LIT 4385 – Spring 2027 – Kilgore

This course offers students a chance to read (really read) the poetry of Emily Dickinson, one of the greatest, strangest, most inspiring writers in the English language. Against the conventional image of the sad, alienated spinster, the Dickinson you will encounter in this class is positively ecstatic and wonderfully defiant--her own person on her own terms. In addition to exploring Dickinson's major themes and orientations to writing, our focus will be on Dickinson's embodied, experimental relationship to textuality and language, genre and poetic form. Students will be exposed to recent scholarly practices in Dickinson Studies with particular attention to manuscript criticism and material poetics, using digital archives to look at her original productions. But we'll also learn about Dickinson's fascinating biography and consider contemporary engagements with her life and work in popular culture.