Theme & Program Committee

2025 Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association
November 20-23, 2025 in San Juan, Puerto Rico

Late-stage American Empire?

Submissions Open 1 January 2025; link forthcoming
Submissions Due 1 February 2025

Since the end of the Cold War, we have heard a constant refrain about the end of the American Century, the end of history, and more recently, the end of the U.S. empire. At the same time, the institutions in which we work are changing, as many eliminate the tenure-track, downsize liberal arts programs, target our knowledge production, attack our dissent, and outsource shared governance to paid consultants. “America,” as an object, has been thoroughly stripped of its exceptionalism and is bankrolling a genocide, while the forces of fascism and authoritarianism have risen across the political spectrum. Moreover, climate change may have passed a tipping point, accelerating environmental catastrophe. What kind of America is invoked in American Studies and where/how is America studied? Are we living through an historical conjuncture characterized by late-stage American empire?

We invite discussion at our 2025 conference of what American Studies is, and can be, in this moment of ongoing catastrophe and accelerating devolution. Are we experiencing the late-stage of empire and how might this era inform American Studies, broadly conceived? What sorts of violent eruptions characterize this stage of imperial transformation and through what methods, questions, theories (and from where) can we locate resources for meaning, imagine new forms of sociality, and articulate new modes of knowledge production? What possible futures do our methods enable or foreclose at the present conjuncture? How might Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, Ethnic Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Queer and Trans Studies, and Puerto Rican Studies offer critical resources for understanding the present conjuncture?

Rather than lamenting an American Studies or empire in perpetual crisis, we intend for this call to serve as an invitation to imagine an American Studies otherwise, from its peripheries, from the standpoint of elsewhere. Contributors might view the world-changing moment we’re thinking and living through as a violent, terminal phase. They may also view it as creative ground for new intellectual and political possibilities. We call on our members, and our chapters, committees and caucuses, to critically engage with ways that our current geopolitical conjuncture, the late stage of the American empire (as well as its powerful durability), requires critical reflection on our methods, our theories, and the gravitational center of our disciplines.

We will engage these questions and others in a context of imperial violence, colonial relations, climate catastrophe, as well as anti-racist, anti-colonial, and Indigenous resistance. Puerto Rico, our conference host, encounters daily the consequences and limits of the American empire, as well as the violent displacements caused by climate/military/cultural imperialism. Puerto Rico is also a place of insurgent knowledge formation and creative worldmaking where Indigenous, Black, and Latinx anticolonial analysis, culture, and praxis offer resources for imagining post- or counter-American American Studies. Puerto Rico forces us to confront the intimacies of empire and settler colonialism, and requires us to think with questions of decolonization, from Puerto Rico to Palestine, to Hawai‘i, to Haiti, to Congo, to Sudan.

The Program Committee invites proposals in three broad categories: a) sessions with papers, b) sessions without papers, and c) off-site sessions.

Submissions with Papers
- Paper Panel: Presenters write papers, and distribute them to the chair, commentator, and other panelists by the deadline. In the session they may "talk" their paper from notes, speaking directly to the audience rather than reading line-by-line, or read their paper. Powerpoints and other A/V may be used, but must be requested during submission.
- Individual Paper Submission: Presenters submit their own individual papers, and accepted papers are then compiled into sessions built by the Program Committee. While the Committee will consider individual papers as space allows, we anticipate that we only be able to accept a very limited number of individual papers in 2025. Prospective participants are strongly encouraged to join existing panels-in-formation or to post their individual paper ideas to develop panels in conjunction with other individual members.
Submissions without Papers
- Roundtable (Dialogue Format): Presenters engage in dialogue with each other and the audience. No papers are read or presented. Possible formats could include:
  - roundtables of scholars;
  - a workshop;
  - author-meets-reader sessions on new or recent books;
  - forums with scholars, community activists, mass or alternative media-makers and public officials, performing and/or visual artists, curators, and/or educators
  - Linkages with communities outside the hotel (e.g. community centers, performing arts centers, museums, secondary schools, prisons, libraries, and other public sites) are encouraged, as are sessions held at sites outside the convention center.
- Performative Format: Presenters perform their work. This could range from 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. [
- Skill- and Resource-Sharing Sessions: Organized by a collective approach to building scholarly research capacity (particularly around interdisciplinary, counter-disciplinary, and transdisciplinary work), these sessions may be organized by theme, methodological approach, theoretical tradition, archival conceptualization, or any other rubric that proposers wish to engage in concert with session participants.
- Professional Development Panel: These panels are considered distinct from scholarly sessions. Caucuses and committees are particularly encouraged to sponsor these sessions (in addition to one professional development panel, a caucus or standing committee may officially sponsor two scholarly sessions). These sponsored sessions are often a good way for members to become involved in the association, as caucuses and committees in particular may publish an open call for proposals before deciding on sponsored sessions. Participation in a professional development session is distinct from scholarly sessions and do not count toward a member’s scholarly session(s).
Off-site Sessions
- These sessions take place beyond the space of the conference hotel and also require an abstract. Off-site sessions might take place at local bookstores, bars, or community institutions. Sessions are scheduled in Montreal during the in-person conference, but they may be proposed for times outside of the usual "grid" of 8:00am to 6:00pm. Organizers are responsible for making all arrangements with offsite locations, including any setup and facilities. Please be advised that offsite venues may also require additional fees or liability insurance.

2025 Program Committee

Conference Chair

Alex Lubin, President-elect, American Studies Association
Pennsylvania State University

Conference Co-Chairs

Moustafa Bayoumi, Brooklyn College
Marisol LeBrón, UC Santa Cruz
Jasbir Puar, University of British Columbia

Conference Program Committee