Call for papers
Ninth Biennial Conference of the International Association of Inter-American Studies (IAS)
Laboratories of Change: The Americas between Progress and Backlash
June 2 – 4, 2027
Bielefeld University, Germany
The present historical moment is marked by far-reaching global upheavals, many of which are closely related to current events in the Americas. Over the past five centuries, developments originating in or profoundly shaped by the Western Hemisphere have transformed societies across the globe —from European conquest, colonialism, and transatlantic slavery to the US, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions, the Cold War and the political and cultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s to #blacklives matter, #niunamenos and the rise of Trumpism. Today, technological innovations, political realignments and social struggles in the Americas are once again generating shifts far beyond the hemisphere.
The history of the Americas reveals a recurring, though never linear, tension between transformation and reaction. Radical movements for social change challenge entrenched power structures and repressive regimes, ushering in periods of political, technological, social, and cultural transformation. Yet such advances frequently provoke counter-movements, authoritarian projects, and periods of conservative backlash.
How can we conceptualize these shifting relationships between progress and regression, emancipation and repression, resistance and reaction? How do North and South, centers and peripheries, and local and global forces shift and interact in these processes? What has made the Americas such a consequential laboratory of political, social, cultural, and technological change? And to what extent are the categories of “progress” and “backlash” themselves adequate for understanding complex, contradictory, and regionally uneven transformations?
The conference places particular emphasis on the inter-American, transregional, and global dimensions of these dynamics. It invites critical reflection on the roles of colonialism and imperialism, capitalism and extractivism, migration and exile, cultural exchange, and transnational networks. Of equal importance are the agency, alliances, and internal tensions of counter-hegemonic movements and historically marginalized groups, including Indigenous and Afro-diasporic communities, feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements, labor movements, and ecological, antiracist, and decolonial initiatives. The conference also places particular emphasis on works and practices of cultural production—including literature, film, visual art, music, performance, and popular culture—as sites in which transformation and reaction are imagined, negotiated, contested, and remembered.
Both Bielefeld University and the International Association of Inter-American Studies have, since their respective foundations, been committed to interdisciplinary scholarship. We therefore welcome proposals from across the humanities and social sciences, including American, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, African Diaspora and Indigenous Studies, literary and cultural studies, history, media studies, sociology, anthropology, political science, and gender and queer studies. We particularly encourage contributions that cross disciplinary, linguistic, and regional boundaries.
We expressly welcome historically oriented contributions, including research on periods, processes, and archives whose significance does not depend on a direct or immediately demonstrable connection to the present or future.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Revolutions, reform movements, and counterrevolutions
- Democracy, populism, authoritarianism, and political polarization
- Colonialism, imperialism, decolonization, and coloniality
- Capitalism, neoliberalism, extractivism, and social inequality
- Slavery and racism
- Afro-diasporic and Indigenous movements and cultures in hemispheric perspective
- Feminist, queer, and LGBTQIA+ movements
- Migration, displacement, exile, borders, and diasporas
- Transnational protest movements and counter-hegemonic networks
- Environmental transformation, the climate crisis, and environmental justice
- Technological change, digital cultures, and the public sphere
- Music, literature, film, art, and popular culture as sites of transformation and reaction
- Public memory, historical narratives, and contested pasts
- Religion and religious movements in progressive and reactionary projects
- Inter-American relations between North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean
- The global impact of political, social, and cultural developments in the Americas
- Theoretical and methodological approaches to Inter-American Studies
- Disability, ableism, and their intersections with race, gender, class, and sexuality
- Bioethics and the political, social, and cultural implications of biomedical change
These topics are intended as points of departure rather than limitations. We particularly welcome contributions that complicate the binary between progress and backlash or examine how both tendencies may coexist within the same movements, institutions, and historical processes.
Returning to Bielefeld
With its Ninth Biennial Conference, the International Association of Inter-American Studies returns to one of its principal places of origin. The Association’s intellectual and institutional foundations were laid at a conference held at Bielefeld University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research in 2008. Scholars from Latin America, North America, and Europe, working in fields including literary and cultural studies, media and film studies, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, history, religious studies, political science, and law, came together to establish a new forum for interdisciplinary and transregional research on the Americas.
Since then, the Association has explored the manifold social, cultural, historical, political, and economic entanglements connecting North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Its conferences in Europe, Latin America, and the United States have helped establish Inter-American Studies as a dynamic, transdisciplinary field while fostering dialogue among scholars from different regions and academic traditions.
Nearly two decades after that first gathering in Bielefeld, the Association invites scholars in the humanities and social sciences to take stock of the field and consider its future. What can Inter-American Studies contribute to our understanding of the present moment? How might its concepts, spatial frameworks, and methodological approaches need to be revised? How can hemispheric perspectives help us question and rethink conventional binaries of empire and periphery, center and margin, or domination and resistance? And how can an Inter-American Studies framework illuminate the contradictory dynamics of progress, backlash, resistance, and global transformation?
Submission Guidelines
We invite proposals for:
- Individual papers of approximately 20 minutes
- Panels comprising three or four papers
- Roundtables and other discussion-based formats
- Artistic, audiovisual, or practice-based contributions
Proposals for individual papers should include:
- The title of the paper
- An abstract of no more than [250–300 words]
- Up to five keywords
- A short biographical note of no more than [100 words]
Panel proposals should include a brief description of the panel’s overarching theme, abstracts for the individual papers, and biographical notes for all participants. Panels must adopt a transnational perspective and should preferably engage explicitly with Inter-American relations, processes, or entanglements. Submitted panels must include speakers of different genders, and no more than two speakers may be affiliated with the same institution.
The conference languages are English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Proposals and presentations may be delivered in any of these languages.
Please submit proposals by December 1 to info@interamericanstudies.net
Applicants will be notified of the outcome by December 21.
Conference Information
Dates: June 2 – 4, 2027
Venue: Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld University, Germany
Contact: matti.steinitz@uni-bielefeld.de
Further information:
We welcome proposals from scholars at all career stages and from a broad range of disciplinary, regional, and intellectual traditions. We look forward to renewing the inter-American conversation in Bielefeld.