Annual Meeting: Transitions
November 15th-19th, 2023
Transitions may be the most constant feature of everyday life. With endless uncertainties that are exacerbated by political turmoil, pandemic unpredictability, and climate crisis, our quotidian experiences are steeped in mutability. Transitions present us with both challenges and opportunities, not only in our everyday lives but also in our work as anthropologists. We hope that transitions may be something that we can approach with a sense of experimentation, imagination, and play, rather than a growing state of exhaustion and dread. As we navigate these transitions, we continue to think about how anthropology can rise to face our current condition, or ways it may fall short.
Within the word transition, emphasizing the prefix trans opens up avenues of thought that celebrate the in-betweenness of our state of being. Rather than focusing on the pressures to move on to the next thing (to be post-COVID, post-racial, post-colonial, as it may), tarrying in transition helps us to appreciate the difficult path toward restoring proper relationships. Many of us long for Indigenous self-determination, and authentic practices of inclusion and justice across lines of race, class, gender, sexuality and ability. Attaining these forms of life ultimately depends on careful attention to the transitions involved as we bridge past and future. Transitions may be understood as forms of liminality: highly structured, ritualized, and signaled. They may also represent the unknown– a move from stable ground to less certain topographies, new vernaculars, and unfamiliar grammars.
As we gather for CASCA/AAA 2023, we invite our colleagues and collaborators to think with us about transitions and in-betweenness, and to explore our anthropological curiosity in relation to many other iterations of ‘trans-ness.’ This includes but is not limited to transnationalism, trans identities, transitivity, transdisciplinarity, translanguaging, transparency, transhumanism, transluminescence, translation, transliteration, transcendence, transfusion, and transmutation. By dwelling in the process of transition, understanding it as a project of connection and mobility, our Toronto meeting will bring us together to linger in the contingencies of transition, and to understand transition as a professional, scholarly, and everyday condition which we must embrace.
Registration/Submission
Registration information for CASCA members: Members of CASCA and the AAA are eligible to participate in the conference based on their respective membership. You may participate in the meetings based on CASCA membership or AAA membership or both. CASCA membership registration form link. Please do not hesitate to contact membership@anthropologica.ca if you have questions about CASCA membership status or registration.
The AAA conference registration system will be used for conference submission and registration, the conference fee structure will be the same for everyone. When registering/ submitting, registrants will self-identify as CASCA members, AAA members or as members of both associations. Conference registration (fee-paying) is open. Participants, if selected for the program, will be required to register for the meeting and become a AAA or CASCA member by Friday, September 08, 2023 in order to participate. Registration rates and more information available here.
Membership & Registration Waiver Application Request Form for Indigenous participants (Application deadline October 6th) CASCA participants who identify as First Nations/ Métis/ Inuit, please complete and submit the form found here; your waiver application will be forwarded to CASCA for processing. If you have questions about this application process please be in touch with cascapres@gmail.com in advance of the deadline for more guidance.
Submission and the AAA Hub
To be included in a conference submission, participants will need to have a profile in the AAA Community hub. There is no charge, simply click the link and follow the steps to create a profile.
You need to be in AAA Hub even if you are a CASCA member submitting to CASCA. CASCA members are not automatically added to the AAA hub. If you try to create a profile and already have one, you will be notified as such and can request a password reset link to regain access to your old profile.
If, as a session organizer, you want to know if your session participants have a AAA hub profile either ask the participants, or see if their name appears when you try to add them as a presenter. If they cannot be added, please ask them to create a profile.
*NB* please be sure the email used is current. The email address is the unique identifier, as a participant you will be identified by the email you register with in the hub. As a session organizer, you will need to search and add session participants using the hub email associated with each person.
Submissions Open for Special Events & Installations
Deadline for Special Event Submissions/Installations
Friday, June 2, 2023 – 11:59 PM Eastern Time
More information on: Special Events and Installations
Submissions Open for Workshops
Deadline for Workshop Submissions
August 23, 2023 at 11:59 PM ET
More information: Workshops
Late Breaking Call for Submissions
Beginning on Wednesday, July 26 the AAA/CASCA will be accepting Late Breaking proposals for the AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting. Proposals are considered “late-breaking” if the submission meets the following criteria:
- The topic must be directly relevant to current events. This year’s topical themes are listed below.
- Presentations must offer findings that were not available until after the March 29, 2023, General Call for Proposals submission deadline.
- Applicants may submit late-breaking abstracts even if they have had another abstract accepted for presentation, but abstracts submitted prior to the submission deadline may not be resubmitted.
For more information on the types of submissions accepted and the full list of topical themes that will be considered, please visit our Late Breaking page on the Annual Meeting website.
General Call For Participation
The General Call for Participation has closed.
*The deadline for Participation Proposals to be submitted in the Portal was Wednesday, March 29, 2023 – 11:59 PM Eastern Time
- General Call for Participation Submission Guide
- More details on the AAA website.
- Session Organizer Responsibilities
- AAACASCA2023 Organizing Committees
- 2023 Annual Meeting Timeline
Student Volunteer Opportunity
(application deadline October 04, 2023)
Who is eligible?
- Members of the AAA and CASCA
- Graduate students prioritized
More information here: Student Volunteers
Advertise Your Session
Organizers who wish to advertise their session and find presenters through the CASCA website Conference Classifieds are invited to contact cascanews@cas-sca.ca.
CASCA Events – more information to come
- Chair Breakfast
- Women’s Network event
- Weaver-Tremblay
- CASCA banquet
- CASCA at the cusp of 50 years: Looking to a future that honours our past
- Once again CASCA poster presenters will be eligible to win a prize. More details to come.
The keynote address will be “Truth before Transition: Reimagining Anthropology as Restorative Justice,” presented by Dr. Kisha Supernant, Director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology, University of Alberta.
Conference Resources
- Quoi de neuf ? Entretien avec Michelle Daveluy (Podcast with one of the co-presidents of the Executive Program Committee for the AAACASCA2023 conference – about the conference, its theme, what it covers, and what our francophone listeners can get from it).
- CFHSS code of conduct
- CASCA’s Sexual Harassment Policy
- AAA Annual Meeting Harassment Prevention
- AAA Accessibility Information
- Visa, Housing and Travel Information
The Housing Block is Now Open
