Take a journey into the artist’s true country.

About "Artists and Their Regions: Flannery O’Connor and the American South"

Region—geographical space, language, architecture, demographics, population density, ethnicity, landscape—provides the raw material for artists: that is the premise of this capstone course for the Creative Work minor. To explore this premise, and to inspire the impulse in each of us to “make locally,” we traveled during spring break to Milledgeville, Georgia, “a bird sanctuary” according to a now-removed sign north of town on State Highway 441. Milledgeville was also home to the world’s largest insane asylum in the 1950s, and Flannery O’Connor from 1938-1964. In many ways, not much has changed, and we have learned much about O’Connor and other Southern writers and artists through our pilgrimage.

Artists & Their Regions is the CCW's signature course. It features seminar-style class meetings and a week-long artists' retreat that gives students and faculty time to focus on their creative projects. 

The course is offered each spring to upperclassmen dedicated to honing their craft and developing a specific creative project over the semester. In the spring of 2013, the class read the work of Flannery O'Connor and traveled to O'Connor's hometown in Milledgeville, Georgia. 

Recent Travels

In spring 2011, the Artists and Their Regions class studied the living and the dead from Houston, Texas, to New Orleans, Louisiana. 

Reading List

• Cemeteries of Ambivalent Desire, Marie Theresa Hernandez
• It Takes A Worried Man, Tracy Daugherty
• Down In Houston: Bayou City Blues, Roger Wood
• The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
• The Dirty Side Of The Storm, Martha Serpas
• Pleasure Dome, Yusef Komunyakaa

Retreat 2011

For spring break, we traveled to Lake Pontchartrain and stayed at Fontainebleau State Park, then traveled to New Orleans and spent a few days in the French Quarter.