2008 Scholar in Amherst Award Competition

The Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) invites applications for the Scholar in Amherst Program. The scholarship, which is awarded annually, is designed to support research on Emily Dickinson at institutions such as the Frost Library of Amherst College, the Jones Public Library, the Mount Holyoke College Archives, the Dickinson Homestead, the Evergreens, and the Amherst Historical Society. The award is a $2,000 fellowship to be used for expenses related to that research, such as travel, accommodations, or a rental car. Upon completion of their research in Amherst, recipients will write a letter to the EDIS Board outlining what they achieved as a result of EDIS support.  A minimum stay of one week in Amherst is required. Recipients also may use the fellowship to initiate a lengthier stay in the area. Preference will be given to persons with completed PhDs who are in the early stages of their careers. 

The Scholar in Amherst Program was inaugurated in 2002 by a generous donation from Sylvia F. Rogosa, made in honor of her daughter, Vivian Pollak, second president of the Emily Dickinson International Society. The 2003 award was named in honor of Myra Fraser Fallon, mother of EDIS treasurer Dr. James Fraser. The 2004 award was named in honor of renowned Dickinson scholar Brita Lindberg-Seyersted and those in 2005 and 2006 for Professor Everett Emerson to recognize his contributions to Dickinson studies as well as early American literature. The 2007 Scholar in Amherst Award honors Suzanne Juhasz and Jane Donahue Eberwein, Dickinson scholars and founding members of EDIS. The 2008 Scholar in Amherst Award will honor Roland Hagenbüchle, an influential international Dickinson scholar whom many readers may know for coediting The Emily Dickinson Handbook (1998; rev. pbk. 2005). 

To apply for the 2008 Scholar in Amherst Award, please submit a curriculum vitae, letter of introduction (written by the applicant), a two-page project proposal, and a brief bibliography, by December 15, 2008, to Paul Crumbley at PCrumbley@english.usu.edu; inquiries may also be directed to Martha Nell Smith at mnsmith@UMD.EDU and Eleanor Heginbotham at heginbotham@csp.edu. Letters of recommendation are not accepted as part of the application packet.

EDIS Scholar in Amherst Award 2007

The Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2007 Scholar in Amherst Award is Aífe Murray, an Independent Scholar whose work on Emily Dickinson has been featured in Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Visiting Emily: Contemporary Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Emily Dickinson, and the Blackwell Companion to Emily Dickinson.  The EDIS Award will enable Murray to complete the research for her forthcoming book Maid as Muse: How Her Domestic Servants Changed Emily Dickinson’s Life and Language (University Press of New England 2009). 

EDIS Scholar in Amherst Award 2006

The Emily Dickinson International Society invites applications for the Scholar in Amherst Program. The program supports research on Emily Dickinson at institutions such as the Frost Library of Amherst College, the Jones Public Library, the Mount Holyoke College Archives, the Emily Dickinson Museum, and the Amherst Historical Society. The award is a $2000 fellowship to be used for expenses related to that research, such as travel, accommodations, or a rental car. A minimum stay of one week in Amherst is required. Recipients also may use the fellowship to initiate a lengthier stay in the area. Preference will be given to persons with completed PhDs who are in the early stages of their careers.

For 2006, the Scholar in Amherst Award will be named, for the second time, in honor of Everett Emerson, who died in 2002. He was the first male guide at the Dickinson Homestead, played a central role in bringing Dickinson’s dress to the Homestead, and organized “Emily Dickinson: A Centennial Conference” at the University of North Carolina in 1986. Though he is best known for his scholarship on early American literature and Mark Twain, Emerson’s unflagging enthusiasm for Dickinson inspired a generation of Dickinson scholars.

To apply for the 2006 Everett Emerson Scholar in Amherst Award, please send three copies of a curriculum vitae, a letter of introduction (written by the applicant), a two-page project proposal, and a brief bibliography by October 15, 2006, to Marianne Noble, Chair, Scholar in Amherst Selection Committee, mnoble@american.edu. Inquiries also may be addressed to Jane Eberwein, Department of English, Oakland University, Rochester, MI 48309-4401, USA or jeberwei@oakland.edu. Recommendation letters are not accepted as part of the application packet.

Calls for EDIS Graduate Fellowships

Emily Dickinson Graduate Student Fellowship 2009

The Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) announces a fellowship award in support of graduate student scholarship on Emily Dickinson.  The award, in the amount of $1,000, may be used to fund travel to collections or conferences, to support book purchases, or for other research expenses necessary to the project.  Preference will be given to applicants enrolled in doctoral programs and engaged in the writing of dissertations or other major projects directed toward publication.  To apply, please send a curriculum vitae, description of the project (including intended use of the award funding), the names and contact information of two references, and a dissertation prospectus or other relevant writing sample (no more than 25 pages) to Martha Nell Smith, Professor, Department of English, 3238 Tawes Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.  Electronic applications welcome (indeed, preferred):  mnsmith@umd.edu.  Applications are due by September 30, 2009; the award will be announced by November 15, 2009.

