THE ACADEMY OF PHILOSOPHY & LETTERS

2023 Annual Conference
(Register Here)

“Picking Up the Pieces: Rebuilding a Viable Culture”

June 1-3, 2023

College Park Marriott

University of Maryland

College Park, MD

Much discourse over the last several years has been on American decline. Every level in every sector of government and society has failed in its basic tasks. Politics, religion, economy, society—all are in crisis. The engines of the American economy are sputtering, apparently incapable of adjusting in a productive way to new economic realities. The advances of technology were thought to be a healthy stimulus to social mobility, but instead seemed to have worn away the social bonds and living spaces essential to healthy community. Declining trust in our social institutions is exceeded only by the plummeting trustworthiness of those institutions. Religious organizations of all denominations have been embroiled in scandals and complicit in political intrigue of all sorts. Politicians are openly corrupt, enriching friends and family like the oligarchs of old. In cinema and literature there is less reason for outrage than boredom. Banality is the rule in the era of perpetual remakes and derivative sequels. The American conservative movement has lost its leavening influence and appears to have at long last cracked up, just as its critics long predicted. If at the end of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was convinced that the sun upon Washington’s chair was rising, it is now at long last clearly setting. 

Eras of turmoil are eras of opportunity. What does it take to rebuild the American polity across all of these domains? The Academy of Philosophy and Letters issues a call for papers and presentations on the theme of rebuilding. 

Confirmed speakers include Mark Mitchell and Christopher Owen.

●      What does it take to rebuild a healthy economy? 

●      What does it take to rebuild the constitutional foundations of a viable republic?

●      What does it take to rebuild and beautify our living spaces, the towns, cities, and rural communities so essential to healthy social life? 

●      What does it take to rebuild and renew a healthy imagination to our culture, literature, architecture, and cinema? 

●      What does it take to rebuild the formative institutions of religion, family, and education? 

●      What does it take to rebuild a viable conservative movement?

View the Conference Schedule. [coming soon]

View speaker bios. [coming soon]

Register for conference.

Reserve your hotel room.

Submit all inquiries to apl@philosophyandletters.org.

To submit a proposal, please email Dr. Luke Sheahan at luke.sheahan@gmail.com.