time to read and discuss each exhibit with the presenters. The second half encourages group discussion, facilitated by a chair and commentators.

B. Sessions without Papers.

In past meetings, the ASA has already sponsored many kinds of alternative sessions: roundtables, conversations, performances, multi-media presentations, readings of creative work, workshops involving audience participation, and presentations linked to the community outside the hotel (community centers, museums, secondary schools, prisons, etc.). These formats will experiment with creative forms of expression, performance and dialogue that represent a significant departure to conventional presentations of papers. These sessions require an abstract.

Performative format. Presenters will perform their work. This could include the range of artistic performing arts (dance, music, drama, spoken word, performance art) to multi-media presentations (video, film, audio, digital media) and readings of creative fiction and non-fiction.

Dialogue format (Roundtables).Presenters will engage in dialogues with each other and the audience. Possible formats could include roundtables of academics; forums with scholars, community activists, mass or alternative media-makers and public officials; conversations between performing and/or visual artists, curators, and educators about aesthetic and expressive innovations or the challenges of developing public cultures in diverse communities. This format might be particularly well suited to creating linkages with the communities outside the hotel (community centers, performing arts centers, museums, secondary schools, prisons, libraries, and other public sites).

Workshop format. Presenters will create venues to verbally and physically interact with the audience. Educators, artists, and curators, for example, could lead these workshops to emphasize the interactive challenges and possibilities of interdisciplinarity and American Studies.

We are excited about the possibilities for Washington, DC, 2013. We hope you will join us in making this a stimulating, conversational, and useful conference for the American Studies Association and its members.

ASA Individual Paper Submission Instructions

YOU ARE PERMITTED TO SUBMIT ONLY ONE PROPOSAL.

Register here after December 1, 2012 to submit a proposal through the ASA's 2013 submission site.

All individual paper submitters must be current members of the ASA (or an affiliated international American studies association) in order to propose an individual paper.

All presenters must also buy a registration if their proposal is accepted in order to be properly registered for the conference. Only fully registered participants will be listed in the annual meeting program.

Register here to begin or renew an ASA membership and for the annual meeting. There is no log in required.

All individual paper submitters will need the following:

Individual Paper Title (maximum of 15 words per title. Do not begin the title with quotes or other characters.)
Paper Abstract (maximum of 500 words per abstract)
Session Keywords
Special Requests
Individual Author information including: first name, last name, affiliation, e-mail address, and a 350 word biographical statement. (Example of a biographical statement)
Confirmation of current membership status

IMPORTANT: type all information as it should appear in the program. Use appropriate grammar, punctuation, sentence construction, and do not use abbreviations. The information you type in this form will be included in the ASA program book (if your proposal is accepted). Type title as it should appear in the program (limit to fifteen words). Do not type in all capital letters. Use initial caps only. Do not include quotations or other characters at the beginning of your title.

Those submitting individual paper proposals will receive a confirmation e-mail that the paper has been submitted. The Program Committee will organize as many individual papers as possible into sessions. Individual paper submitters will each have to create a brand new user account at the convention submission site, even if he or she submitted last year, and the submitter can edit his or her personal information, paper titles, and abstracts. Proposals may be edited after submission only until January 26, 2013, but personal information may be updated at any time.

ASA Session Submission Instructions:

YOU ARE PERMITTED TO SUBMIT ONLY ONE PROPOSAL.

Register here after December 1, 2012 to submit a proposal through the ASA's 2013 submission site.

All session submitters must be current members of the ASA (or an affiliated international American studies association) in order to propose a session. Each panel submission should also include a second current ASA (or affiliated international American studies association) member in addition to the panel organizer at the time of submission All other panelists, including chairs and commentators, must be current individual members of the ASA (or an affiliated international American studies association) by April 1, 2013 in order to participate if their proposal is accepted.

Register here to begin or renew an ASA membership and for the annual meeting. There is no log in required.

All participants must buy *both* a membership and a registration in order to be properly registered for the conference. Only fully registered participants will be listed in the annual meeting program.

The session submitter will need the following:

Session Title (maximum of 15 words)
Session Abstract (maximum of 500 words)
Session Keywords
Special Requests
Paper Title from each session participant (maximum of 15 words per title) for sessions with papers only
Paper Abstract from each session participant (maximum of 500 words per abstract) for sessions with papers only
Contact and biographical information from each session participant (presenters, chair, commentator) including: first name, last name, affiliation, e-mail address, and a 350 word biographical statement (Example of a biographical statement)
Confirmation of current membership status from each session participant

Standing Committee, Caucus, Task Force, Program Committee, and Affiliated Society proposals should state the organizational sponsor's name at the beginning of the session title.

AN INDIVIDUAL MAY NOT SUBMIT MORE THAN ONE SPONSORED PROPOSAL.

