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Events

Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due

Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due

Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
For submission guidelines, click here

From the Editors

ASA/UNITE HERE Joint Statement (2010)

American Studies Association Joins Forces with San Antonio Hyatt Workers
Attending Other Meetings? View the Union Hotel Guide
Learn More About INMEX

STATEMENT: American Studies Association and UNITE HERE reaffirm their working relationship.

ASA strongly supports UNITE HERE and INMEX in their efforts to further the cause of workers rights.

ASA joins UNITE HERE in urging Global Hyatt to resolve their labor dispute in San Antonio.

The American Studies Association and UNITE HERE reaffirm their working relationship, specifically in regard to their strategic partnership as it relates to placing their meetings in hotels where employers treat workers with respect and dignity.

ASA is proud to be a founding member of INMEX, a non-profit meeting planning organization started by UNITE HERE to ensure that groups such as ASA hold their meetings and conferences at hotels and conference centers that treat their workers with dignity and respect. With the assistance of INMEX, tens of millions of dollars worth of meeting and convention business has been diverted to corporations that practice high-road employment practices. John Stephens, ASA Executive Director, is the Chair of INMEX and plays a key role in the organization’s mission to support workers rights by sending business to responsible employers.

To that end, the ASA is hopeful that the current labor unrest at the San Antonio Hyatt will be resolved prior to their Annual Meeting on November 18. ASA stands by UNITE HERE in urging Global Hyatt to settle this matter, and all other outstanding organizing efforts by workers at their hotels, as quickly as possible and in a manner that is respectful of the workers.

ASA is prepared to make a decision not to return to any Hyatt properties in the future until this and all other outstanding organizing issues with UNITE HERE have been resolved.

Published on November 18, 2010 by John F Stephens.

ACLS Humanities E-Book

The American Studies Association is a member of the American Council of Learned Societies. The ACLS offers individual annual subscriptions to ACLS Humanities E-Book to current American Studies Association members. By early 2010 HEB will be offering unlimited access to nearly 3,000 full-text, cross-searchable titles across the humanities and social sciences, from the 1880s through the present.

Individual subscriptions are an attractive option for those whose institutions don’t already have a subscription to HEB or for American Studies Association members who might not be affiliated with a subscribing institution. Individual annual subscriptions are $35.00. Please visit http://www.humanitiesebook.org/subscribinginsts.html to see if your institution subscribes.

You may purchase an individual subscription to HEB at http://www.humanitiesebook.org/subscription_purchase.html. Please choose American Studies Association from the “Society Affiliation” pull-down menu and, in the space that says “Society Membership Number,” provide your American Studies Association membership number. If you do not know your membership number, you may request it here http://asa.press.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/member_number_lookup.cgi

You may also call the Johns Hopkins University Press at 1-800-548-1784 for your membership number, or email JHUP Customer Service at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). For inquiries about HEB, please e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Published on January 17, 2011 by John F Stephens.

Intellectual Freedom in a Time of (Economic) Crisis

A Statement by the Executive Committee of the American Studies Association
April 2011

The early months of 2011 have witnessed protests and insistent calls for change in what are being called the “Arab Spring” revolutions, in Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and other Arab countries. In the face of disaster, there are also the rumblings of organizing among activist networks in Japan against its pro-nuclear power government and TEPCO, one of the world’s largest energy suppliers. In the United States, we have seen the impassioned protests of workers in several states, in response to legislation that, among other things, drastically weakened the collective bargaining rights of union members. We have also tragically witnessed assaults on the freedom of speech and the academic freedom of scholars who challenge the logic and ideology of this legislation through the seizing of emails and other forms of communication that reference not simply the situation in these states, but labor relations more generally. Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s 2010 Presidential address called on American Studies scholars to remind ourselves that we are workers, that the work we do must continuously involve organizing, and to think more expansively about worker solidarity.

