Carol Loeb Shloss

Carol Loeb Shloss, former Acting Professor of English at Stanford University, has written widely and variously about literary modernism. The author of one of the first books about Flannery O’Connor, she is returning to the field after award winning works on the families of James Joyce and Ezra Pound. Changing her focus from fathers and daughters to mothers and daughters, her current book is called Flannery and Regina: The Andalusia Chronicles.

Institute Discussions

Rather than regard Regina O’Connor as the backdrop of her daughter’s creativity, this seminar will examine Regina’s own creation of a life narrative and place it next to Flannery’s more literal writing. While one created books, the other created a farm; while one wrote at a typewriter, the other wrote out supply lists and planned an entirely different, but equally important narrative of survival. One woman worked in the symbolic world; the other wove a life out of material circumstances. Each wrote according to the norms of different generations of southern women; each defied expectation. Together they created a landscape unique in the south and indeed to their historical time.