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CELEBRATE ASWAD'S 25th ANNIVERSARY

ASWAD 2025 - 12th Biennial Conference

Call for Papers

 

“I’ve known rivers”: The Ecologies of Black Life and Resistance

Our host site, Saint Louis, sits at the confluence of two iconic rivers, the Mississippi and the Missouri. These continuously moving waterways have carved into the landscape, reshaping the bedrock that guides humans, plants and animals together. They can yet prove unpredictable as their banks rise and retreat as they nourish and cleanse. ASWAD’s 2025 Conference theme takes as its inspiration the river, and waterways, as an analytical framework for Black lives past and present. 

The conference will take place at the Marriott St. Louis Grand Hotel on October 29 - November 2, 2025.

Suggested Subfields

  • Black freedom and ecological justice
  • Black feminist eco-ethics
  • Plant and animal life
  • Maritime cultural landscapes
  • Gender and Environment
  • Afro-Maritime/Marine Spiritualities and Philosophies
  • Ethno-racial policies against Black rural populations, farmers, and maroon-descendants
  • Rivers of change: Ferguson and the long histories of Black freedom struggles
  • Streams of music: converging musical genres

We encourage the submission of full panels. In your proposal, please indicate which of the above topic(s) you will address. All applications should include an abstract and a brief bio for each presenter.

For the full Call for Papers in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German, please Click Here.

To submit proposals Click Here.

Review of proposals will begin September 3, 2024. All proposals should be submitted by October 11, 2024. Acceptances will be issued on a rolling basis. We encourage multidisciplinary panels defined by diversity across identity markers, including but not limited to age, race, gender, sexuality, ability, academic rank, language, and geographies among others. Individuals may participate in up to two different ways - e.g. as a panelist and chair, a panelist and discussant, etc. To submit a proposal and to present at the conference your ASWAD membership must be current.

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected].