Caucus & Committee Events

ASA committees, appointed by the Executive Committee, play a central role in governance by implementing ASA priorities, developing programs, sponsoring awards, and advancing interdisciplinary scholarship and community engagement. At the annual meeting, committees hold open business meetings where members can learn about ongoing work, talk with leadership, and explore participation. Committees also sponsor sessions, listed separately in the program.

ASA caucuses are member-initiated groups that foster scholarly and community exchange. While not part of formal governance, they convene open business meetings and sponsor sessions that provide lively spaces for advocacy, collaboration, and new ideas. Some also sponsor their own prizes. 

Many committees and caucuses are actively seeking new members and leaders. Attend business meetings and sponsored sessions to learn more!

Committee-Sponsored

Departments, Programs, and Centers Committee

• American Studies Under Attack Nationally and Locally (Presidential Session)
  • Thurs, 1:45-3:15 pm in Clark 5
• Drop-in Sessions 
  • Fri, 12:00-1:30 pm in Wabash 2
  • Sat, 1:45-3:15 pm in Wabash 2
• Improvising American Studies Courses – A Workshop on Pedagogy, Programming, and Possibilities
  • Sat, 10:15-11:45 am in Salon 7
• Improvising to Draw Them In: Ideas for Promoting American Studies Courses, Offerings, and Programs
  • Sat, 3:30-5:00 pm in Chicago

Graduate Education Committee

• Works in progress: Job and Grant Application Materials Workshop
  • Fri, 8:30-10:00 am in Wabash 1
• Graduate Student Drop-in with coffee and Bagels: What Do You Need from the ASA?
  • Fri, 10:15-11:45 am in Exhibit Hall, Booth 14

International Committee

• Aerial Archives Studies: Flights of Imagination and Improvisation
  • Thurs, 10:15-11:45 am in Salon 12
• Fighting for Our Freedoms Together: The Internationalism of Paul Robeson
  • Thurs, 3:30-5:00 pm in Salon 4
• Award Luncheon, Sponsored by the Renee B. Fisher Foundation and the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney
  • Fri, 12:00-1:30 pm in Chicago
• Business Meeting
  • Fri, 3:30-5:00 pm in Wabash 1
• International Scholars’ Happy Hour, Co-Sponsored by the ASA-JAAS Committee and the Journal of Transnational American Studies
  • Sat, 5:30 – 7:00 pm in Salon 7-12 Foyer

ASA-JAAS (Japanese Association for American Studies) Committee

• Geographies of Resistance
• Fri, 1:45-3:15 pm in Indiana
• Business Meeting
  • Sat, 12:00-1:30 pm in Wabash 2
• International Scholars’ Happy Hour, Co-Sponsored by the International Committee and the Journal for Transnational American Studies
  • Sat, 5:30 – 7:00 pm in Salon 7-12 Foyer

Race, Indigeneity, and Scholar Support Committee

• Mentorship as Improvisation: On Teaching and Mentoring During Uncertain Times
  • Thurs, 10:15-11:45 am in Salon 5
• Pedagogy of Improvisation: Teaching Race and Gender During Fascism
  • Thurs, 12:00-1:30 pm in Salon 4
• Navigating Tenure and Promotion as BIPOC Scholars
  • Thurs, 1:45-3:15 pm in Clark 7
• Coffee & Donuts Break, co-sponsored by the Students’ Committee
  • Fri, 2:00-3:00 pm in Exhibit Hall Rear

Regional Chapters 

• Mix and Mingle
  • Saturday 12:00 – 1:30 pm in Exhibit Hall Rear

Students’ Committee

• Coffee & Donuts Break, co-sponsored by the RISS Committee
  • Fri, 2:00-3:00 pm in Exhibit Hall Rear

Caucus-Sponsored

Academic and Community Activism

• Making Research Work for Abolitionist Movements
  • Thurs, 12:00-1:30 pm in Salon 7
• Against Zionist and White Nationalist Attacks on the Academy: A Roundtable on the Proposed ASA Resolution
  • Thurs, 3:30-5:00 pm in Salon 7
• Business Meeting
  • Fri, 10:15-11:45 am in Wabash 1
• Zionism Is Racism: Introducing the Critical Zionism Studies Syllabus
  • Sat, 1:45-3:15 pm in Salon 12
• Palestine is Everywhere: A Night of Reflection and Connection
  • Sat, 6:00-7:30 pm; Co-sponsored with other orgs. Off-Site: 1240 W. Randolph St., Chicago IL 60607

Children and Youth Studies 

• Interrupting Childhood Time: Improvisation, Desire, and Alternative Youth Temporalities
  • Thurs, 1:45-3:15 pm in Salon 12
• Childhood in the Meantime: Children’s Racialized, Sexual, and Classed Improvisations
  • Sat, 1:45-3:15 pm in Burnham 1
• Business Meeting
  • Sat, 3:30-5:00 pm in Wabash 1

