South Atlantic MLA Conference 
November 5-7, 2026 
In-Person Conference 
Atlanta, GA 

Panel Proposal: “Intertextual ‘Innerleckchuls’: Reading O’Connor in Conversation” 

The Flannery O’Connor Society seeks abstract proposal submissions for a panel to be held at SAMLA’s annual conference (November 5-7, 2026) in Atlanta, GA.  

If her extensive correspondence, numerous book reviews, and the more than 700books in her personal library are to be believed, Flannery O’Connor lived much of her lifein the pages of books. While she greatly resented the physical isolation of Milledgevilleforced 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, if Jordan Cofer’s chapter in Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor (2020) is to be believed, O’Connor counted herself). She viewed her own work somewhat begrudginglywithin 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 overlap (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 to 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. 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/).