Session submitters: You will receive a confirmation e-mail upon submission. You will find copies of all emails in the message center of your All Academic user account. You will serve as the primary contact with panelists and the ASA. You are responsible for editing paper titles, abstracts, and biographical statements. The proposal may be accessed only through your account. You may edit the session proposal until January 26, 2013. You will automatically create an All Academic user account for each panelist . You are also responsible for ensuring your panelists join the ASA (or are members of an affiliated international American studies association) and register for the annual meeting.

Panelists: You will find copies of all emails in the message center of your All Academic user account. You may not access the proposal through your All Academic user account. You may only update your account profile, affiliation, and contact information. You must join the ASA (or be a member of an affiliated international American studies association) and register for the annual meeting.

Submission Restrictions and Guidelines

You are allowed to make only one submission. The Program Committee will eliminate from consideration those who submit more than one proposal.

So that as many members as possible will have the opportunity to be actively involved in the Annual Meeting, you may participate in one scholarly session on the program. If your name is listed on two or more proposals in whatever role you will render those proposals ineligible for consideration by the Program Committee.

The Council has charged its nine standing committees with organizing professional development panels. You may serve on one professional development panel and on one scholarly panel.

Sessions submitted without a chair will not be considered.

You may chair and comment on the same session.

You may chair and present on the same session without papers.

You may not chair or comment and present a paper on the same session with papers.

If a panel has a commentator, he or she should not be the dissertation adviser of any member of the panel.

Session organizers should seek out a mix of junior and senior panelists, as well as a mix of institutions represented by faculty and graduate student panelists.

A major headache at all Annual Meetings is papers that go on for too long, wearying the audience and disrupting the schedule. Session organizers should make sure that their session begins on time, and that participants do not abuse the time limits. All sessions are 105 minutes in length. This includes the reading of papers, responses by the commentators and comments from the audience. When an audience has sat through a typical session of three papers and one response by a commentator, they quite rightly feel cheated and frustrated if no time is left for audience participation. The following chart can be used by the session chair as a guide to allocating time during the session, assuming that one takes five minutes for introductions.

Session Length	Number of Papers or Presentations	Time Allowed per Paper or Presentation	Time Allowed for a Single Commentator	Time Allowed for Audience Comments
105 minutes	3	20 (2000 words)	20	20
105 minutes	4	16 (1600 words)	16	20
105 minutes	5	13 (1300 words)	15	20

Participation Requirements

The association expects that people agreeing to appear on the ASA program should recognize their professional responsibility to support the organization with their dues as well as conference registration fees.

Register here to begin or renew an ASA membership and for the annual meeting. There is no log in required.

The session organizer should inform the members of the proposed panel of these requirements before submitting a proposal. The session organizer is also responsible for ensuring that their panelists promptly comply with these requirements.

All submitters must be current members of the ASA (or an affiliated international American studies association) at the time of submission.

Each panel submission should also include a second current ASA ( or affiliated international American studies association) member in addition to the panel organizer at the time of submission.

All participants are expected to pay their membership dues to the ASA (or an affiliated international American studies association) by April 1, 2013. if their proposal is accepted.

Only current members will be listed in the annual meeting program.

All participants are expected to pay their conference registration fees early by June 1, 2013.

Only registered participants will be listed in the annual meeting program.

On occasion, non-academic participants may with written permission of the Executive Director, be exempted from the membership requirement. Applications for exemption shall be submitted in writing to the Executive Director of ASA by April 1, 2013. These non-members, however, must register early for the annual meeting by June 1, 2013 at the non-member rate.

Register here to begin or renew an ASA membership and for the annual meeting. There is no log in required.

The Journals Publishing Division of the Johns Hopkins University Press is responsible for membership and subscription fulfillment. If you have any questions or problems concerning your membership please contact JHUP Customer Service directly at toll free (US and Canada only) at 800-548-1784 or email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

The Program Committee advises each participant of his or her professional and ethical obligation to appear, and also to locate suitable replacements in the event of an unavoidable withdrawal.

Fees and Funding

Participant Pre-Registration Fee (due June 1, 2013):

ASA Member or International Affiliate $100.00
ASA Member or International Affiliate-Income under $15,000 $75.00
ASA Member-Student/K-12 Educator $50.00

Non-Member $150.00
Non-Member-Income under $15,000/year $100.00
Non-Member-Student/K-12 Educator $75.00

After June 1, the registration fee for all registrants will increase by $25.00 in each category

Participants must arrange their own travel and accommodation. Participants are responsible for obtaining the funding they need to attend the Annual Meeting. The ASA cannot underwrite travel funds, honoraria, per diem, or other subsidies for any chair, commentator, or panelist; breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, or receptions for any group; or professional or individual audio or video recording of any sessions or events.

Membership and registration fees are neither refundable nor transferable.

Forfeited registration fees will automatically transfer to the Baxter Travel Grant Fund. The Baxter Grants provide partial travel reimbursement to advanced graduate students who are members of the ASA and will travel to the convention in order to appear on the Annual Meeting program.

Audio-Visual Equipment

The ASA will supply all session rooms with a Digital Equipment Package. Included: LCD/multimedia data projector, with speakers, laptop (MS Powerpoint, CD, & DVD capable, PC but MAC compatible), screen, and on site technical support. Not included: live internet connection.