Emily Dickinson Graduate Student Fellowship 2008

The Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) announces a fellowship award in support of graduate student scholarship on Emily Dickinson.  The award, in the amount of $1,000, may be used to fund travel to collections or conferences, to support book purchases, or for other research expenses necessary to the project.  Preference will be given to applicants enrolled in doctoral programs and engaged in the writing of dissertations or other major projects directed toward publication.  To apply, please send a curriculum vitae, description of the project (including intended use of the award funding), the names and contact information of two references, and a dissertation prospectus or other relevant writing sample (no more than 25 pages) to Martha Nell Smith, Professor, Department of English, 3101 Susquehanna Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.  Electronic applications welcome (indeed, preferred):  mnsmith@umd.edu.  Applications are due by October 15, 2008; the award will be announced by November 1, 2008.

Emily Dickinson Graduate Student Fellowship 2007

The Emily Dickinson International Society announces a fellowship award in support of graduate student scholarship on Emily Dickinson.  The award, in the amount of $500, may be used to fund travel to collections or conferences, to support book purchases, or for other research expenses necessary to the project.  Preference will be given to applicants enrolled in doctoral programs and engaged in the writing of dissertations or other major projects directed toward publication.  To apply, please send a curriculum vitae, description of the project (including intended use of the award funding), the names and contact information of two references, and a dissertation prospectus or other relevant writing sample (no more than 25 pages) to Mary Loeffelholz, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, 100 Meserve Hall, Northeastern University, Boston, MA  02115.  Electronic applications welcome:  m.loeffelholz@neu.edu.  Applications are due by July 1, 2007; the award will be announced by July 15, 2007.

Emily Dickinson Graduate Student Fellowship 2006

The Emily Dickinson International Society announces the inauguration of a fellowship award in support of graduate student scholarship on Emily Dickinson. The award, in the amount of $500, may be used to fund travel to collections or conferences, to support book purchases, or for other research expenses necessary to the project. Preference will be given to applicants enrolled in doctoral programs and engaged in the writing of dissertations or other major projects directed toward publication. To apply, please send a curriculum vitae, description of the project, the names and contact information of two references, and a dissertation prospectus or other relevant writing sample (no more than 25 pages) to Professor Mary Loeffelholz, Department of English, 406 Holmes Hall, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115. Electronic applications welcome: m.loeffelholz@neu.edu. Applications are due by March 30, 2004; the award will be announced by May 15, 2004.

Calls for the Emily Dickinson Journal

Emily Dickinson’s Reading

          What happened when Emily Dickinson sat down to read, and what did she do with what she found?  For a special issue of the Emily Dickinson Journal, we seek essays exploring her deep immersion in the written word. How did her reading influence her thinking and her writing?  Essays might—though are not obliged to—theorize what Dickinson did with what she read.  According to one biographer, Dickinson's engagement with literature was "burrlike"—choice bits would attach to her and stick.  On the other hand, other scholars have suggested that she engaged more deliberately with the ideas and aesthetics of her "kinsmen of the shelf."  The essays in this volume might address this distinction.  Why did she claim she never touched "paint mixed by another person" when clearly she did?  Contributions could argue for traces of semi-conscious influence or for a more sustained and earnest engagement with what she read.  We welcome studies of still-unexhausted warhorses like hymnody and the Bible; perennially rich areas such as contemporary fiction and poetry; juvenilia like primers, textbooks, conduct manuals, and gift books; as well as any discourses in the wider world that filtered through Amherst in any conceivable fashion:  legal documents, marketing and advertising materials, travel literature, journalism, philosophy, political polemics, reports of war and combat, comic performance, agricultural pamphlets—all manifestations of the burgeoning print culture of her time.

 Finished essays will be 25-35 pages in length, including notes and bibliography (double-spaced, 12-point font).

Please send a one-page proposal and an abbreviated CV by April 1, 2009, to the Co-Editors, Dan Manheim and Marianne Noble, at dan.manheim@centre.edu and mnoble@american.edu.  Finished papers will be due August 15, 2009.

Emily Dickinson and Contemporary Poetics
2008 Special Issue of the Emily Dickinson Journal

Emily Dickinson is canonical and popular but what aspects of her poetics are important today, and why? As a complement to the testimonials provided by individual poets in the 2006 special issue of the EDJ, we now seek broader, more scholarly essays on Dickinson's relevance to the way contemporary writers understand poetics, poetic lineage, the act of reading, and the nature or function of poetry.

