6616 Beechmont Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45230
Join Mount St. Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology (MTSM) for the 2026 LeBlond Lecture at the seminary’s Bartlett Center.
Jennifer Frey, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at the University of Tulsa will present “Flannery O’Connor: Hillbilly Nihilist or Hillbilly Thomist?”
Noted for her fascination with grotesque characters and the extremes of human nature, Flannery O’Connor is an often misunderstood writer. In this talk, Dr. Jennifer Frey will argue that the key to unlocking the fiction of O’Connor is understanding her as a student of St. Thomas Aquinas. By tracing the movement of grace in her stories, we can begin to understand O’Connor on her own terms: as a woman who wrote “happy stories” thick with the promise of God’s mercy and redemption.
The 2026 LeBlond Lecture is open to the public and admission is free.
About Professor Frey
Jennifer Frey, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Tulsa. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and her B.A. in philosophy and medieval studies, with a classics minor, at Indiana University-Bloomington. Dr. Frey’s most recent coedited book is Practical Truth: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2025).
