Reconsidering Flannery OConnor

Contributions by Lindsay Alexander, Alison Arant, Alicia Matheny Beeson, Eric Bennett, Gina Caison, Jordan Cofer, Doug Davis, Doreen Fowler, Marshall Bruce Gentry, Bruce Henderson, Monica C. Miller, William Murray, Carol Shloss, Alison Staudinger, and Rachel Watson

The National Endowment for the Humanities has funded two Summer Institutes titled "Reconsidering Flannery OConnor," which invited scholars to rethink approaches to Flannery OConnors work. Drawing largely on research that started as part of the 2014 NEH Institute, this collection shares its title and its mission. Featuring fourteen new essays, Reconsidering Flannery OConnor disrupts a few commonplace assumptions of OConnor studies while also circling back to some old questions that are due for new attention.

The volume opens with "New Methodologies," which features theoretical approaches not typically associated with OConnors fiction in order to gain new insights into her work. The second section, "New Contexts," stretches expectations on literary genre, on popular archetypes in her stories, and on how we should interpret her work. The third section, lovingly called "Strange Bedfellows," puts OConnor in dialogue with overlooked or neglected conversation partners, while the final section, "OConnors Legacy," reconsiders her personal views on creative writing and her wishes regarding the handling of her estate upon death. With these final essays, the collection comes full circle, attesting to the hazards that come from overly relying on OConnors interpretation of her own work but also from ignoring her views and desires. Through these reconsiderations, some of which draw on previously unpublished archival material, the collection attests to and promotes the vitality of scholarship on Flannery OConnor.