46th National Women's Studies Annual Conference

Thursday, November 5th - Sunday, November 8th 

The National Women’s Studies Association leads the field of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Established in 1977, NWSA has more than 2,000 members worldwide. Our annual conference regularly draws more than 1.800 attendees and is the only annual meeting in the continental United States of America and its territories that is exclusively dedicated to showcasing the latest feminist scholarship. 

Register for the Annual Conference 

  • Registration for the NWSA Annual Conference is a separate fee from the Association membership.
  • If interested in attending our Pre-Conferences, registration is separate and available here.

➡️ A major benefit of having an active membership is the automatic discount for events. We recommend purchasing your membership first before completing your registration. 

Presenter Requirements

Please note that all presenters for the NWSA Annual Conference are required to have an active membership and be registered by September 4th, 2026 in order to guarantee your inclusion in our conference program. Your membership must be active at the time of the conference (Nov 5-8, 2026).

2026 Annual Conference Registration

Annual Conference Pricing & Important Deadlines

    All pertinent details regarding our Annual Conference registration and program are also included in our Registration page as well as your registration confirmation email!

    EARLY BIRD RATES

    (Ends August 4, 2026)

    REGULAR REGISTRATION RATES

    (Ends October 29, 2026)

    LATE (ON-SITE) RATES

    (Ends November 7, 2026)
    Student Member $120 USD $140 USD $140 USD
    Member $235 USD $325 USD $400 USD
    Non-Member $360 USD $450 USD $510 USD

    Access Reviewer Feedback | 2026 Submission Portal

    We received over 1,327 proposals, and our 2026 Proposal Review Committee worked with care to review submissions while teaching, learning, and resisting as our field is under siege. Our program is possible due to their service and leadership.

    We encourage you to view and incorporate the feedback provided by our Proposal Review Committee; it is our hope that these perspectives strengthen your work and contributions to the field.

    • Login to your X-CD account
    • You can access your reviewers' comments by going into the submission form in which you submitted to 
    • Select 'Submission Status'
    • Once selected, a pop-up will appear, displaying your final status notification email
    • Scroll down to read our reviewers' comments.

    *The email used in your submission will be the email the Association uses to contact you about its status!

    Enter the Portal

    Book Your Hotel & Plan Your Trip

    The 2026 NWSA Annual Conference will convene at the Hilton Atlanta in Atlanta, Georgia; all sessions and conference events will be hosted on-site, under one roof! We’re excited to share more details as we confirm conference programming!

    Plan Your Trip

    Our 2026 Call for Proposals (CFP) is available and downloadable as a pdf here and as an image-free accessible document here.

    📌 You can view our Trans/Gender-Variant Caucus Call for Proposals (CFP)  here. 

    📌 You can view our Disability Studies Interest Group's Call for Proposals (CFP) here.

    The Submission Portal for our 2026 Annual Conference opened on February 2nd, 2026 and closed on March, 23rd 2026.

    Each year, the National Office invites submissions via our official Call for Proposals. The Association President sets the theme and areas of focus (sub-themes) that guide the curation of our conference program. We welcome proposals from activists, administrators, artists, educators, dreamers, practitioners, and feminist trouble makers with a vested interest in and commitment to promoting and supporting the production and dissemination of knowledge about gender and sexuality through teaching, learning, research and service in academic and other settings.

    Our commitments are to: illuminate the ways in which women’s, gender, and sexuality studies are vital to education; to demonstrate the contributions of feminist scholarship that is anti-racist, comparative, decolonial, global, intersectional and interdisciplinary to understandings of the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences; and to promote synergistic relationships between scholarship, teaching and civic engagement in understandings of culture and society.

    As a gentle reminder, the Association limits presenters to two (2) presentation sessions to assist us with building the conference schedule as well as honor all of our needs for balance and wellness in what can be a very capitalist space of expected (constant) production, and to allow for more diverse presenter participation!

    Stay tuned for resources on preparing proposals, submission guidelines and more!

