Here you will find links to the CFPs for and details about future CAAS meetings, and to previous conferences sponsored by CAAS.
Future Conferences
CFP: “American Carnage”
Canadian Association for American Studies, October 23-25, 2026 (In person at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia).
In his 2017 inauguration speech, Donald Trump “coined the sinister phrase ‘American carnage’ to vividly conjure an image of inner cities he said were affected by crime, a political elite that had forgotten ordinary people, and a landscape of rusted factories like tombstones” (Pilkington, “American carnage,” The Guardian, 21 Jan 2017). This characterization of American life has aided Trump’s efforts to forge an imperialist and increasingly authoritarian regime in the US that includes deploying the National Guard to Democratically controlled urban centers while ignoring the rule of law to do so. Of course, such attempts to use both material violence and rhetorical violence to similar ends has a history that both predates and arguably sets the conditions for the establishment of the US and other settler nations in the so-called “New World” and beyond. Historically, carnage comes from the Latin word “carnaticum,” meaning “flesh,” and refers to the “violent killing of a large number of people.”
Such violence is never without concomitant forms of resistance, however. More recently, the 2022 movie “American Carnage,” ironically invoked Trump’s phrase as the comic horror film advocated for the rights of undocumented Hispanic youths in the US, while any number of cultural forms—from dystopian fiction and film, to gothic and horror, to visual arts, and other forms—have used representations of carnage to challenge what Toni Morrison called the “national narrative” of the US. There are ecological resonances, as well, from both the factory farming of animals and the environmental effects thereof.
This conference takes its title from the multiple resonances of the term, “American carnage” and what it means literally and figuratively. Please note: CAAS is open to any and all papers on American Studies, not limited to the specific topic of each year’s conference, but we particularly invite papers that address this broad topic in the United States from different disciplinary approaches and over all time periods. Some themes might include (but are not limited) to the following:
- American carnage as fantasy
- American carnage and the American Dream
- Carnivores, factory farms, and the ecological
- Climate change and geopolitics
- Colonial and imperial violence
- Consumption and /as carnage
- Flesh, fantasy, and identities
- Genres of carnage: utopias, dystopias, horror, and more
- Labour organization and anti-labour actions
- Trade Wars, Tariffs, and economic violence
- Violence and state formation
- Violence as / against resistance
Please email 250-word proposals and brief bios by April 15, 2026 to caasconference26@gmail.com and please include the subject line: CAAS 2026 CFP Submission.
CFP: “What’s Going On?”
October 24-26, 2025 (online)
In May of 1971, Marvin Gaye released What’s Going On, a concept album that documented various social injustices that made America far from great. Songs on the record explored American involvement in Vietnam, environmental degradation, racist police, urban poverty and other issues confronting the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Gaye also addressed divisions within the nation, divisions that have persisted since then and have come to be framed as the “culture wars.” In the LP’s title track, he invites others to speak with him so that they can inform each other of what they believe is going on.
This online conference takes its title from Gaye’s masterpiece, a choice precipitated in part by the election of Donald Trump in November 2024, for many of us are thinking about how to make sense of that event. The question “what’s going on?” asks for a description of the salient and defining features of a given historical moment, particularly the present, but it also gestures towards continuities from/within the past, namely divisions and struggles that have been “going on” for some time. Although Trump’s election might seem like, and might even be, an aberration or a crisis, it also represents long-standing tendencies within the nation.
We invite papers that address “what’s going on” in the United States. Papers can be from different disciplinary approaches and can focus on various aspects of American society and culture from all periods. Some themes might include (but are not limited) to the following:
Divisions within the nation, past, present, or future
Nativism and immigration (of people, ideas, culture)
Christian, white, and other nationalisms
Cultural canons as contributing or resisting the status quo
American authoritarianism and fascism
Black and/or Indigenous futurisms
The backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion
American utopias and/or dystopias
Climate change and environmental crises in film, fiction, television
Exceptionalism vs. internationalism
Critiques of the present
Conspiracy theories and other narratives
The apparent triumph of wealth/gilded ages
Everyday extremism
Free speech/the New McCarthyism
Please email 250-word proposals and brief bios by April 21, 2025 to CAASconference2025@mta.ca
CAAS Roundtable: First Thoughts on Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket
On September 26th, 2025, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, One Battle After Another, will be released in theatres. Anderson – who previously adapted Thoman Pynchon’s Inherent Vice in 2014 – has confirmed that his new film is loosely based on Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland. Less than two weeks later, on October 7th, 2025, Penguin Press will publish Shadow Ticket, a new novel from the 88-year-old Pynchon. This roundtable will feature a structured discussion of Anderson’s film and Pynchon’s novel, sharing first impressions of both texts, connections to both creators’ respective oeuvres, relevant topics in American studies, etc.