In response to these and other recent events, in the United States and throughout the world, the Executive Committee of the American Studies Association has issued the following official statement on Intellectual Freedom in a Time of (Economic) Crisis:

“The American Studies Association condemns all efforts to criminalize freedoms of speech and association. We condemn attempts to intimidate and silence scholars whose work engages them in matters of public concern and policy. The United States pays its scholars in public and private tax-exempt institutions to consider, among other things, the problems and challenges societies face, to draw lessons from the past, to compare across polities, and to make informed recommendations that will spark open debate. At the end of the day all not-for-profit education is underwritten by, and therefore must be consistently made available to, the people. Recent events around the country mock provisions in the modern world’s most durable constitution, and displace the difficult work of thoughtfulness and remedy to surveillance and punishment. We view the attacks as part of the orchestrated assault on all public sector workers. While the character of the attacks on our colleagues is not surprising, given the US’s decades-long embrace of criminalization as an all-purpose response to social, economic, and other problems, it is long since time to say: Enough. We are workers, and we are the public.”

Published on May 24, 2011 by John F Stephens.

American Quarterly

We are pleased to announce that the special issue of American Quarterly, Sound Clash: Listening to American Studies, guest edited by Kara Keeling and Josh Kun, has an on-going supplementary website, where some of the authors have contributed media to
accompany their essays.

We have also activated the E-TOC feature for American Quarterly. Access to the function is available here. ASA members can input their e-mail address and subscribe to updates for as many journals as they wish. You will receive an e-mail whenever an issue of the journal is published on Project MUSE. You may also use that link to manage their subscriptions after signing up.

Published on September 23, 2011 by John F Stephens.

Statement on Standards in Graduate Education

The statement that follows was approved by the American Studies Association National Council on November 3, 2005. This statement builds upon the standards advocated by the American Association of University Professors in their Statement on Graduate Students, but has been modified to address the more specific conditions of graduate study in American Studies and related fields.

Preamble

As the largest professional organization in its discipline and as an organization with broad interdisciplinary reach, the American Studies Association has a unique responsibility to establish the standards of professional conduct and institutional support in graduate programs in American Studies and related fields.as been formulated to address the complex reality of graduate study and to foster sound academic policies in graduate programs in American Studies and related fields.

The following statement sets forth recommended standards that pertain to graduate students in their roles as advanced students, future colleagues, and teachers within the university. Graduate students are not only engaged in an advanced course of study, they are often also in programs of professional academic training and hold teaching and research assistantships. As graduate assistants, they carry out many of the functions of faculty members and receive compensation for these duties. The statement that follows has been formulated to address the complex reality of graduate study and to foster sound academic policies in graduate programs in American Studies and related fields.

The responsibility to secure and respect the conditions conducive to graduate study is shared by all members of the university community. Every department of American Studies and every college or university has a duty to develop policies and procedures that safeguard against the infringement of the rights of graduate students as outlined in this statement. These standards will not only enhance the educational and professional development of graduate students, but will support the freedom of thought and expression so vital to the intellectual life of the university.

Each program in American Studies has a responsibility to make these standards available to continuing and prospective graduate students and to all faculty members either by inclusion in the program description or by public posting in the department.

General Standards:

1. Graduate Students have the right to academic freedom. While graduate students are responsible for learning the content of any course of study for which they are enrolled, they should be free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study and should be encouraged by faculty to exercise their freedom of discussion, inquiry and expression. Graduate students’ freedom of inquiry is necessarily qualified by their still being learners in the profession; nonetheless, their faculty mentors should afford them latitude and respect as they decide how they will engage in research and teaching.

2. Graduate students have the right to be free from illegal or unconstitutional discrimination, or discrimination according to, but not limited to, age, gender, disability, race, religion, political affiliation, national origin, marital status, or sexual orientation, in admissions and throughout their education, employment, and placement. This right extends not only to discrimination in admissions and hiring, but also in the right to study and work in an environment free of intimidation and harassment.

3. Graduate Students are to be considered members of an academic community, and as such, they have the right to collegial and respectful treatment by faculty members and other students alike.

4. Graduate Students are entitled to the protection of their intellectual property rights, including recognition of their participation in supervised research and their research with faculty, consistent with the standards of attribution and acknowledgement relevant to the field of study. This includes the right to co-authorship in publications involving significant contributions of ideas from the student. The student should receive first authorship for publications which are comprised primarily of the creative research and writing of the student when consistent with the conventions of the field.

5. Graduate students have the right to confidentiality in their communications with faculty and administrators of their program. Discussion of the students’ performance among faculty should be of a professional nature and should be limited to the students’ academic performance and fitness as a graduate student and graduate instructor.

