Our Conferences

ACTC’s flagship program is our Annual North American conference, where professors, administrators, and graduate students from all over the world gather to discuss core texts and how we teach them. Even as ACTC grows and our programs expand into other formats, times of the year, and parts of the world, it is at the North American Conference that we are most likely to gather, reconnect, and reorient ourselves to the noble, challenging, and sometimes lonely business of core teaching. 

As with all ACTC conferences, our panels are scheduled for unconventionally long blocks of time and we insist that all panel papers are both short (no more than five pages) and focused on substantial engagement with a core text. All our panel sessions are conducted around tables, and our ultimate aim is serious, productive, and enjoyable conversation. 

The plenary sessions at our North American conferences have been led by some of the most accomplished scholars at some of the most prestigious universities in the world. They bring to ACTC their seriousness both about scholarly work and teaching, and they consistently inspire us to look beyond any facile account of academic work that might pit the two sorts of endeavor against one another. 

Our North American conferences are the cooperative effort of sponsoring and co-sponsoring institutions and the offices of ACTC. Sponsoring and co-sponsoring institutions have the opportunity to showcase their institution’s core text programs in panels reserved exclusively for their institution’s presentation. They are involved in development of theme and selection of plenary speakers, as well as conference recruitment. Interested parties should contact info@coretexts.org