Participants will not need to prepare any written remarks and discussion questions will be created collaboratively (via Google docs) before the roundtable. The only requirement is for participants to commit to watching Anderson’s film and reading Pynchon’s novel (mercifully brief, by Pynchon’s standards, at 384 pages) before the online CAAS conference begins on October 24th, 2025.
Interested participants should send an email to the roundtable organizer, Ross Bullen (OCAD University), rbullen@ocadu.ca, by August 31st, 2025. We are looking for 6-8 participants in total (though this is flexible). Participants can also present on a different panel at the CAAS conference. All participants must register for the conference and be members of CAAS.
CFP: Remembering Percy Walton: A Roundtable on the American Studies in Canada
As we approach what looks to be a hotly contested and globally impactful presidential election in the US, many Canadians are considering with some dread the political, economic, and cultural implications of a second Trump term. As many commentators have noted, while American cultural production skews progressive, entrenched political sensibilities have lurched reactionary in recent decades, engendering a political landscape given over to right-wing populism, autocracy, Nativism, the cult of personality, misogyny, the systemic judicial rollbacks of civil rights, widespread conspiracy mongering, and the like—so much so that even a Harris victory may not signify fully resuscitated democratic norms. (And who knows how or when or whether election results will even be settled?). What might these deeply unsettling developments mean for Canadian scholars and students of American life, let alone ordinary Canadians? This roundtable on the past and future of American Studies is dedicated to the memory of the late Percy Walton (1957-2024). longtime editor of the Canadian Review of American Studies. We are indebted to Percy’s unstinting advocacy for the discipline, her generous and inspired pedagogy, her unflagging feminist commitments, and her wide-ranging scholarship across many aspects of American literary and popular culture.
Organizers: Jennifer Andrews (Dalhousie) and Art Redding (York)
The call with submission info will appear on the ACCUTE page: https://accute.ca/2025-call-for-papers/
Past Conferences
2024: On Bothering (Concordia University in Montréal/Tiohtià:ke)
October 4th-6th, 2024
Program: 2024 conference program
2023: West by Northeast (Online) September 22-24, 2023 / Online Program: 2023 conference program 2022: Reanimations (Online) October 28-30, 2022 / OCAD University, Toronto, Ontario Program: 2022 conference program 2021: CAAS Great Divides (Online) October 22-24, 2021/ University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Program: 2021 conference program 2020: CAAS Symposium (Online) October 16 & 23, 2020 / Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick Program: 2020 conference program 2019: CAAS Symposium October 25-27, 2019 / Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec Program: 2019 conference program 2018: Alternative/Mainstream October 12-14, 2018 / St. Mary’s University, Calgary, Alberta Program: 2018 conference program 2017: Uncertain Futures October 27-29, 2017 / OCAD University, Toronto, Ontario Program: 2017 conference program 2016: Homeland Insecurities October 21-23, 2016 / Fredericton, New Brunswick Program: 2016 conference program 2015: CAAS sponsored four panels at the 2015 American Studies Association annual meeting October 8-11, 2015 / Toronto 2014: American Circuits, American Secrets Banff, Alberta / September 18-21 2014 Program: 2014 conference program 2013: Total Money Makeover: Culture and the Economization of Everything University of Waterloo / October 24-27 2013 2012: Geographies of Promise and Betrayal: Land and Place in US Studies York University and the University of Toronto / October 25-28, 2012 2011: The Aesthetics of Renewal Carleton University / Chateau Laurier / November 3-6, 2011 Program: 2011 conference program 2010: Health/Care/Nation University of Windsor / October 14-17, 2010 2009: States of Emergency: Crisis, Panic and the Nation Centre for American Studies, University of Western Ontario / November 13-16, 2009 2008: American Legacies Memorial University of Newfoundland / August 13-16, 2008 Program: 2008 conference program 2007: The Americas— Drawing the Lines Montreal, Québec / November 8–11, 2007 2006: American Exceptionalism Queen’s University / October 19–22, 2006 Program: 2006 conference program 2005: America and Violence Dalhousie University and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design / October 6 – 9, 2005 2003: Authenticity and Contention University of Manitoba / October 17-19, 2003 Program: 2003 conference program