Flannery O'Connor Society at the American Literature Association (American Literature Association)
Chicago, IL
Organization: The Flannery O'Connor Society
Event: American Literature Association
CALL FOR PAPERS
Flannery O’Connor Society
American Literature Association
Annual Conference May 20-23, 2026
Palmer House Hilton | Chicago, IL
The Flannery O’Connor Society invites abstracts (of no more than 250 words) for open topic presentations at the annual conference of the American Literature Association. (https://americanliteratureassociation.org/ala-conferences/ala-annual-conference/).
Possible paper topics include, but are not limited to:
- Film and media adaptations of O’Connor’s life and work
- Intra/intertextual evaluations of O’Connor’s work in relation to other authors, genres, and media, or between texts
- O’Connor and modernism/postmodernism
- Ability and disability in O’Connor’s life and work
- Class concerns and social status for O’Connor and her characters
- Place, region, and politics in O’Connor’s letters and fiction
- Aesthetic and rhetorical approaches to O’Connor’s fiction
- Approaches to teaching Flannery O’Connor’s work
- Gender and sexuality in O’Connor’s fiction, as well as evaluations of the body of criticism on gender and sexuality in O’Connor’s work
- Canonicity and O’Connor in Southern Literature
- New critical and theoretical frameworks for O'Connor studies
Please send abstracts to Rachel Bryan (rbryan5@vols.utk.edu) by Thursday, January 15th, 2026. Please include your name, email, and a short bio (100 words) with the abstract. Presenters must be members of the Flannery O’Connor Society by the time of the conference. Information about the conference’s fee and reserved hotel rate can be found on ALA’s CFP (https://americanliteratureassociation.org/ala-conferences/ala-annual-conference/). Information about the Society, including how to join, can be found on the Flannery O’Connor Society Website (http://flannerysociety.org).
rbryan5@vols.utk.edu