Dr. Farrell O’Gorman’s book Catholicism and American Borders in the Gothic Literary Imagination was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in November. The book, which has won advance praise from scholars at Trinity College Dublin and Wheaton College, traces images of Catholicism in the work of major American fiction writers from the Revolution up until the present day. In part it considers how Catholic writers such as Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy transformed a national literary tradition originally marked by an anti-Catholicism imported to North America from Britain. The book also demonstrates how fiction writers in the United States have often associated Catholicism with Latin America and the Caribbean.
On November 16, Dr. O’Gorman delivered an invited lecture on the Notre Dame campus in conjunction with the book’s publication. The lecture was hosted by Notre Dame’s Department of English, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, and Latin American/North American Church Concerns outreach initiative in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. A panel of Notre Dame faculty responded to Dr. O’Gorman in a public event attended by other faculty, students, and various members of the university community.
Dr. O’Gorman serves as chair of the English Department and directs the program in Christianity and Culture at Belmont Abbey College.