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Photo courtesy of GCSU
A formal name change for Andalusia Institute at Georgia College & State University (GCSU) has taken place, and it will now be known as the Flannery O’Connor Institute for the Humanities.
Flannery O’Conner graduated from Georgia State College for Women (now GCSU) in 1945, where she earned her B.A. in Social Sciences. She is a renowned novelist and short story writer, including works like A Good Man is Hard to Find, Good Country People, and Wise Blood.
Since the institute's founding in 2020, it has frequently been confused with Andalusia, the farmland that O’Connor lived on. The institute was meant to focus on O’Connor’s work promote scholarship around her and work with writers who were inspired by her.
“Ultimately the name change will allow the institute to grow its footprint and to distinguish its programming,” said Dr. Jordan Cofer, interim executive director. “It was launched to help promote Flannery O’Conner, her work, research around Flannery O’Conner, and even help inspire other writers.”
Since its founding, the Institute has done numerous things for the university, as well as the surrounding community.
It established the Flannery O’Connor book club, which has brought authors like Daniel Wallace ( Big Fish) and Yaa Gyasi (Transcendent Kingdom) to GCSU, and sponsored conferences and other events, like the American Literature Association Symposium on Flannery O’Connor, as well as a conference on O’Connor that will take place in September.
The institute has also received three federal grants, one with the Department of Education, and two with the National Endowment for the Humanities. The institute has been able to run a program called the Writing for Success initiative, which has created a 5th-grade curriculum around literacy.
The institute has also hosted a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on O’Connor, which brought 25 scholars from all over the country to live on campus for a month to study O’Connor. A new project is in the works which will be aimed at collecting and capturing stories from those who knew O’Connor.