2026 MALAS CONFERENCE
MALAS 2026 Annual Conference
October 23-24, 2026
Colorado Mesa University, Grand Junction, Colorado
76th Annual Meeting of the Midwest Association for Latin American Studies (a hybrid event)
Freedom: Independence and Sovereignty in the Americas
OVERVIEW:
The 76th MALAS conference invites proposals regarding genealogies of freedom, independence, and sovereignty in the Americas to trace their legacies and ongoing reconfigurations across Latin America and the Caribbean. Independence was not simply declared from above; it was lived from below through the actions of soldiers and militias, urban workers and rural laborers, women who sustained and subverted political orders, enslaved and free Afro-descendant populations who seized on the contradictions of liberal ideology, and Indigenous communities who pursued their own survival and sovereignty on their own terms.
THEME
As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence, this moment invites critical reflection. Situating the United States as one experience among many, rather than as the singular model of modern self-determination, invites critical and comparative understanding of how freedom, independence, and sovereignty have been defined, debated, and reimagined across the Americas. Much like the fight for freedom and independence in the United States, Latin America followed similar trajectories: prolonged conflicts, fragile alliances, and competing visions that gave rise not to a single founding moment, but to a series of uneven, disputed, and regionally distinct ruptures. The Haitian Revolution, for example, still epitomizes struggles for political sovereignty, inseparable from tensions over race, labor, bodily autonomy, and the meanings of freedom across the hemisphere. Efforts to articulate continental unity–such as the Congress of Panama in 1826–also underscore both the possibilities and limits of postcolonial coordination in the face of internal divisions and external pressures.
Today, scholars challenge traditional narratives about revolutionary wars in the Americas and the social consequences of processes of nation building and modernization. They have opened new pathways for more inclusive histories that foreground Indigenous and Afro-Latin cultures, as well as studies on the growing political and social representation of women and LGBTQ+ individuals in shaping national and regional identities. At the same time, activists have identified state officials as agents of environmental destruction. Thus, in so doing, they affirm the rights of people and communities to govern their natural resources according to local needs, knowledge, and sustainability, as reflected in anti-mining movements, Indigenous land claiming, and struggle over climate policies in island nations.
Therefore, the 76th MALAS conference aims to rethink conceptions of freedom and independence, and to broaden established notions of sovereignty to include often overlooked voices, marginalized agencies, and environmentalism. We invite academics, students, independent scholars, practitioners, and artists to exchange ideas about intra-regional and inter-regional cooperation in order to enhance cultural understanding and build social tolerance throughout the Americas and beyond. We welcome contributions from all disciplines.
**General inquiries regarding the annual conference may be addressed to general@malasnet.org. Please include "Conference 2026" in the subject line.