Flannery O'Connor: Imagination, Solitude, and the Oddities of Life | A Collegium Institute Panel

Collegium Institute hosted this evening panel conversation exploring Flannery O’Connor on the imagination, solitude, and the glorious oddities of life on June 3, 2020 via Zoom. This event is part of Collegium's new Ars Vivendi Arts Initiative and featured distinguished speakers Amy Alznauer, Jennifer Frey, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and Christine Flanagan, moderated by Jessica Sweeney the Ars Vivendi managing director.
This recorded version has a slightly unusual layout due to technical difficulties with the recording, but we hope you enjoy what turned out to be a fascinating, dynamic conversation about one of the greatest American female writers. See the full description of this event, along with short speaker bios below:
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Though long hailed a literary icon both for America and for the Catholic Church, Flannery O’Connor in the present moment may be more compelling than ever. To mark what would have been her 95th birthday this spring, a new NEH-supported documentary, Flannery, was released to critical acclaim, winning the Library of Congress’s first ever Ken Burns Prize for Film. Burns himself called O’Connor “one of our country’s greatest writers.”
She was a bold and honest writer, convicted by the power of storytelling to change the hearts of readers. She was both a strong woman and a fragile woman, adamantly and particularly herself while carrying her compromised body with her. From her mother’s farm, surrounded by her birds, Flannery gave us a vision that is marked by humor and violence, loss and triumph.
The global pandemic and quarantine protocols have only enhanced the relevance of the one who once wrote, “Lord, I’m glad I am a hermit novelist.” Before the world turned upside down, recent scholarship had traced the final thirteen years of her life which she spent in ill health and isolation on her family farm in Georgia. It is even more vital now to revisit the legacy of this author whose life and work have always spoken with a peculiar power, but appear to target us today.
For O'Connor, the world she observed from her own kind of isolation was dark and strange, and yet ineradicably marked by grace. In this Collegium Institute panel, four distinguished thinkers, all women, gathered together to discuss their fascination with one of the greatest American female writers:
-Amy Alznauer, Author of soon to be released picture book, The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor: A Life and Artist In Residence at St. Gregory the Great in Chicago.
-Jennifer Frey, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and co-editor of Self-Transcendence and Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology.
-Jessica Hooten Wilson, 2020-2021 Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence at the University of Dallas in their Humanities and Classical Education Graduate program and the author of Giving the Devil His Due: Flannery O‘Connor and The Brothers Karamazov.
-Christine Flanagan, Professor of English at University of the Sciences and the editor of The Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Caroline Gordon​.
-Moderated by Jessica Sweeney, Managing Director of Collegium Institute's Ars Vivendi Arts Initiative.
This event was co-sponsored by Dappled Things, The Genealogies of Modernity Project, The Lumen Christi Institute, Abigail Adams Institute, The Beatrice Institute, the Penn Catholic Newman Community, Nova Forum for Catholic Thought, Harvard Catholic Center, Morningside Institute, Portsmouth Institute, and Church Life Journal of Notre Dame's McGrath Institute.

[@liper13]

I enjoyed this so much. Jessica Sweeney is awesome.

[@seanmacgiollarnath2121]

Super transmission.

[@danielhughes1387]

Great panel! Bravo!