The Fifteenth Biennial
Conference
March 18-20, 2027
Loyola University Water Tower campus, Chicago
The Fifteenth Biennial Conference of the Society of Early Americanists will be held March 18-20, 2027 in Chicago, at the Loyola University Water Tower campus.
Chicago (or Zhegagoynak, in the Potawatomi language) is a place connected both to the Great Lakes and to the Mississippi River watershed. It is a place where lakes, rivers, wetlands, and portages have long allowed passage to the Caribbean and points further south as well as to northern lakes, rivers, and the Atlantic Ocean. It is a multi-lingual place: where people spoke and still speak many Indigenous languages; many Indo-European languages; many of the languages spoken across Africa; and more. The region is a place of historic and continued place making for the Indigenous peoples on whose ancestral lands the contemporary city was built and who call this place home, including the Potawatomi, Odawa, Ojibwe; the Illinois Confederation: the Peoria and Kaskaskia Nations; and the Myaamia, Wea, Ho-Chunk, Sauk, and Meskwaki Nations; as well as the Menominee, Kickapoo, and Mascouten Nations. It has been a place of unfreedom for Black peoples taken to the Great Lakes by force and a place of freedom and homemaking for those who traveled through on the Underground Railroad or who moved north during the Great Migration. It is a site of relations among Black and Indigenous peoples, involving both intimacy and unfreedom. These relations are often narrated through the story of Jean Baptiste du Sable, the Black man often described as Chicago’s first settler, who is believed to have been born in Haiti and who in the late eighteenth century married a Potawatomi woman named Kitihawa, with whom he established a trading post near Lake Michigan. Finally, with the second largest community of Mexicans in the U.S. and, in recent years, a place of forced homemaking for many Venezuelan refugees, Chicago troubles nation state borders that have their origins in the early Americas.
These early and continuing histories of travel, translation, trade, intimacy, dispossession, unfreedom, fugitivity, and placemaking make Chicago a prime location for considering the capacious geographies, languages, temporalities, genres, and archives that characterize early American studies.
The Conference Program (PDF, as of 6 June) is now available. For more information about the panels, visit sea2023.exordo.com.
SEA 2023 will host a book exhibit free of charge to publishers. Publishers interested in exhibiting books should contact Ralph Bauer at bauerr@umd.edu.
Publishers and their authors who are registered participants may request a time on the conference schedule for a book talk at the exhibit. Contact Ralph Bauer at bauerr@umd.edu.
Calls and Announcements
More program information will be forthcoming; watch this space. Calls for papers are available on the SEA’s social media feeds and the EARAM-L listserv.
The Conference Program (PDF, as of 6 June) is now available. Additional information about the panels can be found at sea2023.exordo.com/programme.
Art History, Tulane University
Emerita, English, University of Maryland
History and Art History, George Mason University
Ben Bascom (West Virginia University), Ajay Batra (Vanderbilt), Christian Crouch (Bard College), Jenny Forsythe (Western Washington University), John Garcia (American Antiquarian Society), Andrea Knutson (Oakland University), David Medina (Florida Atlantic University), Sarah Robbins (Tufts), John Nelson (Texas Tech), Jonathan Senchyne (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Lloyd Sy (Yale), Chris Trigg (Nanyang Technological University), Abram Van Engen (Washington University-St. Louis), Maria Windell (University of Colorado-Boulder), Rebecca Rosen (Murray State Universiy, SEAC representative), Kirsten Silva Gruesz (UC-Santa Cruz, SEA vice-president), Caroline Wigginton (University of Mississippi, SEA executive coordinator).
Fifteenth Biennial SEA Conference, March 18-20, 2027 — Loyola University Water Tower Campus, Chicago
Conference registration is now open. A current SEA membership is required for conference participation. Follow the steps below to register.
Please join or renew your SEA membership before registering.
Once your membership is up to date, register via ExOrdo.
Program participants are encouraged to register by October 31 to get early bird rates.
Conference registration is now open. A current SEA membership is required for all conference participants.
Program participants are encouraged to register by October 31 to get the early bird rate.
Early Bird Rate Deadline: October 31, 2026
For membership questions, use the contact options on the Membership page. For registration questions, contact the conference organizers.
Travel & Accommodations
Local Host Committee: Madison Bastress (McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, The Newberry Library), Melissa Adams Campbell (Northern Illinois University), Caroline Egan (Northwestern University), Mar Garcia (Northeastern Illinois University), Jeff Glover (Loyola), Matthew Kruer (University of Chicago), Hayley Negrin (University of Illinois-Chicago), Eric Slauter (University of Chicago), SJ Zhang (University of Chicago).
The SEA 2027 Biennial Conference will take place at Loyola University's Water Tower Campus, 111 E Pearson Street, Chicago.
Land Acknowledgement
Chicago is a site of historic and continued place making for the Indigenous peoples on whose ancestral lands the contemporary city was built and who call this place home, including the Potawatomi, Odawa, and Ojibwe Nations; the Illinois Confederation: the Peoria and Kaskaskia Nations; and the Myaamia, Wea, Ho-Chunk, Sauk, and Meskwaki Nations; as well as the Menominee, Kickapoo, and Mascouten Nations.
The conference location is easily accessible from both O’Hare International Airport (ORD) and Midway International Airport (MDW) by public transit.
From ORD, take the Blue line toward Forest Park (the only possible direction) to Jackson. Transfer at Jackson to the Red line toward Howard, getting off at Chicago.
From MDW, take the Orange line toward the Loop to Roosevelt. Transfer at Roosevelt to the Red line toward Howard, getting off at Chicago. You can tap your contactless bankcard or mobile wallet app at the turnstiles to pay for a train fare.