Digital Humanities

• To Engage, Mobilize, or Refuse – Disassembling Improvisation
  • Fri, 10:15-11:45 am in Salon 12
• Business Meeting
  • Fri, 12:00-1:30 pm in Wabash 1
• Digital Shorts
  • Fri, 1:45-3:15 pm in Salon 12
• Professionalization Panel: Surviving Change – Notes on Resistance and Compromise
  • Fri, 3:30-5:00 pm in Burnham 1

Critical Disability Studies

• Cripistemologies of AI in and beyond Academia
  • Thurs, 1:45-3:15 pm in Salon 2
• Cripping Immigration in the Age of ICE
  • Fri, 12:00-1:30 pm in Crystal
• Revisiting White Disability Studies: Making Modest Proposals Twenty Years On
  • Fri, 1:45-3:15 pm in Crystal
• Business Meeting
  • Fri, 3:30-5:00 pm in Price

Educators’ Alliance

• Improv and Your Classroom: A Pedagogy Workshop (Session 1)
  • Fri, 10:15-11:45 am in Wilson
• Punk Pedagogies and its Improvisations
  • Fri, 1:45-3:15 pm in Salon 7
• Improv and Your Classroom: A Pedagogy Workshop (Session 2)
  • Sat, 12:00-1:30 pm in Salon 4
• Business Meeting
  • Sat, 1:45-3:15 pm in Wabash 1

Environmental Justice

• Mentoring Session
  • Sat, 8:30-10:00 am in Salon 4
• Business Meeting
  • Sat, 10:15-11:45 am in Wabash 1
• Author Meets Readers – Daniel Lanza Rivers’ California Futures: Haunted Ecologies, Decolonial Relations
  • Sat, 12:00-1:30 pm in Salon 7
• Black Eco-Improv: Ecological Improvisation and Black Environmental Repair
  • Sat, 3:30-5:00 pm in Salon 5

Critical Ethnic Studies 

• Genealogy of the “Gook”: Anti–Asian Racism and Solidarity across U.S. Wars in Asia
  • Fri, 12:00-1:30 pm in Salon 5
• Business Meeting
  • Sat, 10:15-11:45 am in Wabash 2

Ethnography

• Improvised Intimacies: Care, Constraint, and Relational Life Across Bodies and Platforms
  • Thurs, 10:15-11:45 am in Salon 4
• Business Meeting
  • Thurs, 1:45-3:15 pm in Wabash 1
• AfroChicanx Imaginaries: Memories, Narratives and Oppositional Consciousness of the Black Diaspora
  • Fri, 1:45-3:15 pm in Dearborn 2
• Get Organized: Building Academic Worker Power on and across Campuses (Presidential Session)
  • Sat, 12:00-1:30 pm in Dearborn 2

Critical Food Studies

• Food, Community, and Imagining Worlds Otherwise
  • Sat, 10:15-11:45 am in Salon 4
• Business Meeting
  • Sat, 12:00-1:30 pm in Wabash 1
• Building Houses Out Of Chicken Legs At Twenty: Black Women, Food, And Power
  • Sat, 1:45-3:15 pm in Salon 7

Material Culture

•  “Yes And” approaches to Material Culture Pedagogy: Digital Technologies, Practice-based Teaching, Object Study
  • Thurs, 10:15-11:45 am in Crystal
• Joint Business Meeting with the Visual Culture Caucus
  • Fri, 1:45-3:15 pm in Wabash 1
• Making under Constraint: Craft, Embodied Knowledge, and Improvisational Methods
  • Fri, 3:30-5:00 pm in Salon 5
• Improvised Archives: Ephemeral, Composite, Compacted and Obfuscated Registers of Cultural Meaning
  • Sat, 12:00-1:30 pm in Kimball

Queer/Trans 

• Queer/Trans Caucus (GL/Q) Business Meeting
  • Sat, 3:30-5:00 pm in Wabash 2

Critical Prison Studies

• ICE Out! A Roundtable on Lessons from Mobilizations in the Midwest (Presidential Session)
  • Fri, 10:15-11:45 am in Crystal
• Business Meeting
  • Sat, 8:30-10:00 am in Wabash 1
• What Does Sanctuary Mean on Campuses in Trump 2.o?
  • Sat, 1:45-3:15 pm in Dearborn 2

Sports Studies

• The Sound of Victory: Music, Sport and Society
  • Thurs, 12:00-1:30 pm in Crystal
• The Sports Studies Monograph: Improvising a New Publishing Paradigm
  • Thurs, 3:30-5:00 pm in Salon 5
• Business Meeting
  • Fri, 3:30-5:00 pm in Wabash 2
• Racialized Bodies, Athletic Experiences and Creative Exchange: Reflections from an Interdisciplinary Symposium about Sport
  • Sat, 3:30-5:00 pm in Salon 7

Visual Culture

• Joint Business Meeting with the Material Culture Caucus
  • Fri, 1:45-3:15 pm in Wabash 1