About the Society
The Flannery O’Connor Society was founded in 1992 to, in the words of Sura Rath, its first president, “promote and assist O’Connor studies through the organization of conferences and special meetings, and to foster scholarship and academic community amongst O’Connor scholars.” Since then, it has grown to include approximately 400 members around the world—including scholars, clergy, and fans—all interested in encouraging and understanding the writings of Flannery O’Connor.
The Society holds its annual business meeting during each year’s American Literature Association Conference. These meetings set goals and plans for the Society's future and report on happenings throughout the past year. They are open to all members.
The Society regularly sponsors academic panels on O’Connor at ALA's annual meeting, the ALA’s Symposium on American Fiction, and regional MLAs across the country.In addition, we seek to be a clearinghouse for O’Connor studies through Cheers!, a newsletter published twice a year and sent to all members.
The Society holds its annual business meeting during each year’s American Literature Association Conference. These meetings set goals and plans for the Society's future and report on happenings throughout the past year. They are open to all members.
The Society regularly sponsors academic panels on O’Connor at ALA's annual meeting, the ALA’s Symposium on American Fiction, and regional MLAs across the country.
Officers
President: Robert Donahoo
Professor of English at Sam Houston State University and co-editor of Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Terrorism (U. of Tenn. P). He has published many articles on O’Connor in journals ranging from the Flannery O’Connor Review to the CEA Critic and Contemporary Thought. His essays on O’Connor have appeared in “On the Subject of the Feminist Business”: Rereading Flannery O’Connor, edited by Teresa Caruso, and Inside the Church of Flannery O’Connor: Sacrament, Sacramental, and the Sacred in Her Fiction, edited by Joanne Halleran McMullen and Jon Parrish Peede. He has also published essays on the drama of Horton Foote, southern novelist Larry Brown, the fiction of Tolstoy, and postmodern science fiction. Contact him at eng_rxd@shsu.edu.
Vice-President and Editor of Cheers!: Avis Hewitt
Associate professor of English at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. She has been editor of Cheers! The Flannery O'Connor Society Newsletter since 2006 and teaches a major-authors course on O'Connor in addition to survey and period courses in American literature, a genre course in fiction, and a capstone survey of literary theory. She earned her B.A. at the College of Wooster and her M.A. and Ph.D. at Ball State University. She taught at both Campbellsville University and Northern Arizona University before moving to Michigan. In 2006 she organized a one-hundred participant international conference at GVSU. She subsequently co-edited Flannery O'Connor in the Age of Terrorism: Essays on Violence and Grace (U. of Tenn. P.) with Robert Donahoo, collecting fifteen essays from papers, panel presentations, and plenary talks at the GVSU conference. She has published on the work of Mary McCarthy, Denise Levertov, John Updike, and O'Connor. Her 2011 essay comparing O'Connor and Updike as two American writers with "Christian concerns" appears in Flannery O'Connor: Critical Insights (Salem P.). She is currently working on a monograph delineating the connection between egocentric and theocritic desire in O'Connor's texts. Contact her at hewitta@gvsu.edu.