Dr. Wray to serve as guest faculty member at 2007 institute on O’Connor

August 21, 2006

A Lyon College professor well known for her expertise in the work of fictionist Flannery O’Connor will be sharing her knowledge with 25 other college faculty members from across the U.S. in July 2007.

Dr. Virginia Wray, the W.C. Brown Jr. Professor of English, will be one of six guest faculty members to teach part of the July 2007 Summer Institute, “Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor.”

The program, to be held at O’Connor’s alma mater, Georgia College & State University, will bring to Milledgeville, Ga., 25 college faculty who want to learn more about how to do research on and teach the works of Flannery O’Connor.

Funded by a $155,000 grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute will be coordinated by co-directors Bruce Gentry and John D. Cox of the GCSU Department of English, Speech and Journalism.

The 25 participants selected for the Institute will spend time studying in the GCSU O’Connor Collection and working on O’Connor-related projects that they propose as part of the process of applying for the Institute. Participants will live on campus and will have time to get acquainted with Milledgeville’s Old Governor’s Mansion, the Old Capitol Museum, and various O’Connor-related sites.

Professor Bob Wilson of GCSU will lead tours of Milledgeville’s Historic District, and Andalusia (the farm where O’Connor lived while completing most of her major works) will welcome visitors for a July Fourth celebration. The participants will also take field trips around Georgia, have opportunities to view and discuss film versions of O’Connor’s works, and be treated to readings by the creative writing faculty at GCSU.

Guest faculty are Richard Giannone of Fordham University, Sarah Gordon of GCSU, Michael Kreyling of Vanderbilt University, Farrell O’Gorman of Mississippi State University, Patricia Yaeger of the University of Michigan, and Dr. Wray of Lyon College.

The NEH grant is a tribute to the stature of Flannery O’Connor as an American writer and to GCSU as the home of O’Connor studies. She has achieved canonicity for many reasons: her sophisticated explorations of religion; her intelligent engagement with significant theologians and philosophers; her investigations of violence and evil; her unique responses to the traditions of American literature and to the cultural forces of her time; her ability to identify with outsiders, including children and the disabled and even those who perpetrate violence; her fascinating conflictedness over gender; and her skill as a satirist and stylist.

“Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor” will assist participants in examining O’Connor from all of these important angles. O’Connor is a writer who appears in virtually every anthology for college seminars in freshman literature, American literature, or the short story. She is the subject of scholarly articles, numerous dissertations, and critical books.

Georgia College & State University is O’Connor’s alma mater, although when she attended the school, it was called Georgia State College for Women. The O’Connor Collection in the GCSU Library is the largest collection of O’Connor materials in the world. It includes drafts of O’Connor’s major stories, her novels, and her essays; a large portion of O’Connor’s personal library; a significant collection of O’Connor’s letters; and a nearly complete collection of publications about O’Connor.

GCSU has hosted several major symposia on the works of O’Connor, and it is also home to the Flannery O’Connor Review, which along with its predecessor, The Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, constitutes the world’s longest-running journal dedicated to the study of a woman writer.