The Critical Theory Program Presents a graduate workshop on Emily Dickinson and birds by Branka Arsic, Columbia University
Birds and insects are material for Emily Dickinson's poetry; they are found in it from the early fascicle poems to late envelope fragments. They do various things: they fly, of course, but they are also creatures of stillness, return or delay. They raise ontological questions (what life is, or what loss is) while also pointing to aesthetic questions (form and rhythm, for example). There are instances where they shape-shift and transform themselves, and there are instances where their morphology prevents the dissolution of larger embodied phenomena such as landscape or trees. But in all cases they are creatures of memory, embodied if flying archives. It is to those questions - of being, loss, recollecting and archiving - that this seminar will attend.
Participants are asked to read a few of Dickinson's poems, from the Franklin Variorum Edition, in advance of the workshop. Email Miriam Piilonen, miriampiilonen2018@u.northwestern.edu, for copies of the poems.
Co-sponsored by the Buffett Institute, Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Center for Global Culture and Communication, English Department, Religious Studies Department, Philosophy Department, and Comparative Literary Studies Program.