Taxis and rideshare are also available at each airport; follow signs for ground transportation (note that rideshare pickup may be on a different level than the taxi stand).
Amtrak and regional commuter trains stop at Union Station, 225 S Canal Street, Chicago.
Google Maps will show public transit options for getting from Union Station to Loyola’s Water Tower Campus (the most straightforward option is to take the 151 bus; Google Maps will show where to catch the bus at Union Station). You can tap your contactless bankcard or mobile wallet app at the front of the bus to pay for a fare.
In an effort to ensure that hotel costs that can match, to the degree possible, the range of institutional support SEA members receive, we have negotiated rates with several downtown hotels. You must book directly with the hotel of your choice by February 15, 2027 to get the negotiated rates (note that Loyola’s deadline for dorm rooms is January 15).
Main conference hotel:
Westin Michigan Ave, 909 N Michigan Ave, $169/night. Reserve Room.
Additional hotels:
Chicago Marriott Downtown, 540 N Michigan Ave, $189/night; self-parking for $45/night. Reserve Room.
Residence Inn, 101 E Erie St (studio king rooms), $163/night. Reserve Room.
Courtyard by Marriott Downtown/River North, 30 E Hubbard St, $125/night. Reserve Room.
Loyola has a limited number of dorm rooms available, which range in price and number of beds. You must book a dorm room by January 15, 2027.Reserve a dorm room at lodging.luc.edu; use PromoCode SEA27
* Be sure to select the correct dates for your stay! *
Be advised: parking in downtown Chicago is expensive; traffic is usually bad. Public transit is the fastest and cheapest way to get around. If you drive, the recommended hotel is the Chicago Marriott Downtown, 540 North Michigan Avenue, which at the time that we negotiated our group rate offered self-parking for $45/night (the hotel included a caveat that this rate is subject to change). At check-in, provide the parking ticket from the garage to front desk. The front desk agent will then ask for your phone number to text you a QR code to use to get the lower parking rate and to also route the parking to the guestroom. This QR code can be used for in and out privileges from the garage.
Spot Hero is another option for finding discounted parking.
Common Reading Initiative
Laila Lalami
The Moor's Account (2014)
We are excited to announce the 2027 SEA Common Reading, Laila Lalami’s 2014 novel The Moor’s Account. A work of historical fiction, The Moor’s Account is the “invented memoirs” of Mustafa al-Zamori, called Estebanico, the enslaved Black man who was one of four men to survive the Narváez expedition in 1527. Lalami’s work engages and reimagines literary texts like Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación from the perspective of one of the people mentioned only a few times across the text.
This section contains bibliographies, an essay, and a timeline to aid instructors teaching The Moor’s Account and its main source text, Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación.
These resources were created by the Common Reading Initiative Student Fellows Abby Ridley, Hannah Ridley, Abby Rush, and Ericka Stone and by Common Reading Initiative committee members Keri Holt, Don James McLaughlin, and Kelly Wisecup. Please see the Student Fellows Biographies page to learn more about the fellows.
- Apalachee Presence and the Narváez Expedition: La Relación, The Moor’s Account, and Maps of Present-Day Florida (Abby Ridley and Hannah Ridley)
- The Moor’s Account Annotated Bibliography (Abby Rush)
- History of Al-Andalus: Context for Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account (Ericka Stone)
- Selected Bibliography on the History of Al-Andalus (Ericka Stone)
- La Relación Annotated Bibliography (Keri Holt and Don James McLaughlin)
- Bibliography for Resources on Jean Baptiste Point DuSable (Kelly Wisecup)
- Common Reading Initiative Student Fellows Biographies
Students are invited to participate virtually or in person — attending the plenary talk and open student dialogue with Prof. Williams.
The SEA Common Reading Initiative Committee envisions The Moor’s Account as a work that will allow conference attendees to consider the early Americas as a hemispheric and transatlantic geographic and cultural space, to engage with the multi-lingual archive of early American literatures (from multiple Indigenous languages to Spanish to Arabic), to learn from scholarly conversations about Blackness and racial categories before 1700, to teach with place-based approaches that center the Indigenous nations across whose homelands the expedition traveled, and to take up methodological questions around archives and speculation. We’re also anticipating that the book can invoke conversations about relationships between Chicago—and the Great Lakes more broadly—and the Caribbean (Chicago’s connection to the Caribbean is often narrated through the story of Jean Baptiste du Sable, the Black man believed to be born in what is now Haiti, who established a trading post near Lake Michigan with his wife, a Potawatomi woman named Kitihawa).
We encourage SEA members to engage with the Common Reading by assigning The Moor’s Account in your AY 26-27 courses. See the Classroom Resources section above for a background essay, bibliographies, and a timeline. We are planning to hold a Zoom workshop in fall 2026 to discuss approaches to teaching the book. If you’d like to support your local bookstore when you order the book, you can select your local store through Bookshop.org.
The Common Reading Initiative Committee also recognizes that SEA members hold much scholarly and pedagogical expertise about Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación and about The Moor’s Account. Watch for a call for participants for the pedagogy workshop to be held in fall 2026.
Siena University
Knox College
Utah State University
University of Tulsa
Tarrant County College
University of Texas at Austin
James Madison University
Contact Information
Fifteenth Biennial SEA Conference, 18-20 March 2027 — Chicago
Kelly Wisecup
Northwestern University
SEA President
kelly.wisecup@northwestern.edu
For inquiries about conference registration, the book exhibit, book talks, dormitory reservations, or program participation, please contact Ralph Bauer directly at bauerr@umd.edu.