Wendy Tronrud
Election
Position
Name
Wendy Tronrud
Candidate statement
I first presented aspects of my work on Emily Dickinson at the 2016 Dickinson International conference in Paris. As I began to work on my dissertation, which developed through an exploration of the relationship between African American spirituals and Dickinson’s Civil War-era poems, participation in this conference not only offered engaging conversations with many Dickinson scholars important to my project, it offered an irreplaceably supportive intellectual community. This community has continued to inspire my own thinking about Dickinson and her poetry and it also has provided a model on how to facilitate academic conversations and relationships that mentor, encourage, and include new voices and ideas. I would like to become an EDIS Member-at-large to more directly participate in this community of scholars and artists. Most recently, I have joined Queens College as an Assistant Professor of English Education. I am also serving on an EDIS conference committee dedicated to developing new conference venues for Dickinson-related panels.
Currently, I am co-editing a double issue of ESQ with Gerard Holmes on Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Higginson, Apart from Dickinson,” for which I also wrote an essay, “Between Transcription, Translation, and Revision: Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s Epictetus, “Negro Spirituals,” and “Sappho.” I am also working on an essay that deals with Dickinson’s volcano poems in relation to its symbolic import to American slavery writ-large, and I will begin developing my dissertation, “Odd Secrets of the Line”: Emily Dickinson and the Uses of Folk, into a book manuscript for publication.
As an educator, Dickinson’s poetry continues to play an important role across the classes I am fortunate to teach. I taught Dickinson in many of the courses I developed while the Associate Director of Education Programs with the Bard Prison Initiative. I have developed a Methods course for pre-service teachers in Bard College’s Masters in Teaching program that focuses on Dickinson’s poems as a way to consider “how to teach complex texts to adolescent readers.” When I was a NYC high school teacher, I included Dickinson’s poetry in my literature classes with great aplomb as her poetry has a unique ability to both interest students and encourage them to experiment and creatively engage as thinkers and writers.
Becoming directly involved as a member-at-large with the Emily Dickinson International Society would be a tremendous opportunity. In this role, I will work with fellow EDIS members to support the various needs of the organization, including finding ways to introduce new readers and scholars to Dickinson’s poetry and Dickinson studies.
Currently, I am co-editing a double issue of ESQ with Gerard Holmes on Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Higginson, Apart from Dickinson,” for which I also wrote an essay, “Between Transcription, Translation, and Revision: Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s Epictetus, “Negro Spirituals,” and “Sappho.” I am also working on an essay that deals with Dickinson’s volcano poems in relation to its symbolic import to American slavery writ-large, and I will begin developing my dissertation, “Odd Secrets of the Line”: Emily Dickinson and the Uses of Folk, into a book manuscript for publication.
As an educator, Dickinson’s poetry continues to play an important role across the classes I am fortunate to teach. I taught Dickinson in many of the courses I developed while the Associate Director of Education Programs with the Bard Prison Initiative. I have developed a Methods course for pre-service teachers in Bard College’s Masters in Teaching program that focuses on Dickinson’s poems as a way to consider “how to teach complex texts to adolescent readers.” When I was a NYC high school teacher, I included Dickinson’s poetry in my literature classes with great aplomb as her poetry has a unique ability to both interest students and encourage them to experiment and creatively engage as thinkers and writers.
Becoming directly involved as a member-at-large with the Emily Dickinson International Society would be a tremendous opportunity. In this role, I will work with fellow EDIS members to support the various needs of the organization, including finding ways to introduce new readers and scholars to Dickinson’s poetry and Dickinson studies.