Upon our arguable return to normalcy after the SARS-CoV2 pandemic, the members of the Spanish Association of American Studies will be gathering in Granada to discuss the grounds that have historically established notions of normalcy and abnormalcy in American society and culture since its origin to the present moment. Said notions trigger conceptualizations about what things ought to be like and their deviation from the norm, thus a moral or ethical assessment that is time and place precise, i.e. culturally specific to the US context. In the context of the 21^st world pandemic, climate crisis, the #metoo movement and the #Icantbreathe movement, the recent American political turn from Trumpist era to Democrat Joe Biden presidency, discourses that focus on the (impossible) return to normalcy can be analyzed on many levels. Is such a return possible in American discourses? What affects does this “return to normalcy” narrative trigger? Are narratives of renewal and healing, as was the case of Harding’s speech, mainstream? Or do they coexist, collide, counterpose with other discourses? Do narratives reconstruct a historical vision of a past to which it is possible or impossible to return?

For the 2023 SAAS conference at the University of Granada, we welcome members to approach the “return to normal” from sundry theoretical positions within American Studies, regardless of whether they further interrogate or challenge American discourses, past and present, based on a “return to normal” logics.