This volume contains the proceedings of the AMS Special Session on Geometry of Submanifolds, held from October 25-26, 2014, at San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, and the AMS Special Session on Recent Advances in the Geometry of Submanifolds: Dedicated to the Memory of Franki Dillen (1963-2013), held from March 14-15, 2015, at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Ml. The focus of the volume is on recent studies of submanifolds of Riemannian, semi-Riemannian, Kaehlerian and contact manifolds. Some of these use techniques in classical differential geometry, while others use methods from ordinary differential equations, geometric analysis, or geometric PDEs. By brainstorming on the fundamental problems and exploring a large variety of questions studied in submanifold geometry, the editors hope to provide mathematicians with a working tool, not just a collection of individual contributions. This volume is dedicated to the memory of Franki Dillen, whose work in submanifold theory attracted the attention of and inspired many geometers.