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.

Cost: $1200

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

Scholarship: we ask all applicants to pursue funding sources through their home institution. The Valor Institute also has scholarship money available. To apply, please email Joel VanDerworp with a letter of recommendation along with your retreat application.

Sponsorship: the Valor Institute is looking for partners to join us in expanding our retreat offerings. Click here to learn more about how you can support the Valor Institute.