The New England American Studies Association and the Center for New England Culture invite submissions for a special conference on "Global New England: The Meaning of Region in the Nation and the World." The setting is, appropriately, the Peabody Essex Museum, site of the Salem East India Marine Society, established in 1799 by sea captains as a repository for journals and artifacts collected from American voyages across the globe. The conference will be held April 16-18, 2004.

We invite proposals for papers and panels that envision New England across disciplines and over time in a context of global fluidity:

• As a contact zone, cultural nexus, and channel for exchange through which multidirectional currents of historic and cultural resonance have flowed. Papers might explore such media of exchange as cultural, educational, and medical programs; the slave trade; the China Trade; the "war on drugs"; the "war on terrorism;" and such forms of exchange as goods or people, ideas or images, mythologies or technologies, literatures or legacies.
• As a fluid and mobile construct, in which questions of place, identity, and influence have been historically contested and renegotiated. Papers might explore such issues as the meaning of region in the nation and the world in an American Studies perspective; New Englanders' representations of experiences outside of the region and constructions of other places; the origins and subsequent history of New England regionalisms; and changing expressions of regional culture.

We welcome papers and panel proposals that address any aspect of this broad topic. As always, NEASA warmly invites participation by public intellectuals and activists without university affiliation -- e.g., secondary school teachers, journalists, community organizers, archivists, curators, and independent scholars. Papers submitted formally will be eligible for the Mary Kelley Prize for best paper by a graduate student or non-tenure track scholar. In addition, NEASA anticipates publication of a selection of the papers, and encourages presenters to prepare work appropriate for an anthology.

Conference Site: Salem is seventeen miles north of Boston. Attendees will have opportunities to visit the exhibits of the recently renovated Peabody Essex Museum, including East and West Asian, Native American, and African collections, and the Yin Yu Tang, a 200-year old Chinese merchant family's house; the House of the Seven Gables; and the Salem Maritime National Historic Site.

Contact information: Send inquiries and proposals, including one-page abstract and c.v. (acceptable as email attachments in Microsoft Word), by January 5, 2004, to: