Join us for an Academic Retreat on William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom by Dr. Glenn Arbery of Wyoming Catholic College.

About the Leader

Dr. Glenn Arbery currently serves as Professor of Humanities at Wyoming Catholic College. From 2016 to 2023, he served as the third President of WCC.  He has served as Director of the Teachers Academy at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture and as an editor at People Newspapers in Dallas, where he won regional and national awards for his writing. In addition to numerous essays and reviews, he has published two volumes with ISI Books, Why Literature Matters (2001) and The Southern Critics (2010), editor. He is also the editor of The Tragic Abyss (2003) for the Dallas Institute Press and Augustine’s Confessions and Its Influence, St. Augustine Press (2019). His novel Bearings and Distances was published by Wiseblood Books in 2015, and his second, Boundaries of Eden, was published in 2020.

Join us for an Academic Retreat titled “Embodying Charity in Flannery O’Connor” led by Dr Farrell O’Gorman of Belmont Abbey College.

About the Leader

Dr. Farrell O’Gorman is Professor of English at Belmont Abbey College and taught previously at Mississippi State University and DePaul University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. O’Gorman is the author of two monographs: Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction (2004) and Catholicism and American Borders in the Gothic Literary Imagination (2017). He has spoken on O’Connor at a variety of regional and national events, at conferences in France and Italy, and at the 2014 O’Connor conference in Ireland, for which he served on the organizing committee.

O’Gorman’s teachings focus on O’Connor, Catholicism, and gender in the American Gothic, in part by exploring O’Connor’s relationship to Nathaniel Hawthorne and Katherine Anne Porter. His work places O’Connor in a tradition of “American women writing Catholicism” that includes Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, and Toni Morrison as well as Dorothy Day and Rose Hawthorne Lathrop.

Important Details

Travel: Participants are expected to pay for their own travel to and from the retreat. We recommend flying into Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and arriving at the Kingfisher Center at least an hour before the event begins.

Scholarships: Full scholarships are available for undergraduate and graduate students, teachers, and professors. Please indicate your desire for a scholarship on the application. We do not want cost to be a barrier for anyone desiring to participate in one of our retreats.

Academic Retreats are offered free of charge to Valor faculty and staff.

Sponsorship: The Valor Institute is looking for partners to join us in expanding our retreat offerings. Please contact Joel VanDerworp if you are interested in sponsoring our programs.

Join us for an Academic Retreat on “Friendship in Athens, Rome, and the New Jerusalem” led by Dr. Matthew Walz of the University of Dallas.

About the Leader

Dr. Matthew Walz completed undergraduate studies at Christendom College, double-majoring in philosophy and theology and graduating as the valedictorian of the class of 1995. He earned a doctorate in philosophy at The Catholic University of America by completing a dissertation on Thomas Aquinas's understanding of free will.

Dr. Walz is Chair of the Philosophy Department, Associate Dean of Constantin College, Director of Pre-Theology Programs at the University of Dallas, as well as the Director of Intellectual Formation at Holy Trinity Seminary.

Dr. Walz’s research and writing focus primarily on medieval philosophy, ancient philosophy, and philosophical anthropology. Besides Aquinas, his favorite philosophical authors include Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, and Wojtyla.

Topic: The Crisis of Western Education

Texts: The Crisis of Western Education, Christopher Dawson

Leader: Dr. Andrew Seeley is Director of Advanced Formation for Educators and Concurrent Professor of Philosophy at the Augustine Institute. He received a Licentiate from the Pontifical Institute in Medieval Studies in Toronto and a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto. In three decades as a Tutor at Thomas Aquinas College, Dr. Seeley taught every subject in its integrated Great Books curriculum. He is co-author of Declaration Statesmanship: A Course in American Government. Desiring to share his love of learning, Dr. Seeley co-founded the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education in 2005, where he served as Executive Director for 12 years, and continues as a Faculty Consultant. He became Executive Director of the Arts of Liberty Project in 2021, and recently co-founded the Boethius Institute for the Advancement of Liberal Education with Dr. Jeffrey Lehman. For his work in the renewal of liberal education, he was named as the 2023 recipient of the Circe Institute’s Paideia Prize. He is an avid devotee of the works of JRR Tolkien, and an amateur director of the plays of William Shakespeare.

Topic: Philosophy of Authority

Texts: A General Theory of Authority

Leader: Dr. Daniel Connelly serves as Assistant Professor and Course Director of the Department of Leadership at the US Air Force's Air Command and Staff College and serves on the Board of Valor Education. Prior to his current post, he served there as Assistant Professor of International Security and the college's Director of Faculty Development. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Auburn University, an M.S. from the Joint Military Intelligence College, an M.A. from American University, and a B.A. from Trinity College in Russian Studies. During his doctoral matriculation, he specialized in Organizational and Social Psychology. He offers elective courses in Russian strategic culture and the contemporary applications of the Just War Tradition. Dr. Connelly was assigned to the Air Force's Squadron Officer College in 2004, returned there as Dean of Academic Affairs and Faculty Development in 2010, and was assigned to the Air Command and Staff College (ACSC) in 2015 for his last military assignment before retirement from the US Air Force.

Topic: “The Human Person and Modernity”

Texts: End of the Modern World, Romano Guardini, “Violence and Modern Gnosticism,” Augusto Del Noce, “The End of Modernity,” Robert Spaemann

Leader: Dr. Jon Kirwan, Director of Graduate Programs at University of St Thomas (TX) and Dr. John Finley, Academic Director of the Valor Institute