The New England American Studies Association is currently seeking submissions for our Summer 2024 conference “Revisiting Region: Locating the “Where” in American Studies” to be held at Harvard University, June 21-22, 2024.

In a moment of political polarization, environmental crisis, and educational censorship, the serious study of region as a cultural, social, and academic tool is of pivotal importance for building and disrupting ideas of identity and collectivity. We seek submissions that explore the role of region(s) within the national project, within our field of study, and within the popular imagination. Put simply, we invite you to join us as we revisit region.

American Studies as a field grapples with regional and hemispheric differences and continuities that shape and disrupt ideas of “the nation.” Regions are imagined and reimagined in ways that are simultaneously expansive, limiting, stereotypical, innovative, local, national, and global. In our efforts to revisit region, we ask: What role does region play in American studies now? Is there such a thing as non-regional American Studies? What are the important conversations in studies of New England, the mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, the South, the West, hemispheric American settings such as the islands of Hawaii or the Caribbean, and beyond? How has the idea of region been used politically, culturally, and academically, and to what ends? As region was, and continues to be, an important foundation for how American Studies is taught, studied, and even experienced, this conference welcomes proposals that focus on American Studies topics from all avenues of regional studies, including but not limited to:

• Regional Imaginaries
• Region-less and Outsider-ness in America
• Current American Regionalism as Imperial and Colonial Inventions
• Indigenous Geographies – Political, Affective, and/or Material 
• Region(s) in Conflict 
• The United States and Global Regions
• Diaspora, Movement, and Migration Across Borders
• Racialized, Gendered, and Classed Ideas of Region  
• Rethinking New England 
• The South in the North
• Midwestern Cosmopolitanism
• Ocean Studies of the Atlantic and the Pacific
• Archipelagic Americanism/Americans 
• Regionalist Art, Literature, Music, etc.
• Regional Studies, American Studies, and Universities 
• Travel and Tourism Within and Across Regions
• Political Polarization Across Regional Lines 

We welcome papers on theoretical interventions, creative approaches, personal testimonies, and methodological reflections, as well as traditional papers of 15-20 minutes. We encourage pedagogical explorations of region. We will consider organized panels and individual papers.

Please email submissions (abstracts of approx. 250 words) and brief participant bios to NEASAcouncil@gmail.com by December 15, 2023. Notifications will be delivered by February 15th, 2024. For more, please visit https://newenglandasa.org.