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Togetherness

The past few years have been difficult in untold and untellable ways. As part of this, it has meant that AMSA has not been able to be in-person with all of us in the room together. To seek to recenter ourselves on our mission and ethos, this year’s conference is focused on coming back together in person with each other. AMSA’s conference have always focused on community and an ethos of collective-engagement and togetherness, and this year our core focus will be on renewing this spirit that these conferences have always had.

Concordia University is located on unceded Indigenous lands. The Kanien’kehá:ka Nation is recognized as the custodians of the lands and waters on which we gather today. Tiohtià:ke/Montréal is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations. Today, it is home to a diverse population of Indigenous and other peoples. We respect the continued connections with the past, present and future in our ongoing relationships with Indigenous and other peoples within the Montreal community.

Catherine M. Roach has 25 years of grant-funded research experience on gender, sexuality, and American popular culture. A two-time Fulbright awardee with a PhD from Harvard and publications in both fiction and nonfiction, she's been an invited visiting professor in Canada, Australia, and Europe.  She is Professor of New College, an innovative liberal arts program at the University of Alabama, where she's won the school's top research and teaching awards and where she offers a popular cross-university course titled "Sexuality & Society."  Originally from Ottawa, Canada, she is based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

The United States may have a puritanical past, but the 21st century is wide open to diverse genderexpression and romance.

Good Sex is the manifesto—or Manisexto, if you will—for this cultural revolution. Same-sex marriage is legal, the #MeToo movement has exploded, colleges nationwide now teach consent-based sexual health, the media celebrates body positivity, and transgender visibility has become mainstream. Defining "good sex" as both ethical and pleasurable, Catherine M. Roach features such topics as equity, intersectionality, and shared pleasure while offering a lively discussion that is inclusively feminist, queer-friendly, and sex-positive without being divisive.

An accessible guidebook, Good Sex provides hope that America's sexual, gender, and racial injustices can be addressed together. After all, this new gender and sexual revolution strengthens the pursuit of happiness and love. Welcome to the revolution!

Aaron Boothby is a poet from Riverside, California now living in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. His work has appeared in carte blanche, PRISM, and The Puritan, as well as two chapbooks: Reperspirations, Exhalations, Wrapt Inflections (2016, Anstruther Press), Wave Fields (2020, Skyebound Press), and his first full-length collection Continent (2023 Penguin Random House).