“Improvisation,” the 2026 ASA conference at Chicago’s historic Palmer House Hotel, promises to be a rich and engaging experience.
2026 Conference Theme
“I am interested in shock, and surprise, and improvisation, as methods by which to understand political and social life.” – Billy-Ray Belcourt
Improvisation is not an accident of collapse.
It is a method of creating under constraint.
The riff. The break. The pivot. The “yes and.”
Improvisation is more than an act of survival.
It is mutual aid conjured in dissent.
Glitter thrown on ICE agents.
Frankie Knuckles spinning vinyl at The Warehouse.
It is sweat-drenched bodies. Intricate footwork.
La Raza. Ebony. Jet. Underground zines. Mixtapes igniting new freedom dreams.
Improvisation lives in the ruins of what has been broken and still dares to imagine what might be built next. In its most radical form, it is essential to reparative justice and worldbuilding. Both instant and enduring: improvisation is a fleeting gesture that can open the door to permanent transformations. Those who improvise know that violence is ongoing, that collapse is real. Yet they dare to believe that creativity, play, and collaboration are lifelines.
A change is gonna come. But what do we do in the meantime? This conference implores us to dwell in the meantime.
2026 marks 250 years since the founding of the United States–a nation built upon the entangled systems of settler colonialism and chattel slavery. This turbulent anniversary calls for new provocations: What is the work of American Studies in our current meantime? If we take improvisation seriously—as method, politics, and horizon—what new forms of freedom must be improvised now?
Higher education is under attack. Departments dismantled. Funding slashed. Tenure eroded. Students and contingent faculty persecuted, fired, deported, or disappeared. Academic freedom, as we once understood it, is no longer. We ask: What is a “comfort zone” in a time of global peril? Are our scholarly tools still useful, or must we do wholly different work? What unlikely alliances might be required to survive this crisis? These questions demand an honest reckoning as we imagine a future—an “other side.” We must get messy. It is in the messiness of collaboration, in the décalage of translation, that imperfect possibilities arise.
Chicago, our gathering place, is improvisation in action. A city built on the ancestral homelands of the Neshnabék: the Potawatomi, Odawa, and Ojibwe Nations; the Illinois Confederation: the Peoria and Kaskaskia Nations; and the Myaamia, Wea, Ho-Chunk, Sauk, and Meskwaki Nations, shaped by centuries of dispossession and violated treaties. A palimpsest continually remapped by waves of Black, Latino/a/x, and Asian migration. It is a global city: Bridgeview. Bronzeville. Humboldt Park. Pilsen. Chinatown. Albany Park. A cultural hub whose poetics hum in Gwendolyn Brooks’ “Boy Breaking Glass.” The pensive lenses of Carlos Javier Ortiz and Diana Solís. The whimsy of a Shirien Damra illustration. The genius of immigrant artist-educators who birthed Chicago-style improv comedy. The experimental practices of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. From jazz to house, drill to reggaeton. From Fred Hampton and the Young Lords through the Rainbow Coalition to the Arab American Action Network. Chicago is a living repertoire of improvisatory practices that link art, activism, and knowledge production. A city scarred by segregation and violence, yet alive with queer and trans brilliance and disability justice work. Wreckage and glitter, wound and possibility. The city deeply informs—and maybe even changes—how we gather and what we can learn from one another and from our local communities.
This call for proposals is a blue note; riff on it freely. We want to reimagine what an academic conference can be: immersive, collaborative, and deeply engaged with the community. We invite scholars, artists, activists, archivists, and community builders to dream big with us. While we welcome paper presentations and roundtables, we want to experiment with alternative session formats: performance art, workshops, laboratories, immersive screenings, tours, and more. We especially welcome proposals that center the Midwest in conversations about the global South or American Studies from the periphery. We also seek professional development and community organizing panels that use improvisation as an approach.
Plain Language Abstract
The 2026 ASA Annual Meeting focuses on improvisation as a method of creating, thinking, and organizing under constraint. We understand improvisation as a generative collective practice that can be used in moments of instability, crisis, or institutional failure. We invite proposals that examine improvisation in scholarship, art, activism, teaching, and community work, especially in relation to justice, repair, and world-building. The year 2026 marks 250 years since the founding of the United States. Proposals may engage with this fraught anniversary as it occurs amid conditions including ongoing state violence, attacks on higher education, and labor precarity. These conditions also raise questions about the future of American Studies and the academy as a whole. Chicago is central to the conference. We welcome proposals that engage the city’s histories and futures as well as proposals that situate the Midwest in global or transnational contexts. Traditional formats (e.g. paper panels and roundtables) are welcome; however, we especially encourage alternative and experimental formats, including workshops, performances, community-engaged sessions, laboratories, immersive screenings, tours, and professional development or grassroots organizing trainings.
2026 Program Committee
Chair
Tanisha C. Ford, CUNY Graduate Center
Co-Chairs
Marlon Bailey, Washington University in St. Louis
Terrion Williamson, University of Illinois-Chicago
Committee Members
Tiffany Barber, University of California Los Angeles
Adrienne Brown, University of Chicago
Rikki Byrd, University of Texas-Austin
Sonya Donaldson, Colby College
Charles Hughes, Rhodes College
Kasey Keeler, University of Wisconsin-Madison
S. Heijin Lee, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Matthew Morrison, Stanford University
Akemi Nishida, University of Illinois-Chicago
J.T. Roane, Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Mérida Rúa, Northwestern University