The Balkan-South Slavic series of conferences was initiated in 1978 by a small group of Balkan linguists at the University of Chicago, A conference has been held every two years since then at a location in North America. The conference is primarily for North American scholars but international visitors are also welcome. Most papers are in linguistics, but there is usually at least one session devoted to literature, folklore and other cultural topics. Panels are not organized in advance. Once the allowable number of abstracts have been accepted, they will be organized into panels based on thematic order.