Brunilda Kondi

Candidate statement

My name is Brunilda Kondi and I am an American Literature and Culture instructor at the University of Tirana, Albania. Every year, I teach a course in 19th Century American Literature and one in American Culture to about 200 students at the English Department of the biggest and most reputable university we have here.

I have been teaching Emily Dickinson’s poetry for twenty-three years. In addition to enjoying the linguistic and formal composition and the pleasure it provides, I have personally experienced the transformational power of Dickinson’s lyric poems. My teaching of her poetry focuses specifically on the latter, and every year I witness and enjoy seeing students empowered by reciting or quoting highly relatable poems from the ED collection the world has inherited. I also feel that working with her poems provides room for creativity and innovation, so every year my students and I try new exercises with the poems selected for class discussions.

I was introduced to the Emily Dickinson International Society when I did my Fulbright research in the United States and have been part of it for seven years now. I have greatly benefited from attending two international conferences in this time, and I have participated in the online events organized during these years. I highly appreciate the community of this society and I find the many varied interests and explorations of Emily Dickinson’s poetry to be enriching and empowering.

I would be humbled and honored to provide any kind of support and contribution to promoting the cause of this society as a Member-at-Large. Promoting interest in Emily Dickinson and her poetry is something I have been doing regularly in the academic and informal literary circles I am part of in my small country. I can imagine doing it on behalf of such a society can only expand the power to do so.