If you want additional digital equipment, WIFI, or live internet connection you will have to rent it at your own expense. If you want to use analog equipment such as an Overhead Projector, Slide Projectors, or TV/VCR/DVD's, you will have to bring your own equipment or rent it at your own expense.

We do NOT offer Skype to accommodate individual panelists who do not attend the meeting in person. Skype is a very unsatisfactory medium for video-conferencing with a group. The picture quality when blown up to a necessary size for a group is very poor, and the speaker at the remote location will not be able to identify questioners.

Program Decisions

The Program Committee will organize sessions from individual paper proposals and, on occasion, will combine individual papers with proposed full sessions. If your paper or panel is not accepted, the Committee may call upon you to play an alternative role at the meeting as a chair or commentator. To facilitate the Committee's work, please indicate on the online submission form whether you are willing to act as chair or commentator on another session. The Committee also invites self-nominations from ASA members to serve as chairs and commentators exclusively on sessions constructed from individual submissions.

After the January 26, 2013, deadline for submission of proposals, the Program Committee will meet to review the proposals and select the sessions to be held at the upcoming Annual Meeting. The Committee will approve proposals on the basis of their quality in relation to the others submitted. The Committee will also: attempt to include sessions on a wide variety of subjects and approaches, including scholarly, pedagogical, and professional subjects; consciously support the inclusion of panels focused on topics of concern to different minority groups; strive to balance its selections between topics of continuing interest and new topics to which little or no attention has been paid; look for sessions in which scholars in different fields engage one another on a common topic; and try to span different time periods and subject matters in sessions constructed from individual papers. There will be room for specialized sessions on particular subjects.

To avoid favoritism, the Committee will take care not to overload the sessions with faculty and graduate students from institutions represented by members of the Committee. This does not disallow members of the Committee from presenting papers. The Committee will make every effort to assure diverse representation through the inclusion of minorities, women, graduate students, and international colleagues, and will seek to reflect the regional and disciplinary diversity of the Association's membership.

Notification and Participation

Once the Committee has finalized the program, all persons who have submitted proposals will be notified by email of the Committee's decisions by March 29 th. All emails are also delivered to the message center of your All Academic user account. Session organizers are responsible for notifying the members of the proposed panel of the Program Committee's decision. If you do not receive an official e-mail by April 15, it may be because you did not complete the submission process properly, your email address is incorrect, or your email has very sensitive spam blockers that are blocking the incoming email. Please e-mail the conference director at: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

The session chair will coordinate contact among the session participants to ensure maximum integration of presentations. Participants should send the session chair a brief biographical statement to be used in introductions.

Almost all sessions and events will take place at the Hilton Washington. Sessions will be scheduled from 8 am on Thursday, November 21, 2013, until 5 pm on Sunday, November 24, 2013.

Participants should be available for scheduling at any time during the entire meeting. It is not possible to guarantee any session or panelist a day or time on the program. Submitters may not request a session slot on the program.

If notified by May 1, 2013, the Program Committee will try to honor requests to provide reasonable scheduling accommodations for "disabled" program participants under the public accommodations provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

If notified by May 1, 2013, the ASA will provide ASL Interpretation for panels with hearing-impaired presenters.

If notified by May 1, 2013, the Program Committee will try to honor requests not to schedule a presentation on a religious holiday.

Scheduling will not be completed until June 1, 2013. We suggest that you do not purchase airline tickets or male travel plans before the schedule is finalized.

If a session has a commentator, that session's participants must send copies of their completed papers to him or her by October 15, 2013.

On Line Program

Sessions may post links to graphics, primary source extracts, video and audio clips, illustrations, posters, or other materials in the on line program. If notified by October 15, 2013. with the URL's and link descriptions, the ASA will install the links from the on line program to those on line materials, the panel's web site, and its discussion blog, if any. It is not possible for presenters to "upload" those materials directly to the on line program.

No-Shows

The ASA reminds participants of their professional and ethical obligation to appear in person at their session at the annual meeting. No-shows are conspicuous in their absence. They inconvenience the chair and fellow presenters, as well as those attending their session. The American Studies Association defines a no-show as someone on the program who is not physically present at her/his session at the annual meeting and who (1) has not notified ASA in advance that s/he cannot attend the meeting by October 15, 2013, and/or (2) has not submitted a presentation to be read by the chair or another person at the meeting by October 15, 2013. No-shows will not be considered for the following year's program. If you notify ASA in advance and submit a presentation to be made by someone else at their session, you will not be penalized. You are responsible for finding your own alternative presenter.

Contact Us

For further information about the Call for Proposals, you may contact the president-elect, Curtis Marez (cmarez@dssmail.ucsd.edu), the program chairs Roderick Ferguson, (fergu033@umn.edu), Lisa Lowe, (lisa.lowe@tufts.edu), and Jodi Melamed (jlmelamed@gmail.com), or T'Sey-Haye Preaster, the ASA's conference director .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)