Dear SPA Members,
We are aware that AAA sections and members are making determinations about whether or not to attend the 2024 AAA meeting in Tampa. As you probably know, some members and sections are boycotting the meeting over concerns about safety, and
there are broad concerns about Florida legislation and policies on gender, race, education, and immigration.
The SPA Board is not taking an official position on a boycott. We think that ethical and political decisions whether to attend the AAA meeting are best made by SPA members.
In light of an anticipated reduced in-person attendance for this meeting, we have modified plans for the SPA Business and Board Meetings. These will be conducted virtually to allow for broader attendance. The SPA will still review submissions for SPA sponsorship, including invited sessions, to be held on-site at the AAA. The AAA general call submission portal is scheduled to open on March 16th and close on April 24th.
Please note that four months after the AAA, we will have the Biennial Meeting of the SPA from April 3rd-6th, 2025. Besides a broad exchange of research across the field of psychological anthropology, this meeting affords us the time to be together with
colleagues and friends in a way that is much treasured by the SPA membership.
At the Biennial, our SPA Prizes will be awarded for the Stirling Award, the Boyer Prize for Contributions to Psychoanalytic Anthropology, the Condon Prize for Best Student Essay in Psychological Anthropology, and the SPA Lifetime Achievement Award. The Biennial will take place at the Santa Ana Pueblo’s Tamaya Hyatt Resort and Spa, New Mexico (owned by the Santa Ana Pueblo and managed by Hyatt). Some will recall that we convened our 2019 SPA Biennial Meeting at this location. The Tamaya Hyatt has beautiful views of the Santa Ana Pueblo landscape between the Sandia Mountains and the Rio Grande River, along with hiking trails, a horse rescue, a fitness center, and spa treatments.
Please feel free to contact Bridget Haas bmh7@case.edu or Janis Jenkins jhjenkins@ucsd.edu if you have any questions.
Best,
The SPA Board (Whitney Duncan, Yehuda Goodman, Bridget Haas, Janis H. Jenkins, Vincent Laliberté, Ted Lowe, Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, Aidan Seale-Feldman, C. Jason Throop, Jo Weaver, Hua [Miranda] Wu)