Winston-Salem 2026

Rooted in a rich history of craft and reinvention, the 2026 SECAC conference will be guided by the theme Interwoven: Threads, Patterns & Disruptions. Known as the “Southern City of the Arts,” Winston-Salem has long woven together threads of tradition and transformation from its Moravian beginnings to its industrial rise in textiles and tobacco, and now into its second life as a hub for innovation and the arts.

Interwoven: Threads, Patterns & Disruptions evokes both the literal and metaphorical: the warp and weft of hand-made, home-grown, and self-reliant creative practices; the liminal nature of a city in transition, shaped by transplants, climate, and growth; and the patterns that emerge and disrupt across time, craft, and culture. The theme acknowledges the region’s textile heritage, where weaving connects Winston-Salem to Greensboro, High Point, and beyond while highlighting how the arts continue to interlace histories, communities, and futures.

SECAC 2026 invites artists, scholars, and educators to explore art as embedded in connections that hold memory, identity, resilience, and innovation within its threads. Through the interactions that occur at the conference including conversations, presentations, panels, and exhibitions, SECAC 2026 will honor the city’s layered past while extending its reach into the evolving landscape of contemporary practice.

For the Call for Session Proposals, SECAC invites submissions for 105-minute sessions to be presented in-person during the conference. Session proposals will be reviewed by a panel of peers, and all accepted proposals will be included in the Call for Papers to solicit individual presentations. Alternative session styles are welcome. If you have an idea that does not fit the traditional session model and would like to discuss it before submitting a proposal, please contact the Academic Director at SECACdirector@UMW.edu. 

Sessions are 105 minutes and are organized by a session chair. Sessions may take various forms: chairs are encouraged to think about alternative modalities in addition to academic presentations. This could be a roundtable discussion among invited speakers; a series of demonstrations or performances; a collection of presenters selected from the call for papers; or a panel of speakers pre-selected by the chair. Other creative approaches to the session format are also welcome. Each prospective chair or co-chair may submit only one proposal. Each conference participant may chair one session and may present one paper. Undergraduate students are not permitted to serve as session chairs.

Tracy Stonestreet
Academic Conference Director, SECAC 2026
Winston-Salem, NC
SECACdirector@umw.edu

Share