Candidates: 2026 EDIS Member-at-Large Election

Standing for: Member-At-Large

• • Christine Gerhardt
  • Name: Christine Gerhardt
  • Candidate Statement:
    I am a Professor of American Studies at the University of Bamberg, Germany, and have been working on Emily Dickinson since the early 2000s, with a particular focus on ecocritical perspectives. I have published A Place for Humility: Whitman, Dickinson, and the Natural World (2014) and essays on Dickinson’s poetry in relation to gardening, mobility, and the Anthropocene. Over the years, I have also taught various Dickinson seminars at the universities of Dortmund and Bamberg (Germany), the University of Graz (Austria), and Dartmouth College (USA), and have supervised both a doctoral dissertation and a postdoctoral project on her work. In many respects, Dickinson’s poetry has been a constant in my research and teaching. Indeed, the expectation within German American Studies to specialize across multiple periods and authors has further deepened my engagement with her work, since it can be compared so productively with, for instance, contemporary migration poetry. EDIS, with its various platforms, publications, and conferences, and its vibrant intellectual community, has been crucial for me from the start, and I remain deeply grateful for the society’s openness to international scholars. For instance, I gave one of my first conference papers in the United States at the EDIS panel at the ASA in 2003, and my first essay on Dickinson was published in the Emily Dickinson Journal in 2006. More recently, one of my doctoral students benefited greatly from participating in two EDIS Critical Institutes. It has also been an honor to present my work at EDIS conferences in Amherst and Taipei. At the same time, it has given me great joy to conduct a virtual seminar for the Dickinson Museum together with Renée Bergland, to facilitate a Critical Institute session, and to now co-edit two EDJ special issues on Dickinson’s Ecologies with Li-hsin Hsu. It would be a great honor to serve EDIS as a Member-at-Large. I would be glad to support the society by contributing to committee work, participating in ongoing conversations about the field, and fostering connections between EDIS and European academic networks. I would also be interested in helping to expand international participation—especially among early-career scholars—and in discussing initiatives that further highlight Dickinson’s relevance to contemporary concerns such as environmental humanities and global literary studies.
• • Axel Karamercan
  • Name: Axel Karamercan
  • Candidate Statement:
    I am a philosopher working in twentieth-century Continental philosophy, with a particular focus on Martin Heidegger's thinking of place, dwelling, and poetic language. But I promise, I am not a boring fellow. Born in Turkey, I completed my PhD in Australia, pursued research in comparative literature in the United States (University at Buffalo), and am now based in France. I hold a visiting scholar position at the University of Edinburgh, and this coming fall I will be a visiting scholar at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. Traveling is “more convincing Than Philosophy” to me – and from time to time I write and translate poetry. I have been engaged with Dickinson's poetry for years. I confess I read her like an encyclopedia – when I think I have lost the meaning of a word, I open her collected poems. My captivation with her verse has kept my prose across languages and intellectual traditions alive, and it helped me survive the dire days of academic job hunting. In the last couple of years, my circling around Dickinson has taken a more tangible form. I published a book chapter on the Heidegger–Dickinson connection, presented at the EDIS 2025 International Conference in Wenshan and at the Critical Institute, and recently submitted an article to the Emily Dickinson Journal. I have contributed to the EDIS Bulletin and currently serve as co-chair of the Translation Community with Bruna Kondi. As I have been doing my “Purple Work” at EDIS, I have met wonderful people, from younger to the most distinguished scholars, and it has only made me try to better understand how a society, and in particular EDIS, works. Coincidentally, an anonymous nomination for the Member-at-Large position dropped from “an abundant sky” for me. I am genuinely humbled and thought it would be fair for me to respond. In particular, I would like to work toward stronger connections between EDIS and non-Anglophone scholarly networks. I would bring to the Board a Continental philosophical perspective that is perhaps underrepresented in EDIS, alongside enthusiasm for the Society’s mission and a commitment to expanding its reach across European, East Asian, and international scholarly communities. And a smiling face. “I read my sentence – steadily – / Reviewed it with my eyes, / To see that I made no mistake” in making a case why the Jury should vote for me!