    *Delivered at the 2025 Annual Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico
    Buenas Tardes Mi Gente. Good Afternoon Friends and Comrades.
    Thank you President Heidi Renée Lewis for the introduction and for your leadership in working to stabilize, repair, and prepare our association for the continued transformational work ahead of us.
    ***
    I now have the extreme pleasure of announcing next year’s conference theme, and I’ll do so by sharing a bit about myself and what I’ve been thinking about lately.
    I attended my first NWSA in 2002 (Las Vegas) as a Women’s Studies graduate student under the mentorship of Laura Briggs. I came back to attending NWSA regularly in 2015, after completing a PhD in Performance Studies under the guidance of the late Dr. Jose E. Muñoz. I would not have committed to those arduous and expensive years of study if I had not first fallen in love with feminist advocacy and social justice organizing as an undergraduate at the Women’s Resource Center at UMass Dartmouth, which was then (and is still) under the direction of Dr. Juli Parker.
    Academia expects folks like me to declare our scholarly pedigree and leave the rest unsaid as we supposedly “move up” in the world and settle into the privileges academic life promises and sometimes delivers. Feminism, however, demands that we disrupt expectations. And while time does not allow for a nuanced sharing of my working class, first generation, diasporic Puerto Rican life, let's just say: I was a wild child surviving a chaotic upbringing when I entered academia and despite higher education’s best efforts, while knowledge has given me understanding, purpose, and community, it has not—and will not—domesticate that wildness in me.
    In March, I resigned from a tenured position in WGSS at SUNY New Paltz. Before my official resignation, I took a medical leave to tend to the mostly psychological wounds inflicted by my on-campus arrest. I am one of only two faculty who were arrested for daring to stand tall alongside our students in demanding that SUNY divest from the genocide in, and occupation of, Palestine. While on medical leave, I spent a lot of time in the forest. I found solace for my grief (and rage) in the trees, water, animals, insects—I sat with them and listened, looked for lessons in slowness, presence, abundance, capacity, and reciprocity. And what I found was a new and intense appreciation for the wisdom of feminists who engage and affirm the non-human as teacher, who embrace the excessive as freedom, and who celebrate the ‘out of order’ or the ‘disorder’ as decolonial possibility.

    Embracing what I lovingly refer to as the “woo woo” in the world felt like a radical departure from the ways I thought and moved as a queer feminist scholar when I was writing my first book Graffiti Grrlz. But considering that I spend my summers as a monarch butterfly doula, maybe it wasn’t so radical.

    In Graffiti Grrlz, I make the argument that whether they claim a feminist identity or not—graffiti grrlz perform a feminism that disrupts the heterosexism in graffiti subculture specifically, and in Hip Hop culture broadly. I analyzed how the most venerated, the most difficult to execute, and the most indecipherable form of graffiti writing—wildstyle—was gendered, clearly influenced by a colonially imposed gender binary whereby girls paint like this and boys paint like that; by these rules girls are not supposed to perfect a wildstyle aesthetic, but of course they do. When girls in the graffiti world “go wild,” they perform a feminist intervention that deconstructs the aesthetic and social order of the subculture.

    The escalated fight against white supremacist capitalist patriarchal fascism is a continuation of a battle for our bodies, our livelihoods, our knowledges, and our birthrights. Everyday we receive news about yet another institution that complied (in advance) with the frameworks of the Trump administration: closing centers, institutes, programs, and departments. Our funding has already been or will be taken. They’ve banned our books and even our words. They restrict our movement and surveil our every breath. And when I read this news, it makes me want to wil’ out. My whole body screams: refuse to comply, Jessica. No matter the risk.
    Just as we know that the priorities of, and complicities in, liberal imperial feminism do not move our movement toward liberation, we know that in the face of authoritarianism, making concessions, performing “civility,” and complying in advance will not save us.
    So when we convene for our conference in Atlanta next year, I invite you to engage, embrace, and play with the wild in and around us under the theme: Wild Feminisms.
    The wild child in me, is looking for the wild in you, in our feminist community. May our theme activate a feminist praxis that spreads embodied resistance like wildfire.

    Thank you,
    President Jessica N. Pabón

    Register for the Annual Conference

    Online registration for our 46th annual gathering is now open! NWSA Members - don't forget to login to your account before you start the registration process.

    All presenters are required to register for the conference and hold active memberships. Please ensure that your membership is up-to-date to access the member discounted rate. 

    Start Your Registration

    Become a Member (or) Renew Your Membership!

    As a member of the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA), you belong to the nation's largest network of feminist scholars, educators, and activists. The NWSA supports the work of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality studies practitioners; conducts and disseminates research on the field; strives to develop multi-racial, multi-ethnic programs, services, and operations; and hosts an annual conference that draws more than 1,800 attendees.
     
    The National Office authenticates accounts within 48 business hours; our National Office is anchored by a two-person staff and we appreciate your patience.

    Learn More

    Reserve your Room at the Hilton Atlanta

    The Association offers a room block with discounted rates for conference attendees; book your room in our official room block via the link below.

    Make your Reservation

    Accessible Presentations & Best Practices

    The NWSA works alongside our Access and Inclusion Committee to help curate how we fortify access and inclusion initiatives at the Annual Conference and develop resources to enact a culture of inclusion beyond reasonable accommodations amongst our presenters and attendees.

    Our commitments serve to meet the needs of attendees with disabilities but also work to the benefit of all conference attendees in an effort to normalize accessibility interventions as well as disability justice measures throughout our culture and community.

    Learn More

    Have a Question?

    Please explore our Annual Conference Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page to learn more about our ongoing and expanding accessibility commitments, support services (such as childcare needs), and more! As we collaborate with our Borikén-based vendors and liaisons, we will update our resources accordingly.

    Learn More