"We All Declare for Liberty": looking ahead to the sesquicentenary of the Emancipation Proclamation, SASA is honored to welcome distinguished historians ERIC FONER and TIYA MILES to Charleston as our plenary speakers. We've borrowed our quite broad theme from an observation President Lincoln made less than a year before his assassination: "We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing." We welcome a range of panel proposals and individual paper proposals that zero in on one or more of these three intertwined and still contested terms -- emancipation, liberty and freedom -– placing them in a range of contexts reflecting the richness of American Studies. As ever, SASA also welcomes proposals on other topics that reflect that richness, too, and we display some examples at our new website.

Noon EDT on Friday, September 14, is the deadline for e-mailing paper or panel proposals to us at (note: it's not case-sensitive). In the interest of involving as many people in our conferences as possible, the maximum number of slots on the 2013 program for any participant is two, with no more than one being a formal paper on research. Also, given how well the following statement works within the national org's "Getting on the ASA Meeting Program: A Practical Guide," we've made it an integral part of our 2013 CFP: "The paper you propose must be new and original. You should never plan to give the same paper at two different conferences, and you should never submit proposals for the same panel to two different conferences at the same time."

In that spirit, we'll construct sets of concurrent sessions (90 minutes each, punctuated by 15- or 30-minute breaks and ample caffeine), along with a reception or two and some tantalizing opportunities for getting outside the conference site, Charleston’s historic Francis Marion Hotel. Our special room rate, only $139 per night, single or double, is available until January 4 by calling (843) 722-0600 or 1-877-756-2121 and being sure to mention that you want the special Southern American Studies Association rate. To register online,visit our new website, southernamericanstudiesassociation.org, and click on the "Conferences" button!

As ever, SASA will award its Critoph Prize to the conference's best paper by a graduate student, and this time will be our third consecutive conference to include an interdisciplinary roundtable with the author of a particularly impressive book: Prof. Foner has graciously agreed to participate in a colloquy, while he's with us at Charleston, on his Pulitzer Prize- and Bancroft Prize-winning _The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery_.

Co-chairs of the organizing committee:

Dennis Moore Scott Peeples
Florida State University College of Charleston