Fostering strong scholarship and promoting collegiality within the vital field of contemporary art history.
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Fostering strong scholarship and promoting collegiality within the vital field of contemporary art history.
SCAH at CAA
The SCAH-sponsored panel at CAA highlights topical research and fosters dialogue among scholars of contemporary art through panels, roundtables, and networking events.
As an affiliate society of the College Art Association (CAA), SCAH actively contributes to the Annual Conference through its standing panel, which highlights topical research and fosters dialogue among scholars of contemporary art. SCAH also holds its annual business meeting during the conference and occasionally organizes workshops and other networking opportunitiees.
In 2022, SCAH’s Executive Board made the decision to withdraw our panel from the official proceedings of the 110th CAA conference after our request to make the session free and open to the public was denied. Despite this, we continued to uphold our commitment to accessibility and inclusivity by hosting an alternative un-CAA panel, detailed in our Open Letter to CAA.
Selection Process
Members are encouraged to submit proposals for the session chair and topic for the SCAH-sponsored panel. Proposals may be sent to the President via email or presented at the annual business meeting held during the CAA conference. The final selection is initiated by the President and determined through an anonymous vote by members of the Executive Committee.
To learn more about joining our community or renewing your membership, visit our Membership page.
SCAH at CAA 2026
Dissent Nearby: Diasporic & LGBTQ+ Resistance
SCAH-sponsored panel at 2026 College Art Assocation Annual ConferenceChair: Jocelyn E. Marshall, University of South Florida
Friday, February 20 • 9:00 am to 10:30 am CT
Hilton Chicago • 8th Floor – Lake Ontario
In frantically trying to gain Republican support to pass a funding bill, Donald Trump asserted on Truth Social “We have to remain UNITED – NO DISSENT…VERY IMPORTANT…” (8 March 2025). As artists and activists have demonstrated for years, solidarity building and modes of dissent, however, often go hand-in-hand. This panel subsequently spotlights entwined histories of U.S.-based immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities as part of ongoing efforts to address issues of xenophobia, racism, homophobia, and transphobia using an intersectional and transnational feminist lens. Throughout the last century, American immigration acts have routinely included language of “sexual deviation” and anti-HIV-positive rhetoric in impermissibility rubrics—a pattern that often evades analysis of such legislation and state-sanctioned violence. While, today, we are seeing immigrants be deported to Guantanamo Bay alongside federally funded programs removing “T” and “Q” from materials using an LGBTQ+ acronym, the relationships between U.S. legislation, diasporic displacement, and gender and sexual identities are arguably under-discussed in tandem. By closing this gap, the panel fosters both timely critical conversations and steps toward solidarity building, collective organizing, and mutual aid. Together, panelists voice dissent inside and outside of gallery walls.
Papers from a range of professionals – art historians, theorists, curators, artists, and community organizers – are invited to collaboratively investigate the intersections of diasporic and LGBTQ+ resistance. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Anti-imperial queer feminist methodologies
- Strategies for navigating tensions between arts activism and institutional strictures
- Critical approaches to issues of displacement and/or archival erasure or exclusion in art history scholarship
- Solidarity building and forms of mutual aid inside and outside of the university and museum
Papers
“Queer Feminist Redress of U.S. Imperalism,” Dr. Jocelyn E. Marshall, University of South Florida
“Looking at JEB: Disidentification and the World-Making Power of Queer Photography,” Deirdre Price
“THEY/THEM/THEN,” Jess Westbrook
Previous SCAH CAA Panels
2025 Narratives of Exile, Movement, and Migration in Contemporary Art, Sarah Kleinman, Nicole F. Scalissi, Serda Yalkin, Olivia Murphy, Paloma Checa-Gismero, Peter M. Chametzky
2024 Fugitive Ecologies in Contemporary Art, Allison Young, Andrew Hennlich, Jason Waite, Kate Keohane, Brianne Cohen
2023 Global Solidarities: Contemporary Art and Internationalism, Aaron Katzeman, Jessy Bell, Erina Duganne, Paloma Checa-Gismero
2022* un-CAA panel: Fighting Back to Reclaim Institutions, Nic Aziz, Tatiana Flores, Pablo Helguera, Christine Y. Kim
* SCAH’s Executive Board decided to retract our panel from the official proceedings of 110th annual CAA conference after our request to offer it free and open to the public was denied. See our Open Letter to CAA and the details about our un-CAA panel.
2021 Agitators and Aggregators: New Cycles of Contemporary Art History, Rose G. Salseda, Andy Campbell, Johanna Gosse, Jacqueline Francis
2020 The Status and Stakes of Contemporary Art History Publishing Today, Susan Bielstein, Dushko Petrovich, Rebecca Uchill, Anuradha Vikram, Benjamin Tiven
2019 What is Contemporary Art History, Now? 10 Years of SCAH, Pamela M. Lee, Tobias Wofford, Daniel Quiles, Suzanne Hudson, Alexander Dumbadze
2018 Sites of Micro-Community, Roberto Tejada, Jennifer Doyle, Saloni Mathur, Susanna Newbury
2017 Contemporary Art History: Temporal Frames and Geographic Terrains, Steven Nelson, David Joselit, Irene V. Small, Anneka Lenssen
2016 Exhibition History as Contemporary Art History, Lynne Cooke, Glenn Phillips, Julian Myers-Szupinska
2015 Histories and Economies of Contemporary Art, Rhea Anastas, Katy Siegel, Howard Singerman, Nato Thompson
2014 Identity Politics: Then and Now, Hamza Walker, Gregg Bordowitz, Joan Kee, Dieter Roelstraete
2013 The Social, the Relational, and the Participatory: A Reevaluation, Martha Rosler, Anton Vidokle, Shannon Jackson, Julia Robinson
2012 Digging Where You Stand, Kellie Jones, Michelle Kuo, Frank Smigiel
2011 Critical Histories, Barbara Rose, Diedrich Diedrichsen, Thomas Crow
2010 Contemporary Art History in 2020, Hannah Feldman, Amelia Jones, Robert Storr
2009 What is Contemporary Art History? Grant Kester, Pam Lee, Richard Meyer, Miwon Kwon
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The Society of Contemporary Art Historians aims to foster strong scholarship and promote collegiality within the vital field of contemporary art history.
© 2025 Society of Contemporary Art Historians.