Introduction

With access to an archive of past conference programs, contributors were able to connect personal memory and associational history and help us reconstruct what the GSA has become and is today. Their responses are illuminating in part because of their subjective approach: nearly every one of them begins with individual memories, recalling persons who were influential, for example, or citing particularly important sessions, some clearly and others vaguely recollected. One by one, each author switches registers, turning to more objective accounts that take stock of the disciplinary differences, absences, and benchmarks evident at the conference as well as in the pages of the journal. The social character of these many reflections confirms the success that the GSA has had in serving as a platform for open dialogue. The issue's retrospective analyses reflect this impressive and at times unpredictable energy, an energy that has had transformational consequences for the discipline. The organization has grown and changed throughout the years (see figs. 1, 2, and 3). It started as a regional meeting in the American Southwest-featuring twenty-nine individual paper presentations and held on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe-and now it is a large, collaborative institution wherein ideas are cross-fertilized via a process of national and international cooperation. The conferences are events at which the social setting reinforces the practice of knowledge production. The organization has improved over time at facilitating this production on institutional and group levels, hence the development of GSA interdisciplinary networks and the multiday seminar format, both of which were introduced in recent years. Knowledge production requires a venue, in this case, an organization with conferences, panels, and sessions.