Intertextual "Innerleckchuls": Reading O’Connor in Conversation (Panel (traditional) / In-Person)

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Affiliated / Flannery O'Connor Society
American Studies / Comparative Literature

Garrett Akins (Faulkner University)
gaki@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

If her extensive correspondence, numerous book reviews, and the more than 700 books in her personal library are to be believed, Flannery O’Connor lived much of her life in the pages of books. While she greatly resented the physical isolation of Milledgeville forced upon her by lupus, O’Connor maintained a vital correspondence with fellow writers and thinkers even as she heaped coals of satire on the heads of so-called literary “innerleckchuls” (among whom, Jordan Cofer argues in Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor (2020), O’Connor counted herself). She viewed her own work somewhat begrudgingly within the conversation of “Southern writers,” famously referring to William Faulkner’s corpus as the “Dixie Limited” in an acknowledgment of his outsized influence on the Southern canon. Posthumously, creatives across mediums cite her work as influential, ranging from Southern Gothic films like The Devil All the Time (2020) to magical realist visual novels like Kentucky Route Zero (2020). O’Connor, it seems, cannot help but be understood intertextually.

We invite abstract proposals that speak to some of the following areas of interest:

- Essays examining overlaps (aesthetic, thematic, contextual, or otherwise) between O’Connor’s fiction and another author’s creative work
- (Re)appraisals of O’Connor’s engagement with her contemporaneous cultural / philosophical / theological environment
- Analyses of O’Connor’s correspondence, especially (though not exclusively) with fellow writers / editors / other literary creatives
- Discussions of O’Connor’s creative influences, both acknowledged and unacknowledged, and their relationship with her work
- Investigations of works / creatives influenced by O’Connor, or arguments that a specific work / creative exhibits signs of O’Connor’s influence
- Evaluations of O’Connor’s place in the canon(s): American, Southern, Gothic, and otherwise
- Strategies for / reflections on teaching O’Connor intertextually
- Other topics of interest related to O’Connor’s life and work

Please send abstracts (300 words) and presenter bios (about 100 words) to Garrett Akins at gakins@faulkner.edu by August 25th, 2026. In your submission, please include your paper’s title, your name, institutional affiliation(s), and your current email address. Graduate students and early-career scholars are especially encouraged to submit. Participants must be members of The Flannery O’Connor Society by the time of the conference. More information about the Flannery O’Connor Society, including how to join, can be found on the website (http://flannerysociety.org/). For more information about SAMLA, including lodging and conference registration fees (variable based on affiliation, modality, and rank), please check the conference website, available here: (https://southatlanticmla.org/).