6. Graduate students should be free of reprisal for exercising any of these rights.

Standards Pertaining to Program and Institutional Support:

7. Prospective and current graduate students should be fully informed on degree and program requirements. This includes a clear and regularly updated written statement on program requirements, as well as a clear and consistent articulation of the recommended preparations and procedures necessary for fulfilling those requirements. These requirements should be consistently applied, and if degree requirements are changed, students admitted under the old rules should be allowed to continue under those rules. If the program is discontinued, graduate students already admitted in the program should be allowed to complete their degrees. Students should also be told of acceptance and attrition rates in their program, funding possibilities, employment prospects, and the normative and average time of degree completion.

8. Graduate students should be assisted with the progress of their degrees through periodic assessments, appropriate and timely course offerings, faculty advisors in every step of their degree program, and adequate dissertation supervision.

9. Graduate students should be provided with a realistic assessment of funding opportunities by their program and institution upon admission and periodically thereafter as necessary. Programs should have clearly written policies regarding the distribution of financial and resource support, and these policies should be made public or be readily available upon request.

10. Graduate students should be allowed to participate in institutional governance at the program, department, college, graduate school, and university levels, and should be able to voice their opinions in matters of their interest.

11. Programs and departments are encouraged to support the professional development of graduate students through information on professionalization and the provision of conference and research expenses.

12. Graduate students have a right to mentorship and should be offered a fair notice of discontinuation of adviser relationship. If a graduate student’s dissertation or thesis supervisor departs from the institution, whenever possible, the student should be allowed to keep on working with that supervisor. If this is not possible, the program should make every effort to assist the student in finding alternative supervision.

13. Programs are encouraged to provide graduate students, especially those involved in instruction, with offices and work-spaces, computing and printing equipment, as well as access to copiers, subject to appropriate budgetary limits.

14. Graduate students should have access to their files and placement dossiers. If access is denied, graduate students should be able to ask a faculty member of their choice to examine their files and receive a redacted account, at the discretion of said faculty member. Graduate students should have the right to direct the addition or removal of materials from their placement dossiers.

15. Graduate students have the right to refuse duties and tasks irrelevant to their academic or professional program. This includes the right to request more appropriate assignments without jeopardizing financial aid, or teaching and research appointments.

16. American Studies and similar interdisciplinary programs are responsible for preparing their students for the risks and opportunities involved in obtaining interdisciplinary degrees. Such programs should also enhance their students’ placement opportunities by providing information and guidance in the relevant application procedures and professional standards of related disciplines.

Standards Pertaining to Teaching:

17. Teaching assistants, faculty fellows, and research assistants should have the right to organize and bargain collectively. Administrations should honor majority requests by graduate students for union representation anywhere state legislation permits such activity. Graduate students should not suffer retaliation from administrators or faculty because of their activity and position on collective bargaining.

18. Graduate students should be furnished with terms of appointment and with clear guidelines of terms and conditions of their graduate student employment. Graduate students should have the right to grievance procedures in their program and institution that include impartial hearing committees.

19. The time that graduate students spend in teaching, grading, researching, or other graduate employment should be kept to the standard maximum of about twenty hours per week. Programs and institutions should offer compensation so that graduate student employees are not obligated to seek substantial employment elsewhere. Health and dental benefits should be included in any teaching, grading, research, or fellowship package.

20. Graduate Programs have the responsibility to train and properly supervise graduate student instructors in pedagogical methods. Graduate Student Instructors should have access to seminars on pedagogy and university teaching, and have the right to request that a member of the faculty observe, evaluate, and provide guidance on their teaching.

21. As a service to their own graduate students but also their profession, programs should recognize the adverse effects of relying on adjunct faculty. Although adjunct appointments can add significant dimensions to curricula and some individuals prefer adjunct appointments because of other commitments, the practice of hiring numerous adjunct faculty members year after year to teach the core courses of a program of undergraduate study undermines professional and educational standards and academic freedom. It is recommended that departments should establish an appropriate limit on the number of adjunct faculty members in relation to the number of tenured or tenure-track faculty members and of graduate student instructors.ii

Notes
i American Association of University Professors, “Statement on Graduate Students,” Policy Documents and Reports, 9th edition (Washington D.C., 2001) 268-270.

ii Modern Language Association, “MLA Statement on the Use of Part-Time and Full-Time Adjunct Faculty,” The MLA Guide to the Job Search: A Handbook for Departments and for PhDs and PhD Candidates in English and Foreign Languages, English Showalter, et al. (New York: The Modern Language Association, 1996) 138-9.

