The Society of Early Americanists seeks proposals for panel streams for the 2027 biennial conference, to be held in Chicago, March 18-20, 2027.
SEA has featured panel streams at conferences for over a decade. Panel streams are constituted by 3-4 panels on a theme or topic and work to develop a shared conversation across the conference. Past panel streams include Early African American Studies; colonial Latin Americas; Early Native American and Indigenous Studies; the history of the book in the Americas; creative writing about the Americas; religion and politics; and more.
For the 2027 conference, we are calling for proposals for panel streams, in order to generate streams about emerging areas of scholarship and to create opportunities for as many members as possible to shape the conference program. We plan for the long-standing panel streams to continue and welcome proposals from people who would like to help organize those long-standing panels or for new panel stream topics. If your proposal is accepted, the organizer(s) must become a member of SEA and attend the 2027 conference. We especially encourage and will give priority to collaborative proposals, in which several scholars work together to propose and constitute a panel stream.
What to Submit:
Proposals should include a title for the panel stream; names and affiliations of the organizers; a working list of 3-4 panel titles that would constitute the stream; and a brief but detailed plan for ensuring that the panels feature scholars from different ranks, institutions, fields, and backgrounds.
Deadlines:
Panel stream proposals are due February 20, 2026. Please submit via the SEA Panel Stream Submission Form. The program committee will review and select panel streams by mid-March 2026. Panel stream organizers will then invite and call for panelists and submit full participant information, including abstracts from each panelist, for each panel on the stream by May 1, 2026.
Please feel free to write to Kelly.wisecup@northwestern.edu with any questions.