Extended Deadline

 

The 2022 Emily Dickinson International Society Conference, “Dickinson and Foreignhood,” and the Dickinson Critical Institute in Seville

 

The Emily Dickinson International Society is extending its deadline until November 20 for proposal submission to its international conference, “Dickinson and Foreignhood,” and to its Critical Institute, both to take place at the College of Philology, University of Seville, Spain. The conference will go from Tuesday, July 12, to Thursday, July 14. The Critical Institute will be on Monday, July 11.

The Dickinson Critical Institute helps graduate students and early career scholars develop their work in collaboration with established Dickinson specialists. For more information about the Critical Institute in Seville, please see the conference website (https://edisforeignhoodconference.org/). To apply to the Institute, submit a one-page cv and a 500-800-word description of your project to Eliza Richards (ecr@email.unc.edu) and to Karen Sánchez-Eppler (kjsanchezepp@amherst.edu) no later than November 20. Use the subject heading “[Last Name] Dickinson Institute Application,” and attach your application materials as Word or pdf documents. Decisions on acceptance will be made by December 15.

The EDIS International Conference “Dickinson and Foreignhood” takes its cue from “A South Wind – has a pathos” (c.1864), where the poet refers to “much not understood – / The fairer – for the farness – / And for the foreignhood.” These lines represent the unknown as more beautiful when distant and unfamiliar, or foreign. The conference seeks to develop knowledge of how Dickinson understood the foreign, how she has been understood as foreign, and how foreign peoples have understood her.

The Program Committee welcomes all work on configurations of the foreign, broadly understood, in Dickinson’s writing, including:

• Conceptions of the foreign (or what we might call otherness) in Dickinson’s culture and historical moment

• Discussions of race, ethnicity, class, disability, gender, sexuality, and other categories that have historically been associated with alienation and cultural disenfranchisement

• Dickinson, geography, navigation, and foreign travel

• Parts of Dickinson’s environment, culture, or identity that seemed foreign to her

• Immigration, emigration, and exile

• Dickinson’s reception abroad

• Dickinson, foreign languages, and translation

• Lyric alienation and the poetics of estrangement

• Invasion, contagion, and infection as encounters with the foreign

Finally, regardless of theme, all proposals engaging serious scholarship on Dickinson’s work are welcome. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words, along with a brief biography of 100 words maximum, to Jefferey Simons (dickinsoninseville@dfing.uhu.es) and to Cristanne Miller (ccmiller@buffalo.edu) before November 20. Please specify if you plan to present virtually rather than in person. The conference Program Committee will respond by December 15.

For further information, please see the websites of the conference (https://edisforeignhoodconference.org/) and of The Emily Dickinson International Society (http://www.emilydickinsoninternationalsociety.org/).