Published on November 3, 2011 by John F Stephens.

Political Dissent in a Time of Economic Crisis

A Statement by the Council of the American Studies Association
20 October 2011

We are the public. We are workers. We are the 99%. We speak with the people here in Baltimore and around the globe occupying plazas, parks, and squares in opposition to failed austerity programs, to oligarchy, and to the unequal distribution of wealth and power. The loss of jobs, healthcare, and homes, the distressing use of mass incarceration and mass deportations, and the destruction of environments have brought so many households and individuals to crisis. We join with people re-claiming commons rights to public resources. We join in the call against privatization and for a democratic re-awakening.

As educators, we experience the dismantling of public education, rising tuition, unsustainable student debt, and the assault on every dimension of education. As American Studies scholars, our work includes, among other things, addressing the problems and challenges societies face, drawing lessons from the past, comparing across polities, and making informed recommendations that will spark open debate. We draw inspiration from earlier social movements that have challenged the unequal distribution of power, wealth, and authority. Today’s movements continue this necessary work. The uprisings compel us to lift our voices and dedicate our effort to realizing the democratic aspirations for an equitable and habitable world. We are the 99%.

Published on November 4, 2011 by John F Stephens.

Statement on Free Speech and Student Protests

A Statement by the Council of the American Studies Association
9 December 2011

As educators, as scholars, and as citizens we have watched with horror these past weeks as University of California students, peaceably assembled in constitutionally protected protest, have been met with pepper spray and police batons. As educators, we insist that the university must remain a place where ideas are freely expressed and openly exchanged. As scholars of American society and as citizens we insist that police respect the distinction between peaceable assembly or civil disobedience and forms of public endangerment; we join colleagues and compatriots across the country in affirming and upholding the democratic expectation of our police that riot gear, force in any form, and weaponry of any description are instruments of extraordinary last resort. The force deployed by campus and municipal police in so many instances in recent weeks indicates the depth of precisely the rupture in the social contract that the “occupy” protests have been seeking to address since mid-September.

Given the escalation in student protests across the country, the potential for confrontation and incidents of brutalization may likewise be expected to increase in the days ahead. There is therefore a heightened responsibility on the part of university faculties and administrations across the country to use the force of their intellectual authority and the mechanisms of their governing structures to safeguard standards of free speech, assembly, and academic freedom on campus. We have a responsibility to monitor the pace and trajectory of events locally, and to act swiftly in condemning repression and in holding administrations accountable for instances of misjudgment or excess; a responsibility to foster open debate and to be available to counsel students through tense times and difficult moral decisions; a responsibility to safeguard the values of openness, intellectual honesty, and mutual respect upon which education depends.

While the violent clashes in Berkeley, Davis, and elsewhere in recent weeks are apt to attract our greatest attention, this is also a moment for educators everywhere to reflect upon, discuss, debate, and publicize the more general issues of democracy and education that have come to the fore so vividly. Regardless of where one stands on the specific question of the Occupy movement, beyond dispute is the extent to which a decades-long regime of skyrocketing tuition costs, decimated public budgets, institutional austerity measures, and predatory student loan practices has fundamentally altered the educational landscape in the United States, threatening the very idea of public education itself, and rendering the notion of free education—not so distant in a state like California, after all—a thing so strange that it has slipped from public discourse and very nearly from public memory. The time is now for educators of every political stripe, outlook, and opinion to speak up, to engage in and to lead a much-needed national discussion of the future of education in our society.

Published on December 9, 2011 by John F Stephens.

The Importance of Language Study

A Statement by the Council of the American Studies Association
14 December 2011

The Council of the American Studies Association supports the Modern Language Association’s statement about the importance of language study. We agree with our colleagues at the MLA that education institutions should offer students the opportunity to become fluent in a second language. The cognitive and intellectual benefits of second language acquisition are well documented. Language acquisition enhances opportunities for communication and collaboration in an increasingly interconnected world. The United States is itself already a multi-lingual nation. We believe that monolingualism places individuals at a profound disadvantage in their professional and personal lives. As scholars of American Studies, moreover, we have recognized the importance of proficiency in multiple languages to the study of our field and lament the decreasing opportunities for language study that our students are encountering. For these reasons, we join the Modern Language Association in calling for the development of programs that will offer college students the opportunity to achieve fluency in a second language.

