History faculty member receives grant to collect oral histories on Flannery O’Connor

Dr. Stephanie Opperman, associate professor of history at Georgia College & State University, won a grant of nearly $150,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for a faculty/student project collecting oral histories on the life and works of alumna and author Flannery O’Connor.

The funds were part of $28.1 million in grants awarded recently by NEH for more than 200 humanities projects nationwide. These were given for initiatives at colleges and universities, conservation research, innovative digital resources and infrastructure projects at cultural institutions, according to the NEH website.

“We are excited to interview community members who lived in Milledgeville during the heart of O’Connor’s writing career (1951-1964),” Opperman said.

“We hope to learn more about experiences with class, gender, race, disability, the Cold War, religious beliefs, commercialism and old/new South mythologies in 1950s rural Georgia,” she said. “Given that the grant is centered on student engagement, we are also looking forward to what our undergraduates produce in collaboration with the community.”

Opperman is listed as principal investigator and project co-director. Dr. Jordan Cofer, associate provost for Transformative Learning Experiences, will serve as co-director. English Professor Dr. Bruce Gentry and Dr. Bob Wilson, emeritus professor of history and university historian, will serve as scholarly consultants.

Their endeavor, titled “Collecting the Past,” will take three years to complete. It’ll include related podcasts and videos, as well as oral histories about O’Connor.

The project team will begin hiring student researchers this summer. Oral history interviews will start taking place in spring 2024, as part of Opperman’s HIST 4010 Local History course. Students interested in conducting interviews and/or producing podcasts should be on the lookout for future announcements related to the grant.