Many of today's issues seem very far from Dickinson's Amherst: terrorism, multiculturalism, information flows, identity politics, Google, globalization, genocide, technology, Iraq, the environment... For poets now looking forward, is there anything indispensable or generative in all those nineteenth-century lyrics on death, nature, time, ecstasy, love, pain, God, faith, and trauma? What force is there to Dickinson's signature combinations of iambic meters, distorted syntax, latinate polysyllables, off-rhymes, personae, abstract nouns, compression, word alternatives, dashes, and tropes? Are poets writing with or against Dickinson, and why?

Topics include but are not limited to: the actual or potential relevance of Dickinson's poetics to contemporary or future genres, modes, schools, and theories of poetry; the utility of individual Dickinsonian techniques, themes, or vocabularies for today's creative writers; Dickinson's stylistic, thematic, or other impact on interdisciplinary or inter-arts production (poetry and history or philosophy, poetry and visual art, music, cinema, etc.).

We are interested in scholarly essays by both critics and poets. Submissions by poets must be accompanied by creative writing that is clearly relevant to their expository prose.

Proposals of 250-500 words, with creative writing if appropriate, accepted until August 15, 2007.

Completed papers of 10-25 pages will be due by March 15, 2008.

Send queries or full proposals to Jed Deppman jed.deppman@oberlin.edu or Jay Ladin ladin@usadatanet.net

Calls for International Conferences

Emily Dickinson International Society at MLA

The Emily Dickinson International Society will sponsor two sessions at the Modern Language Association annual conference in San Francisco, December 27-30, 2008. By tradition, one will be an "Open" panel, for which proposals from any area of Dickinson studies are welcome. This year's second panel will be "Dickinson as World Poet." Papers might present Dickinson in the context of contemporary transatlantic or hemispheric studies, as an inspiration or challenge to other world poets, as a global phenomenon, as translated and received in across the world, as a thinker/poet of the world or for the world.

Please submit proposals of 200-300 words as an email attachment to Jed Deppman (jdeppman@oberlin.edu) by March 28, 2008

Calls for Annual Meetings

Miscellaneous Announcements & Calls

Susan Glaspell Society
Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW) meeting
October 21-24, 2009

The Susan Glaspell Society (SGS) invites members of the Emily Dickinson Society to consider joining us for this panel session to be held at the Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW) meeting, *October 21-24, 2009,* at the Sheraton Society Hill in Philadelphia. Please note that you must be a member of SSAWW to present at the conference. Membership in the Glaspell Society is not required, but we welcome new members at any time. For more details about SSAWW, go to www.ssaww.org. For more details about SGS, go to http://academic.shu.edu/glaspell/index.html.

We hope to be granted time and space to do a reading of Alison's House to accompany the panel  Susan Glaspell's /Alison's House/ and the Legacy of Emily Dickinson.  We invite proposals considering any aspect of the relationship between the Emily Dickinson legend and Glaspell's 1931 Pulitzer Prize winning drama. Topics might include, but are not limited to: the relationship between the Dickinson biographies (Taggard’s and/or others) or other treatments of the Dickinson legend and Glaspell's play; comparisons between /Alison's House/ and other dramas about the Dickinson legend; comparisons of Glaspell's and Dickinson's writing; historical analyses of the controversial Eva Le Gallienne production of /Alison's House/ or its critical reception; new directions in the study of /Alison's House/ alone or in combination with other Glaspell works.

*Please send proposals by Nov. 15, 2008 to J. Ellen Gainor
jeg11@cornell.edu

Call for Seminar Papers
Fourteenth Annual Conference of The Association of Literary Scholars & Critics (ALSC)
http://www.bu.edu/literary/conferences/index.html
October 25, 2008
Sheraton Society Hill Hotel
Philadelphia
SEMINAR CALL FOR PAPERS:

 Seminar: Interpreting the Shifting Texts of Dickinson and/or Whitman Convener: Don Share (Poetry Magazine)

 Otherwise so different, Dickinson and Whitman have in common the fact that their textual histories are complicated. Editorial controversies create occasions for interpretation.  

In Dickinson’s case, there are the variant versions, the unfinished poems, the poems embedded in letters and so altered to suit the recipient, versions blurring the distinction between verse and prose, the idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation, and the fact that she did not oversee her publication.

In Whitman there is the shifting ground of six editions of Leaves of Grass, all supervised by the author, and involving revisions, omissions,  innovations of format (such as tables of contents and the grouping of poems into sections), and the adding and dropping of titles.

What interpretive insights can be gleaned from these textual complications, in the case of either poet or (where possible) both? Does it mean anything about American poetry that the texts of its two foundational poets are so unstable? What happens in the classroom when you make your students aware of the textual controversies (or do you have reasons for concealing them)? Do the conventions of nineteenth century print culture cast light on interpretation?

 Please send half-page abstracts or short papers (2-4 pages) as Word attachments to alsc@bu.edu.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Friday, September 12, 2008. 

All perspectives welcome; we hope to include participants who have lots of experience in editing these poets as well as participants who have none.