ASA Statement on Free Speech and Student Protest (December 2011)

ASA Statement on Political Dissent in a Time of Economic Crisis (October 2011)

ASA Statement on Intellectual Freedom in a Time of Economic Crisis (May 2011)

Published on December 14, 2011 by John F Stephens.

Doctoral Dissertations in American Studies and American Ethnic Studies

Doctoral Dissertation Abstracts (since 1986)

The American Studies Association publishes an online registry of American Studies and American Ethnic Studies doctoral dissertation abstracts. American Studies and American Ethnic Studies graduate programs and their recent Ph.D.s may submit entries. These abstracts are added to the ASA website on a continuing basis. This list is now comprised of abstracts of doctoral dissertations written in the United States since 1986. Click here to access the abstracts, sorted by author’s last name, or click here to submit your abstract using our online form.

Doctoral Recipients’ Employment and Career Survey

Each year, the ASA conducts a survey of recent Ph.D. recipients’ immediate employment and career plans. Doctoral degree recipients are invited to participate in the survey as well as submit abstracts of their dissertations. This survey has been recorded since 1996-1997, and encompasses sources of funding received, time taken to completion, short-term and long-term employment and career plans. For past survey reports, please visit the following web page, or click here to submit your survey response using our online form.

Doctoral Dissertations Bibliography

Doctoral Dissertations in American Studies and American Ethnic Studies is an annual, online bibliography of completed doctoral dissertations in American Studies and American Ethnic Studies. We now invite graduate departments and programs that offer the Ph.D. in American Studies or American Ethnic Studies to submit on or before July 1, 2012 the list of doctoral dissertations completed or expected to be completed under their auspices between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012 to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Published on March 16, 2012 by John F Stephens.

ASA Distinguished Speaker’s Bureau

Submit a speaker request | Community Partnership Grant Program

The American Studies Association is pleased to announce the scholars participating in its Distinguished Speaker’s Bureau. Speaking on a wide range of topics, the Distinguished Speakers’ Bureau brings leading scholars to your institution.

Speakers listed here are willing to give at least one lecture in the academic year on behalf of the ASA. Speakers donate their time to the ASA in order to participate. Host institutions pay a $1,000 speaker’s fee directly to the ASA, in addition to the speaker’s travel and lodging expenses.

All speakers’ fees are deposited into the ASA’s Community Partnership Fund. The Community Partnership Fund supports a competitive grants program open to members of the American Studies Association. The Fund encourages projects developed in collaboration with community-based organizations, school districts, public libraries, local historical societies, community museums, and other non-profit entities.

If you or an institution you know would like to arrange a lecture or need further information, please contact the Distinguished Speakers’ Bureau Coordinator at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). In some cases the scholars may be willing to speak on topics other than those listed here. The earlier arrangements are made the better chance you have of obtaining the speaker of your choice. Please do not contact lecturers directly.

Published on April 12, 2012 by John F Stephens.

American Studies Journals: A Directory of Worldwide Resources

http://www.theasa.net/journals

This website provides scholars with a one-stop shop for the latest research published in American studies journals throughout the world. Organized by the International Initiative of the American Studies Association and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this site is the outcome of a collaboration between numerous journal editors around the world.

Published on April 12, 2012 by John F Stephens.

Dimensions of Empire and Resistance: Past, Present, and Future

Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association
San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 15-18, 2012
Puerto Rico Convention Center (All Events)

This year, the program committee received a record-setting 488 session proposals, as well as 350 individual paper proposals, which made selecting panels both a blessing and a challenge. Submissions simultaneously reflected the existing strengths in American Studies as well as a creative and organic engagement with the conference theme, “Dimensions of Empire and Resistance: Past, Present, and Future.”

