In case anybody is interested in the topics prevailing the American studies world, here are some of the panels held at the American Studies Association convention last October (full schedule here):

Queering the Regime: Challenging America’s Legal and Medical Notions of Sexuality and Masculinity Baby-Making, Bible-Based Sex: Acceptable Sexual Rhetorics and Practices in Contemporary Conservative Christianity Sex and National Security Trans(-lating, -forming, -cending) América: The Ethnic Mexican Female Body Politic Un-supersizing the American Female Body Julia Ward Howe’s Transnational Transexual Sex, Borders, and Citizenship Cross-Currents of Cosmopolitanism and Sexuality Transgressive Masculinity and Race, Sex, and Desire in Modern America