Message from the SASS homepage:
Dear SASS members, friends, and 2020 conference participants,
As promised, SASS has closely monitored the Covid-19 pandemic and the measures being undertaken worldwide to mitigate it. Given widespread travel restrictions and the need to protect the health of both our members and the people of Puerto Rico, we regretfully announce that the Society’s annual meeting scheduled for April 29-May 2, 2020 in Puerto Rico has been cancelled.
We remain fully committed to dialogue about the repercussions of Nordic colonialism in the Caribbean, the cooperation with local scholars and artists, and the opportunities for networking and collaboration between Caribbean, Nordic, and American scholars that the conference aimed to foster. To that end, we have rescheduled the Puerto Rico conference for April 27-30, 2022 in the same venue, which will preserve much of the important groundwork that the conference committee has done.
Many of you have already made travel plans. All hotel reservations at the Wyndham Grand Rio Mar may be cancelled without penalty until 7 days before arrival, so please cancel. Airlines are accommodating the need to change tickets, so contact your booked air carrier to request compensation. Conference fees can be handled in three ways:
- Donated in full or in part to SASS;
- Donated in full or in part to an accredited Puerto Rican relief organization;
- Refunded back to the method of payment used when you registered.
Please indicate your preference on this Google sheet. Donations and refunds will be processed after May 15, 2020. We appreciate your patience and your support.
We are very sorry that we won’t have the chance to gather together as a society this year, but we hope to see you next year in Seattle and/or in Puerto Rico the year after. The 2020 conference committee, made up of Lill-Ann Körber, Melissa Gjellstad, Elisabeth Oxfeldt, and Troy Storfjell, has put in many hours of work to prepare this conference, cooperate with local artists and scholars, and put together a meaningful, balanced program. SASS is tremendously grateful for the work they have done to craft a conference that would model ethical, thoughtful engagement with the difficult topic of postcolonial entanglements and for their willingness to pick up these threads again for the 2022 annual meeting.
With SASS’s sincere hopes for your well-being and that of your communities,
Julie K. Allen
SASS President 2019-2021