Submissions reflected a concern with thinking deeply about the conceptual and methodological demands of a truly transnational American Studies, as evidenced in the following panels: Remapping Empire: Telling, Selling, and Touring Transnational American Souths which examines the Mason-Dixon line, New Orleans, Puerto Rico, South Africa and asks what marks the threshold to “the South” for the United States?; The Sun Never Sets I: Rethinking Geographies of U.S. Imperial Power, a panel rooted in examining U.S. imperial power in South Asia raising questions about the locations and geographies of U.S. imperialisms; Dimensions of Empire and Resistance: Language Ideologies, Spanish in the US, and Latinidad, which seeks to engage in a discussion regarding the current forms of imperial ideologies in an increasingly globalized society; Decolonial Feminist Critique, which asks us to think about de-colonization even beyond the frame and dimensions of Empire to analyze efforts in the Americas as acts of hemispheric collaboration, theorizing, and as important social/political/cultural interventions; Transpacific Exclusions and Imaginations: Cultural Crossings Between Asian and American Empires, which asserts that the foregrounding of “Transpacific studies” poses fundamental challenges to American, Asian and Asian American studies because all of these fields are built to some degree on excluding the importance of transpacific cultural crossings; Mercenaries, Missionaries, and Explorers: 150 Years in Africa, which focuses on the ways in which the United States is implicated in the imperial contest and colonialism in Africa prior to decolonization and the cold war.

Scholars also put forth generative themes regarding the transnational traffics generated by imperialism and anti-imperialism. For one, the choice of Puerto Rico as a site for the conference encouraged scholars to connect with one another and examine the varied and various geographies of imperialism, such as in, Turtle Leads the Way: A Poetics of Contact Literatures in the Early Americas, which examines the sounds and symbology that circulate around the circumference of the early Atlantic and Caribbean world that links Africa and indigenous America in the expanse of Spanish, French, and English colonization; Triangulating Latinidad across the Americas: Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States, which examines racialized struggles for social justice across the Americas; Circuits of Empire: Communication and Circulation in the Early Caribbean, sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society, which examines the islands of the Caribbean as central nodes of power and information in multiple networks of imperial authority, whether exerted by Spain, France, Britain, or the United States; Imperial Designs: US Empire, Technology, and Transcaribbean Space, which explores the extended Caribbean as a key site for the development, deployment, and reformulation of technologies of United States empire.

In keeping with this move to examine the transnational, panelists also examined the local and transnational specificities of Puerto Rican history and culture, such as Caucus: Critical Prison Studies: Prisoners of Empire: Puerto Rican Political Prisoners and Resisting U.S. Colonialism which investigates the prison as a tool of colonial domination; Between Island and Diaspora: Locating, Creating and Performing Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba, which brings together bomba practitioners, cultural workers, and scholars to discuss the global dimensions of the form; Vieques Struggle: Political, Social and Historical Significance, which discusses the political, social and historical significance of Vieques’ anti-military struggle.

Along with the theme of Empire, panels made clear how citizenship must be understood in relation to histories of colonialism and resistance, including: Against Wardship: The Society of American Indians and the Making of U.S. Citizenship, 1911-1923, which demonstrates how the U.S. framework of citizenship served as model in Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico; Birthright Citizenship and Its Discontents: Historical Contexts, Transnational Circuits, which traces the historical underpinnings of citizenship and exclusion and demonstrates their transnational contemporary circulation; Citizenship and Belonging: Disability, Race, and Sexuality in America, which draws on material and visual culture, literature, legal studies, and institutional histories to examine how subjects have revised citizenship and boundaries of belonging; A Conversation on the Past, Present, and Future of U.S. (Un)Equal Rights, which demonstrates how the U.S. imperial project has granted more rights to some, while disenfranchising others.

Submissions also interrogated slavery and emancipation in ways that connected past, present, and future; Slavery: Past Lives and Afterlives of Slavery whose panelists collectively trace a genealogy of racial capitalism; The Nineteenth Century Prison, which demonstrates that the histories of U.S. empire and U.S. prisons are intimately entwined; Prisons, Policing, and U.S. Empire, Part II: Cold War Crucible that traces the relationship of Cold War counterinsurgency, colonialism, and anticommunism to the militarization of policing and explosion of hyperincarceration in our day.

