The Southeastern American Studies Association (SASA), the ASA’s largest regional chapter, presents new developments and findings in American studies scholarship, identifies and defines areas of debate about the nature of American culture and its study, and conducts cultural and historical programs on the Southeast and its communities. We work with broad, inclusive conference themes that encompass such topics as art and architecture, black literature and music, American studies as cultural critique, the cultural uses of photography, Native American studies, popular culture, Southern literature, gender studies and much more.

We hope you’ll like us at our Facebook page and that you'll visit our recently refurbished website. This site has information about past conferences, our Critoph Prize (for best paper by a graduate student at each SASA conference), the Barbara Stevens Heusel & Dennis Moore Travel Grants for graduate students, as well as a list of officers and board members.

Timely Reflections 2025 SASA in New Orleans 

March 6-8, 2025, International House Hotel

2025 marks the first quarter century of what we once called the “new millennium.” As we invite you to reflect on such arbitrary markers of time as numbered calendar years, we reflect on questions of periodization and the identification of significant historical moments, considering the insights of Michel-Rolph Trouillot's Silencing the Past in honor of its 30th anniversary.  2025, like any year, is a year of many more anniversaries.  2025 is the 110th anniversary of the US invasion and occupation of Haiti and the 240th anniversary of the Treaty of Hopewell between the United States and the Cherokee.  It has been 100 years since the time period known as the “roaring ‘20s” or the Jazz Age. 2025 is the 100th anniversary of Louis Armstrong’s first recordings with the Hot Five, The Scopes “Monkey” Trial, the formation of the US’s first professional basketball league, Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush,  the publication Alain Locke’s Enter the New Negro and The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.  It is the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war, one of the 20th century’s most important points of historical demarcation. If we roll the calendar back to 1975, we will note that 2025 is the 50th anniversary of the US withdrawal from Vietnam, a significant point of reckoning in the history of the US empire, as well as the beginning of the long economic downturn that is often seen as the beginning point of neoliberalism. It is also the 50th anniversary of the official end of the U.S. “termination” policy with the passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act.  It is, finally, the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, an event that still looms large in any consideration of life and culture in New Orleans. 

As we consider the relevance of any year ending in “5” we think again of what those years signify differently depending on which history (political history, sports history, environmental history, music history, literary history, cinema history, labor history) and whose history we are considering, and which of these appear most often in public memorials and commemorations. For our conference to be held in New Orleans in from March 6-8, 2025, we invite papers, panels and presentations reflecting on any of these anniversaries and related themes or concepts including  

Questions of Periodization, Time and Memory: Historical Fiction; Public commemoration, memorials, and monuments; Collective memory and mourning; Historical Revivals

Cultural anniversaries: Such as Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush; Jaws (50th anniversary); Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five;  Kid A by Radiohead (the 25th anniversary); Tupac Shakur’s Me Against the World (30th anniversary); The Great Gatsby; professional basketball; Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past; suggest your own important cultural landmark or event - you get the idea.

Environmental Events: The continuing impact and significance of Hurricane Katrina, The Deepwater Horizon Spill (10th anniversary), the release of the EPA’s National Air Toxin Assessment on Cancer Alley (10th anniversary)

Reactionary Moments and movements: The Scopes “Monkey” Trial; the Religious Right; 100 years of Eugenics; the 1920s Ku Klux Klan
War, Empire and Afterlives:  Historical Memory of WWII; The US in the atomic age; US Withdrawal from Vietnam and American Empire; Vietnamese Immigration and/or Vietnamese-American culture; The US Invasion of Haiti; Haitian-American Communities in the US; Termination policy and the Indian Self-determination and Education Assistance Act, Hopewell and the legacy of the US’s broken treaties with indigenous peoples.

Century and ½ century markers: The Harlem Renaissance; Roaring twenties;  The Jazz Age; the “lost” generation; The Great Migration; Fifty Years of Neoliberalism; the end of Termination Policy and the passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act.

Guidelines for submissions:

Please use the online form below to submit your proposals by August 16, 2024. 

For individual papers, you will be prompted to submit an abstract for your proposed paper (500 words) and a brief bio (max 300 words).

For complete panel or roundtable proposals, you will be prompted to submit a title and description of the proposed panel or roundtable (300 words); a brief abstract for each presentation within the session (300 words per abstract); and a brief bio for each presenter (250 words per bio).

The full link to the submission form is:  https://form.jotform.com/240605720916150 

In the interest of involving as many people in our conference as possible, each conference attendee may be listed in the conference program as a participant in a maximum of two sessions. While we welcome a range of formats, we ask that panels be designed so that they fit within a 75-minute time frame with at least 15 minutes dedicated to discussion. As always, we especially encourage graduate students to attend our conference, to present research, and to enjoy being part of our scholarly community. A limited number of Heusel/Moore travel grants for graduate students will be made available to offset some of the cost of attending the conference. The Critoph Prize recognizes the best graduate student paper presented at each SASA conference. It includes a certificate and a check for $250, as well as recognition at the next biennial gathering. The deadline for graduate students to submit the papers they are presenting at the 2025 conference—as a Microsoft Word or PDF attachment to SASAConference2025@Gmail.com—is noon on March 6, 2025. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at SASAConference2025@Gmail.com.

• The Critoph Graduate Student Paper Prize

  The Critoph Prize recognizes the best graduate student paper presented at each SASA conference. It includes a certificate and a check for $250, as well as recognition at the next biennial gathering. The deadline for graduate students to submit the papers they are presenting at the 2023 conference—as a Microsoft Word or PDF attachment to critoph@southeasternasa.org—is noon on March 6, 2025. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at SASAConference2025@Gmail.com

• Barbara Stevens Heusel/ Dennis Moore Travel Grants

  As always, we especially encourage graduate students to attend our conference, present research, and enjoy being part of our scholarly community. A limited number of Barbara Stevens Heusel/Dennis Moore Travel Grants for graduate students will be made available to offset some of the cost of attending the conference. Follow this link to read instructions on how to apply.