American Studies Association (ASA) Annual Meeting
The Roof is on Fire
November 3-6, 2022
Hilton New Orleans Riverside
This year’s theme is an homage to the cultures and knowledges too often dismissed or taken, those pieces that prove that our minds and hearts are optimized by laboring in tandem. It is a reminder, if needed, that we come from somewhere, from some people, and it/they are always reinventing, subtly and not so subtly, the terms of our engagements and relation. A reminder that we are keepers of nothing special, even if specialized, for the music is instructive too. “The roof is on fire” invites strategies that draw our attention to and command a multisensory, multiregister engagement with the world as it is and as we want it to be. As a scene of devastation and one of shared, euphoric incantation, the scorched and scorching room in which we will gather holds many possibilities. May all who enter be prepared to let the muthafucka burn.
Like the city of New Orleans in which it will be staged, the 2022 American Studies Association (ASA) conference is an opening. For what and to where is as available as the next sound that grazes the surface of your ear or breeze that crosses your face. What we hope for is time—time to think deeply, struggle, laugh, plot, challenge and be challenged—and presence, together in a place that has long known both things even if fleeting or precarious. What we know is that both are in short supply, the violences are not yet done and are yet undone, and our next steps are tentative for reasons revealed by the many fires. We will come together in this cacophonous conjuncture to pull it apart, piece by piece, in order to continue creation of something else altogether.
"Black Feminist Pedagogy in Apocalypse" (Paper Session: Talk Format)
Chair: Bettina A Judd, University of Washington
"Lesbian Studies and Its Afterparties" (Experimental Session)
Panelist: Kemi Adeyemi, University of Washington
"Cookout: Blackness with No Roof" (Non-Paper Session: Dialogue Format)
Panelist: Bettina A Judd, University of Washington
"The Legacy of Elizabeth Betita Martinez: A Tribute" (Non-Paper Session: Dialogue Format)
Panelist: Michelle Habell-Pallan, University of Washington
"Sound Pedagogies: (New) Ways of Listening & Teaching in Sound Studies" (Experimental Session)
Chair: Michelle Habell-Pallan, University of Washington-Seattle
Panelists: Monica De La Torre, Arizona State University, GWSS Alum '16
Martha Gonzalez, Scripps College, GWSS Alum '13
Sonnet Retman, University of Washington, GWSS Adjunct