Since the publication of Donald Pease and Amy Kaplan’s Cultures of United States Imperialism in 1994, empire has come to hold a central place in American Studies scholarship. Many submissions reflected a meaningful engagement with this call in ways that reflected a new era, an “Empire 2.0” version of the scholarship, such as the Ethnic Studies Committee sponsored panel The Question of Palestine in the Context of Contemporary and Historical Struggles against Racism and Settler Colonialism, which discusses Palestine from the perspective of different contexts of settler colonialism, racism and apartheid; The Guantánamo Public Memory Project which explores the challenges of building a public memory of the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay; Turning the Tide of Empire: Analyzing, Challenging and Eradicating Settler Colonialism in Hawai‘I, in dialogue with the special issue of the American Quarterly Alternative Contact: Indigeneity, Globalism, and American Studies examines the framing of settler colonialism as a means to think through the particularly complex power relations in Hawai‘i.

Other panels chose to explore imperialism through an examination of its footprints in capitalism, globalization and neoliberalism including the roundtable, The Occupy Movement and its Discontents at One Year: History, Neoliberal Resistance, and Criticism; Occupy Academe, Resist Colonization: Neo-liberal Crisis and Transnational Student Protest, which discusses the campus branch of the Occupy movement and current student protest movements in Puerto Rico.

The submissions reflected many of the strengths of the ASA, as basic as getting people from different fields in the same tent to have meaningful conversations are reflected in panels such as Situating Sustainability in an Unequal World: Tales from California, Texas, Puerto Rico, UAE and India which brings together scholars from political ecology, geography, anthropology and American and Ethnic Studies to consider key questions in the study of global sustainability; The Body Politic: Comparative Area Studies, Queer Theory and Transnational American Studies brings together humanists and social scientists working across the U.S., Africa, South Asia and the Middle East.

This is but a small sampling of the diverse proposals we received but we hope it conveys to you the richness of the program of the 2012 conference.

In addition, the Site Resources Committee, co-chaired by Wilson Valentin-Escobar and Jade Power-Sotomayor, has proposed a rich combination of tours and events that promise to be of great interest to a wide variety of conference participants. Events in the works include an environmental justice boat tour of Cano de Martin Pena, a one day tour of a plantation on the south side of the island, and a historic walking tour of Old San Juan. In addition, there will be usual tours available to hotel guests, including a visit to the El Yunque rainforest and the Cuevas del Rio de Camuy (for those interested in the archaeology of Indigenous Taíno culture). There are some planned film showings regarding civil rights and police brutality in Puerto Rico, the university student strikes, and Puerto Rican political prisoners, as well as screenings of the Queer Film Festival. In the arts, the committee is working on presenting an installation by Diasporican artist, Adal Maldonado, and a performance and workshop on Afro-Puerto Rican bomba and percussion. A reception at the University of Puerto Rico Museum is also being organized in collaboration with colleagues at UPR. We will also have a film festival within the conference addressing a range of topics including police abuse, the UPR student strike and colonialism in the Philippines. Highlights of the film festival include Bernardo Ruiz’s documentary of baseball legend, Roberto Clemente, which has never been screened in Puerto Rico, and writer-director John Sayles’ Amigo, with special appearances by both Ruiz and Sayles. Lastly, the performance artist and filmmaker, Nao Bustamante, will serve as the Artist-in-Residence for the conference where she will present her project, “Personal Protection,” project which investigates the relationship between women and war. Our goal is that these local activities will serve as an opportunity to connect conference participants with the local community and to engage with them in their history, arts, politics, environmental concerns, and cultural productions.

We would also very much like to thank members of the program planning committee whose own areas of expertise reflect the diversity and strengths of American Studies. Thank you, Ernesto Chávez, Mona Domosh, Matt Guterl, Pablo Mitchell, Tavia Nyong’o, Merida M. Rúa, Sandhya Shukla, Stephanie Smallwood, and Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu. A special thank you to Matt Jacobson who brought together such an intellectually generous and genial group and whose own intellectual leadership and affability made dozens of hours of reading proposals and meetings enjoyable. Thanks to John Stephens, who fielded a thousand questions that came down the pike with terrific speed and grace and whose long institutional memory served us well. Lastly, thanks to Gabriel Peoples whose spirit and resourcefulness made him a pleasure with which to work.

Thank you,
Frances R. Aparicio, Northwestern University
Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Northeastern University
Natalia Molina, University of California, San Diego

Published on May 18, 2012 by John F Stephens.

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