Sport in “Late-Stage American Empire?”

2025 ASA Annual Meeting in San Juan, PR November 20 - 22, 2025

We are so excited to see you at ASA in November. Mark your calendars for our business meeting on Sat, November 22, 9:45-11:15 am in Puerto Rico Convention Center, Ballroom B, Annex

Here’s a bit more on the conference theme:

Since the end of the Cold War, we have heard a constant refrain about the end of the American Century, the end of history, and more recently, the end of the U.S. empire. At the same time, the institutions in which we work are changing, as many eliminate the tenure-track, downsize liberal arts programs, target our knowledge production, attack our dissent, and outsource shared governance to paid consultants. “America,” as an object, has been thoroughly stripped of its exceptionalism and is bankrolling a genocide, while the forces of fascism and authoritarianism have risen across the political spectrum. Moreover, climate change may have passed a tipping point, accelerating environmental catastrophe. What kind of America is invoked in American Studies and where/how is America studied? Are we living through an historical conjuncture characterized by late-stage American empire?

We invite discussion at our 2025 conference of what American Studies is, and can be, in this moment of ongoing catastrophe and accelerating devolution. Are we experiencing the late-stage of empire and how might this era inform American Studies, broadly conceived? What sorts of violent eruptions characterize this stage of imperial transformation and through what methods, questions, theories (and from where) can we locate resources for meaning, imagine new forms of sociality, and articulate new modes of knowledge production? What possible futures do our methods enable or foreclose at the present conjuncture? How might Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, Ethnic Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Queer and Trans Studies, and Puerto Rican Studies offer critical resources for understanding the present conjuncture?

Rather than lamenting an American Studies or empire in perpetual crisis, we intend for this call to serve as an invitation to imagine an American Studies otherwise, from its peripheries, from the standpoint of elsewhere. Contributors might view the world-changing moment we’re thinking and living through as a violent, terminal phase. They may also view it as creative ground for new intellectual and political possibilities. We call on our members, and our chapters, committees and caucuses, to critically engage with ways that our current geopolitical conjuncture, the late stage of the American empire (as well as its powerful durability), requires critical reflection on our methods, our theories, and the gravitational center of our disciplines.

We will engage these questions and others in a context of imperial violence, colonial relations, climate catastrophe, as well as anti-racist, anti-colonial, and Indigenous resistance. Puerto Rico, our conference host, encounters daily the consequences and limits of the American empire, as well as the violent displacements caused by climate/military/cultural imperialism. Puerto Rico is also a place of insurgent knowledge formation and creative worldmaking where Indigenous, Black, and Latinx anticolonial analysis, culture, and praxis offer resources for imagining post- or counter-American American Studies. Puerto Rico forces us to confront the intimacies of empire and settler colonialism, and requires us to think with questions of decolonization, from Puerto Rico to Palestine, to Hawai‘i, to Haiti, to Congo, to Sudan.

Grounded Engagements in American Studies - Sports-related Panels

ASA is quickly approaching and we can’t wait to see everyone in Baltimore!

We are THRILLED to share a Google Doc featuring sports-related papers and panels for this year’s conference. If you know of any other panels or papers that should be listed, please email us!

You can view the sports schedule here

KEY CAUCUS RELATED EVENTS

ASA Sports Studies Caucus Business Meeting

Our business meeting will be held on Friday, November 15 at 2:00 pm in Calloway A-B

ASA Sports Studies Caucus Social Outing

Join us at Pickle’s Pub (520 Washington Blvd, Baltimore, MD 21230) on Saturday, Nov 16th from 6:00-8:30pm to hang with your favorite caucus members. The bar is a short (<5 minute) walk from the conference venue.

2024 Call for Sponsored Panels

CFP: ASA Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland - November 14-17, 2024

The Sports Studies Caucus of the American Studies Association seeks panel proposals for the 2024 Annual Meeting. In particular, we seek proposals that address the 2024 Annual Meeting theme: Grounded Engagements in American Studies

Per the ASA website: "Grounded engagement eats at the kitchen table, rests in nested sovereignties, manifests in home rules, and envisions liberations. It is a fertile place to think through our relationships in, between, and beyond the campus. In examining the intimacies and power of place, we confront settler and racialized structures globally, working towards mapping new strategies that lead to just worlds. By its nature—studying the power structures in the Americas, American Imperialism abroad, and its force worldwide—American Studies is local and global with interconnected and fluid scales."

The Sports Studies Caucus likewise encourages panel submissions that engage Baltimore, Maryland specifically, or the Washington, D.C./Maryland/Virginia (DMV) area more broadly, and their roles in the sporting cultures of the United States. We also urge interested parties to consider non-traditional panel formats and the creation of interlocking or related panel sessions. We are particularly interested in panels that include athletes or other industry figures that might "ground" our intellectual endeavors with the everyday lived experiences of those within sport.

Have a panel idea? Contact the ASA Sports Caucus at asasportsstudiescaucus@gmail.com and we will do our best to connect you with like-minded presenters. Panel proposals submitted by Jan. 19 will be considered for caucus sponsorship by a vote of our members. To be considered, please e-mail asasportsstudiescaucus@gmail.com with a list of panelists and an abstract of 300 words. 

For more information on the American Studies Association and its Annual Meeting, visit https://www.theasa.net/annual-meeting/years-meeting