From April 4-6, 2024, the 35th Biennial European Association for American Studies (EAAS) conference, titled "1924-2024: The American Immigrant Narrative Revisited", took place in Munich and online. The conference was hosted by the Bavarian American Academy (BAA) and brought together 239 scholars from 35 countries.

To assess the ambivalent legacies of the American immigrant narrative, the conference called for an intersectional approach to the topic, asking participants to examine gendered regimes of immigration, settler colonialism and often suppressed histories of Indigenous communities, the precarious labor conditions of (im)migrant workers, class restrictions, and sexual exploitation, past and present. Those topics were discussed by a total of 154 speakers in 52 panels. 18 members of the Bavarian American Academy actively contributed to the conference as speaker or panel chair.

The conference also featured three public keynote lectures by Prof. Dr. Karen V. Hansen (Brandeis University), Prof. Dr. Paul Apostolidis (London School of Economics and Political Science), and Prof. Dr. Carmen Birkle (Marburg University). All three talks were live-streamed and are available on the YouTube-channel of the Amerikahaus.

The conference was organized by the Bavarian American Academy. The main conference site was Amerikahaus Munich, with Munich's Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film (HFF) as a second event location.

Photo: Statue of Liberty reflection in mirror ©karenfoleyphotography / edited