GCSU assemblage travel to London UK for Flannery Abroad Conference

The Flannery O’Connor Institute for the Humanities along with colleagues and alumni from the Department of English travel in June to present at the Flannery Abroad conference hosted in London, England by Fordham University. Dr. Bruce Gentry, professor emerita and editor of the Flannery O’Connor Review, will give a keynote speech on Friday, June 6, "My Decades at the Circus: Thoughts on Editing the Flannery O'Connor Review" about his time editing the country’s oldest continuously published journal dedicated to the study an individual woman writer.  

The O’Connor Institute’s Interim Executive Director Dr. Katie Simon will chair a session titled “Flannery in Georgia: What Scholars Abroad Can Learn in Milledgeville” presented by Simon and Programming Coordinator Jessica McQuain with a virtual appearance by Georgia College & State University graduate student and 2025 valedictorian Charlotte Aexel. They will discuss the plethora of research materials available in Ina Dillard Russell Library’s Special Collections, as well as the must-see O’Connor sites like Andalusia, the historic home of Flannery O’Connor, Sacred Heart Catholic Church and Memory Hill Cemetery. Attendees will receive information on how to access oral histories gathered by the Collecting the Past project, as well as how to plan research trips to Milledgeville. Simon will also present a paper titled, “Traveling Blues: O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find.’” 

They’re joined by Department of English Lecturer Shannon Skelton, presenting on “When Death is Out of Fashion: Flannery O’Connor and Zadie Smith on Being Pilgrims at Home,” as well as GCSU alumna Penny Dearmin, now a professor at Georgia Southwestern State University. Dearmin will present on the topic “Grotesquerie: Finding O’Connor in Today’s Crime Stories.”  

The O’Connor Institute extends gratitude to Fordham University for providing travel awards to help make this trip possible. For more information about the conference, visit https://www.fordham.edu/academics/centers-and-institutes/curran-center-for-american-catholic-studies/events-and-series/flannery-abroad/.

For more information about the Flannery O’Connor Institute for the Humanities at GCSU, please visit: https://www.gcsu.edu/oconnorinstitute.