Flannery O’Connor | Seeing the Sacred in the Grotesque
Schedule
Sat, 11 Oct, 2025 at 02:30 pm
UTC-04:00Location
Historic Camden Foundation | Camden, SC
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Saturday, October 11 | 2:30 PMHistoric Camden – McCaa’s Tavern (Room TBA)
222 Broad Street, Camden, SC 29020
Part of the Southern Gothic Festival
By 1964, Flannery O’Connor was nearing the end of her battle with lupus. In one of her final letters, she wrote, “You have to cherish the world at the same time you struggle to endure it.” Her writings cherished the world in all its beauty and humor, with an eye that looks unflinchingly at the pain and suffering which our broken world endures. She did this by asking her reader to look at the world and see redemption waiting around every corner … whether in the form of a bullet, the horn of a bull, or a blazing tractor. Join this discussion of how Flannery O’Connor defined our understanding of Southern Gothic by using the grotesque to reveal the intersection between the sacred and the profane.
About the Speaker
Dr. Abigail Lundelius Smith is an award-winning teacher of writing and literature at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. She currently serves as Instructor of Rhetoric and Literature at New Aberdeen College in Charlotte.
She earned her Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of South Carolina, where her dissertation—Shall We Gather at the Table?: The Symbolic, Material, and Cultural Significance of the Table in American Life and Letters—explored the sacramental role of tables in American literature. She completed her master’s degree at the University of Dallas, where she studied under Dr. Louise Cowan and developed a grounding in Genre Theory, which continues to shape her approach to literature.
Free Event · Seating is first come, first served.
👉 Full schedule at southerngothicfestival.com See less
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Where is it happening?
Historic Camden Foundation, 222 Broad Street,Camden, South Carolina, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
