Dr. Jordan Cofer

This conference on Flannery O'Connor's life and works, sponsored by the Andalusia Institute at Georgia College, by the Flannery O'Connor Review, and by Andalusia Farm: the Home of Flannery O'Connor, will be held September 12-15, 2024 on the Georgia College campus in Milledgeville. Our conference is part of the world-wide celebration of Flannery O'Connor's centennial.

Speaking slots are limited. Send your paper proposal of 100-200 words, on any aspect of O'Connor's life and works, to Marshall Bruce Gentry at bruce.gentry@gcsu.edu by May 15, 2024. The conference program will be finalized and announced by July, 1 2024.

Be on the lookout for updates about our conference planning by visiting the website of Andalusia Institute at https://www.gcsu.edu/andalusiainstitute. Please feel free to share the announcement by saving the poster below and sharing with your networks.

Conference Organizing Committee:

• Marshall Bruce Gentry, English Dept., Georgia College (Committee Chair)
• Jordan Cofer, Andalusia Institute, Georgia College
• Matt Davis, Andalusia: the Home of Flannery O'Connor, Georgia College
• Robert Donahoo, English Dept, Sam Houston State University
• Kerry Neville, Creative Writing, Georgia College
• Katie Simon, English Dept, Georgia College

Because of the generous financial support from NEH, we will not charge a fee for registration. This conference has been made possible by a major grant (EH-288088-22) from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

We had such a blast providing writing and communication workshops for 5th graders through our partnerships with CREATE, Inc. and Twin Lakes Libraries of Middle Georgia Regional Library System! This year we'll hold workshops in poetry, prose, podcasting, and more. Please fill out this Smartsheet form to sign up your child. Parents/guardians should attend workshops with students. Registration is free and materials are provided!

We will be at Milledgeville First Friday to answer questions and share information about the program. Please reach out with any questions at 478-445-0816 or jessica.mcquain@gcsu.edu

Jessica McQuain, Writing for Success project coordinator

Featuring storytelling by local 5th-grade students as well as interviews with authors like Mary Carpenter, Chika Unigwe, Kerry James Evans, Laura Newbern, Kerry Beth Neville, and more!

The O'Connor Book Club will continue discussing O'Connor's letters in spring 2024. We had a great time at January's book club! Meetings will take place both in person at the Georgia Writers Museum in Eatonton at 2:00 p.m. and via Zoom at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Please register for the Zoom link. No registration is necessary for the in-person event but we do recommend you arrive early to treat yourself to refreshments from the coffee shop.

Feb. 15: Letters written in 1960, pp. 368-425 in The Habit of Being

Click here to sign up for February

Mar. 21: Letters written in 1961 and 1962, pp. 425-503 in The Habit of Being

Click here to sign up for March

Apr. 25: Letters written in 1963 and 1964, pp. 503-96 in The Habit of Being

Click here to sign up for April

Bruce Gentry, Andalusia Institute Fellow

The Flannery O’Connor Society invites abstract submissions for a proposed panel at the Society for the Study of Southern Literature’s biannual conference in Gulfport, Mississippi from June 23-26th, 2024. This panel’s theme is, broadly, “‘Reconstructing’ Flannery O’Connor,” in line with SSSL’s conference theme of “Reconstruction(s).”

In the essay “Beyond the Peacock: The Reconstruction of Flannery O’Connor” from her collection In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, Alice Walker reflects on Flannery O’Connor’s writing and its impact on her own sense of place and history. In one poignant conversation with her mother over lunch, Walker reflects on her mother saying: “When you make these trips back south […] just what is it exactly that you’re looking for?” Walker replies, “‘A wholeness […] because everything around me is split up, deliberately split up. History split up, literature split up, and people are split up too. It makes people do ignorant things” (48). Walker then discusses a meeting she attended on Mississippi history and literature with a group of librarians, ruminating on how “alive” the legacy of the Civil War was for the white women in attendance.

Recognizing the racial disparity in views of history, Walker urges that “the truth of any subject only comes when all the sides of the story are put together, and all their different meanings make one new one,” but she concludes on her mother’s stance: “Well, I doubt if you can ever get the true missing parts of anything away from the white folks […] they’ve sat on the truth so long by now they’ve mashed the life out of it” (49).

Walker’s essay is one effort to make sense of Flannery O’Connor’s work in light of the history of a “reconstructed” South, especially in its consideration of how, in O’Connor depictions of southern white women, “not a whiff of magnolia hovered in the air (and the tree itself might never have been planted)” (52). In a similar vein, this proposed panel seeks to further explore, “reconstruct,” and reconsider O’Connor’s writing. Possible topics could include, but are not limited to:

• “Reconstruction(s)” of gender, sexuality, race, ability, or religion in O’Connor’s fiction and prose
• Historical perspectives on “Lost Cause” mythos alive or complicated in O’Connor’s fiction
• Meta-analyses of how mid-century authors like O’Connor are being “reconsidered” in contemporary scholarship
• Analyses of how places are “reconstructed” in O’Connor’s fiction
• Considerations of how authorial legacies become “reconstructed” by contemporary readers, especially through contemporary engagements with an author’s letters and autobiographical prose
• Explorations of the grotesque and southern gothic, especially in the liminal space between southern history and postwar modernity

The Flannery O’Connor Society invites abstracts (of no more than 300 words) that speak to the above themes (and more). To read more about SSSL’s conference theme of “Reconstruction(s),” please visit the Society’s website or SSSL’s Facebook group.

Please send abstracts to Dr. Rachel Bryan (rbryan5@vols.utk.edu) by Thursday, February 8th, 2024. Please include your name, email, and a short bio (100 words) with the abstract. Presenters must be members of the Flannery O’Connor Society by the time of the conference. Information about the conference’s fee and reserved hotel rate can be found on the SSSL’s website.

Information about the Flannery O’Connor Society, including how to join, can be found on the Society’s website.

To purchase, send checks made out to: Flannery O'Connor Review

Price $15 for individuals, $16 for institutions

Mail to:

Bruce Gentry

Flannery O'Connor Review

English, CBX 44

Georgia College

410 W. Greene St.

Milledgeville, GA 31061