SULA was founded in 2001 by Angelika Kratzer and Lisa Matthewson at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Its goal is to foster the study of the semantics of under-represented languages of the Americas. Most of the presentations are based on primary fieldwork on Indigenous languages of North, Central and South America.
SULA has the additional goal of supporting the participation of junior scholars. Traditionally, at least one of the invited speakers is a student. There is also a tradition of having at least one invited speaker who is a member of an under-represented language community.
The format of SULA includes commentators for each session; the commentators draw connections between papers and initiate the discussion.
Since SULA 4, due to growing interest in the conference, we have had a poster session as well as talks.
The proceedings of SULA are published by the GLSA at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.