South Atlantic Modern Language Association

For the 2009 meeting of SAMLA, our eighty-first gathering, we will return to the Renaissance Atlanta Hotel Downtown, from 6–8 November. The hotel's ideal location is on the edge of midtown near attractions that will appeal to our attendees, including the Woodruff Arts Center with the High Museum of Art and the Georgia Aquarium. It is also within walking distance of the North Avenue MARTA station, providing easy access to the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and to the many restaurants and shopping venues that can be found along Peachtree Street. Room rates for the convention are $124 per night.

The special focus for the 2009 conference is Human Rights and the Humanities, and our program will feature some two hundred regular, special, and affiliated group sessions, with a large number devoted to the special topic or featuring papers on the subject. In addition, our plenary speakers and featured guests will offer multiple perspectives on the significance of human rights in the English and language disciplines. Friday night's creative plenary speaker is Caryl Phillips (Yale Univ.), who has written ten novels, three works of nonfiction, and multiple articles, screenplays, and television dramas. Born in the Caribbean, raised in England, and currently residing in New York, Phillips focuses on themes of identity and homelessness as they are manifested in multiple points of the African diaspora. His work imagines the lives of people least represented in history and transgresses boundaries of race, gender, and nation.

Anne McClintock (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) will be Saturday's critical plenary speaker. Best known for her 1995 book Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, which chronicles the dangerous liaisons between gender, race, and class that shaped British imperialism and its bloody dismantling, she has written extensively on sexuality, race, gender, nationalism, imperialism, pornography, photography, visual culture, and contemporary culture. She has many forthcoming works related to human rights, in particular a new book called Paranoid Empire: Specters from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

One of our featured guests will be Tony Grooms (Kennesaw State Univ.), the author of Bombingham and Trouble No More. As a writer who focuses on characters struggling with the uncertainty of the American civil rights movement, he will offer a southern story related to the conference's special focus. In addition, Margarita Drago (York Coll., City Univ. of New York) will give an international view on human rights when she reads from Memory Tracks: Fragments from Prison (1975–1980), which recounts her experiences as a political prisoner in Argentina and tells a story of personal victory over repression, terrorism, and abuse. Two other special guests will be García Valdés (Instituto El Greco of Toledo), winner of the 2007 National Poetry Prize for her verse collection "Y todos estábamos vivos" ("And we were all alive"), and Karen Finley, the controversial American performance artist, literary figure, and visual artist who has become a symbol of the fight against governmental censorship.

Registration costs for the 2009 convention are $135 for regular members and $75 for graduate students, adjunct faculty members, and retired faculty members. A discount is provided for registration before 1 October. Participants may register as well as renew their membership using a form available on our Web site (www.samla.gsu.edu). Members of SAMLA receive four issues of the South Atlantic Review (SAR) and the yearly newsletter, which includes the convention call for papers and preconvention program details. Membership dues for 2010 are $60 for individual members, $80 for joint membership, and $35 for graduate students and adjunct and retired faculty members.

Renée Schatteman (Georgia State Univ.) continues to serve as SAMLA's executive director while Lara Smith continues as managing editor of SAR and associate director. Current officers of SAMLA are President, Hunt Hawkins (Univ. of South Florida); First Vice President, Joan McRae Kleinlen (Middle Tennessee State Univ.); Second Vice President, Trudier Harris (Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill); Past President, Allen Josephs (Univ. of West Florida); Executive Committee Members-at-Large, Valerie Dotson (Georgia Perimeter Coll.), Scott Yarbrough (Charleston Southern Univ.), Emily Seelbinder (Queens Univ. of Charlotte), Carolina Marquez-Serrano (Tuskegee Univ.), Jay Lutz (Oglethorpe Univ.), and Robert Sawyer (East Tennessee State Univ.). We extend special thanks to the many SAMLA members diligently serving on standing committees. SAMLA is also grateful for the generous support of Georgia State University, particularly the Department of English, chaired by Matthew Roudané, and the College of Arts and Sciences, whose dean, Lauren Adamson, allocates resources to house SAMLA.

For more information, please contract the SAMLA offices at Georgia State University (404 413-5817 or 404 413-5816; samla@gsu.edu). Membership forms along with information about the organization, the Job Information List, annual awards, our history, the journal, and the 2009 conference are available on the Web site (www.samla.gsu.edu).

RENÉE THERESE SCHATTEMAN
Executive Director