Candidates: EDIS 2020 Member at Large Election

Standing for: Member at Large

    • Cristanne Miller
    • Name: Cristanne Miller
    • Candidate Statement:
      I was a founding board member of EDIS and served for several years as EDIS President. I have been active in the Society not only during my many years on the board but in the years since then. My scholarship on Dickinson includes "Emily Dickinson: A Poet’s Grammar," "Reading in Time: Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century," and most recently the edition "Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them." I am now working with Domhnall Mitchell on a new edition of the letters. As a new/repeat board member, I have a strong interest in helping extend EDIS international connections and helping with the conference in Sevilla, although I would also be happy to serve where needed with other aspects of the board’s business. Over the years, I have already served on many board committees and was editor of the "Emily Dickinson Journal" for 10 years.
    • Anne Ramirez
    • Name: Anne Ramirez
    • Candidate Statement:
      Currently I serve as adjunct lecturer at Neumann University, having recently retired from my position there as Associate Professor of English and leader of the English faculty. For four years (1978-1981) I had the privilege of living in Amherst, where I listened in at the 1980 conference (including presentations by Richard Sewall, Sandra Gilbert, and Suzanne Juhasz). This served to increase my lifelong fascination with Emily Dickinson. When my daughters were much older, I earned my Ph.D. at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, studying with the late Dr. Karen Dandurand. My dissertation explored Emily Dickinson’s personal and literary affinities with a subversive tradition of other writers who have celebrated strong female characters. Since then I have published three academic articles on Dickinson, a panel report in the EDIS Bulletin, a reference book entry on the poet, and over forty other articles and reviews in assorted academic and specialty publications, reflecting my long-term interests in Shakespeare, interdisciplinary women’s studies, and children’s/young adult literature. I also attended EDIS international conferences in 1999, 2004, 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019, presenting at all but the first and last (which marked the celebration of my Ph.D. and retirement). In addition, I attended the 2011 and 2014 Annual Meetings in Amherst, presenting at the latter, and have delivered numerous other academic presentations in my areas of interest. Coming from a cultural and religious background rather similar to Dickinson’s and arriving in academia as a late bloomer, I have a particular connection to some of the social and psychological obstacles she faced as a female poet and intellectual. Although never likely to attain fame myself, I would never have achieved as much as I have thus far without Dickinson’s influence on my life, and I would consider it an honor to contribute more actively to the EDIS through serving as a member-at-large. As a potential Board Member, I have several ideas to advance the appreciation of Emily Dickinson and the support of the Society and Museum. For example, I could approach the world-famous Longwood Gardens and other regional sites about the possibility of programs featuring Dickinson and her poetry of nature and gardening. If we could not get Marta McDowell to come, I could nonetheless draw upon her work to organize some events. I could consult Barbara Dana about the possibility of her performing in my area. I would like to reach out to schools here in the Philadelphia-Wilmington area where my former students teach, offering to give presentations and/or help arrange programs celebrating Dickinson during Poetry Month in April, around Dickinson’s birthday in December, or other appropriate times. Also, I am interested in approaching libraries or other venues in which Dickinson’s poetry could be promoted as part of the multifaceted public humanities movement. Such endeavors might attract secondary school teachers and many other individuals into joining EDIS, attending conferences, and planning visits to Amherst. I have a particular interest in promoting the well-being and future of the Emily Dickinson Museum, as opportunity might arise, having lived in the area and profoundly enjoyed returning there and observing its growth over the years.
    • Baihua Wang
    • Name: Baihua Wang
    • Candidate Statement:
      My curiosity about Dickinson was intrigued when I was a college student reading a Chinese translation of her poems. Later when I had a chance to read them in English, I began to pay attention to the gap between her original power and my first impression of her in Chinese. Thanks to the invitation from Professor Cristanne Miller, whom I met in the year 2008 in Buffalo, I set out a historical survey on Dickinson’s reception in China which resulted in two review essays and a statistic report. Meanwhile I completed (with two students) a Chinese translation of Alfred Habegger’s "My Wars are Laid Away: The Life of Emily Dickinson" (2013), the first trusty biographical work on Dickinson ever translated into Chinese. In the following year, sponsored by Center for Literary Translation Studies of Fudan University & co-organized in cooperation with EDIS (esp. with the great help of Martha Nell Smith and Cristanne Miller), we held a Dickinson Symposium “Emily Dickinson Dwells in China―Possibilities of Translation and Transcultural Perspectives.” We also brought together nearly 50 experts from China and abroad to collaborate on a Dickinson translation project. This diversity of backgrounds and perspectives led to lively — sometimes heated — discussions about how best to understand and translate Dickinson’s poetry. Many earlier translations of Dickinson into Chinese struggled to capture her ambiguity and originality, an oversight we hope to correct. As the person in charge, it was difficult to get everyone on the same page, but most discussions were ultimately amiable and productive. This annotated compendium of 104 new Chinese translations of Dickinson’s poems was published in 2018. What excites me about the success of the Dickinson project is not that our work is definitive or perfect — it’s not — it’s that we have stimulated renewed literary interest in Dickinson in China. In the past 6 years, I have edited five special columns on Dickinson (12 articles and a group of new translations of her poems) for five different influential journals published in China. I was invited to give a planetary talk on Dickinson in the first Female Poets Festival in China (Sihui, 2019). In the 8th International Conference of Chinese/American Poetry and Poetics (2019, Hangzhou), I chaired (with Eliza Richards) a special panel “Emily Dickinson: Her Poetry and Poetics,” the only panel on single poet in the conference. Currently, I am working on a new project: “ED's Experimental Poetics and Its Legacy”, and two translation works of Dickinson’s poems: "The Envelope Poems" edited by Marta Werner and a commentary by Helen Vendler, which will be published in a year or two. I just got a national endorsement on Humanities for my research on Dickinson. Backed by this funding, I hope I will go to New England to update my own study on Dickinson as well as to participate more in EDIS’s conferences and activities. I will also try my best to apply for some extra funding from Fudan University to hold an international conference in Shanghai in the next three years. There is a big Dickinson group in China which I have been networking with since 2014. Maybe it is time to start a local chapter of EDIS in China now. If elected, I would like to try to help increase EDIS membership in China at least. In any case, it is my great pleasure to contribute to the society especially in promoting various interests in Dickinson as well as working on more collaborative projects in China as I have been trying to do all along.