Dear SESAH members and friends,

These are confusing, hectic, but strangely quiet times. All our lives have been affected in important ways in the last month by the COVID-19 pandemic, and many of us are having to learn new digital strategies for doing our work remotely. Several national architectural history conferences scheduled for April and May, including SAH’s Seattle conference, have been cancelled or shifted to a virtual format.

We want to assure you that the SESAH board is closely watching the situation regarding our own annual meeting. We don’t know for sure what the landscape will look like in the coming months, but for now we expect and hope that by this fall the virus will be better understood and controlled and that travel restrictions will have been lifted. Toward that end, we will continue to plan for our annual meeting to be held in Natchez, Mississippi, September 30-October 3, 2020 by reviewing paper abstracts and award nominations in the coming months.

We have, however, extended the deadline for the Call for Papers to May 18 to allow you more time to prepare your paper abstracts, and our Papers Committee will respond to potential presenters by June 8. We hope this extension gives us all something positive to plan for: “what’s next?” instead of “what now?”

Like many of you, I look forward every year to the SESAH conference as a time to catch up with longtime friends and make new friends too, so after this long and disconcerting season of change and anxiety, we look forward to seeing all of you safe and sound at our annual “family reunion” in Natchez, Mississippi.

Take care,
Jennifer Baughn