Author Archive: Patrick Fecher

Emily Dickinson's handwriting on a letter and envelope

Poetry Discussion Group Spring 2026 Series

Emily Dickinson's handwriting on a letter and envelope

Join us for a lively virtual discussion of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters, meeting once a week for a month (April or June). This program is designed to welcome newcomers and seasoned readers of Dickinson alike.

Each session is facilitated by a guest scholar with unique expertise, who leads the group in discussion following an introductory talk. Brief reading handouts will be distributed prior to each month’s program. 

Topics and Leaders:

  • “My Romantic Brother!”: Emily and Austin Dickinson in Conversation and Competition with Gerard Holmes
    Reading her poems and letters, we’ll consider the role of Emily Dickinson’s older brother in the development of her youthful thought and nascent writing practice. 
  • Constellating Dickinson: Reading Across the Archives with Emily Coccia
    Examining the affordances of online archives and print volumes of Emily Dickinson’s writings for facilitating clustered close readings to identify constellated images, resonant phrases, and recurring thematic concerns across Dickinson’s sprawling textual corpus
  • “To the World”: Emily Dickinson and the Other Among Us with Anna VQ Ross 
    Emily Dickinson famously withdrew form most human society for the last 15 years of her life, but she emphatically did not retreat from the rest of the world, and her poems. In this discussion group, we’ll read poems in which Dickinson observes, listens, and speaks to the natural world around her, and discover what it tells her. 
  • “The Door ajar / That Oceans are”: Seeing Emily Dickinson’s Seas with Susannah Sharpless

    This session will navigate material and metaphorical oceans in Emily Dickinson’s poetry

Format

As a registrant, you are signing up to join a small group of 25 or fewer regular participants for four 90-minute Zoom sessions. Meetings are participatory, with video and audio encouraged. Because we want everyone to feel comfortable speaking, full sessions will not be recorded. The program is designed for adult audiences (18+).

Registration

We are offering an identical program for April and June groups. Please review the dates carefully — space is limited.
Refunds are not available for this program.

April Group, $125 program fee (inclusive of all sessions), limited to 25 participants
Wednesday, April 8, 6-7:30pm ET
Wednesday, April 15, 6-7:30pm ET
Wednesday, April 22, 6-7:30pm ET
Wednesday, April 29, 6-7:30pm ET

REGISTER FOR APRIL

April Group, $125 program fee (inclusive of all sessions), limited to 25 participants
Wednesday, June 3, 6-7:30pm ET
Wednesday, June 10, 6-7:30pm ET
Wednesday, June 17, 6-7:30pm ET
Wednesday, June 24, 6-7:30pm ET

REGISTER FOR JUNE

For Educators:
Educators may request a certificate attesting to your participation in the program. 

Reservations are made on a first-come, first-served basis. 

Questions: Don’t hesitate to reach out to edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org with any questions about the program.

Gerard Holmes is a Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the Treasurer of the Emily Dickinson International Society. He has edited and co-edited special themed issues of The Emily Dickinson Journal (EDJ), ESQ, and Women’s Studies, and published standalone essays in EDJ, the Oxford Handbook to Emily Dickinson, Contemporaries / Post-45, and Reception. Subject interests include nineteenth-century uses of improvisation, play, surprise, and related ephemeral, imperfectly documented, or otherwise “immaterial” (in contrast with material) culture. 

Emily Coccia is the Robert A. Oden Jr. Postdoctoral Fellow for Innovation in the Liberal Arts at Carleton College, where she teaches and works on nineteenth-century literature; LGBTQ history; and digital fan cultures. Her book project, Textually Queer, considers how American workingwomen’s creative, resistant, and social reading practices allowed them to envision queer futures and to cultivate spaces for pleasure and intimacy. Her research has appeared in journals including Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, Transformative Works and Cultures, The Emily Dickinson Journal, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.

Anna V.Q. Ross is the author of the poetry collections Flutter, Kick (Red Hen Press), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award, the Julia Ward Howe Award in Poetry, and named a 2022 Best New Poetry Book by the New York Public Library; If a Storm (Anhinga Press), winner of the Robert Dana-Anhinga Award; and the chapbook Figuring (Bull City Press). She holds an MFA from Columbia University, and her work has been supported by fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Community of Writers. Her poetry has appeared in journals including American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, Missouri Review, The Nation, The Paris Review, Plume and on The Slowdown. She teaches creative writing and literature at Tufts University and lives with her family in Dorchester, MA, where she raises chickens. 

Susannah Sharpless specializes in nineteenth-century American literature, and her research and teaching focus on oceanic studies, the environmental humanities, gender, and poetics. Her manuscript-in-progress establishes the long-overlooked presence of women in oceanic imaginaries, demonstrating how literary representations of the sea’s destabilizing power connect to the material and ecological histories that extend beyond the stereotypically masculine spheres of ship and port. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in J19, ESQ, and The Emily Dickinson Journal, and her teaching has been recognized with Cornell’s Deanne Gebell Gitner Annual Prize for Teaching Assistants. She has also written and produced an episode of the C19 Podcast, and published poetry in Bennington Review and Jewish Currents, among others. She is currently co-editor of The Emily Dickinson Journal. 

A pen and inkwell sits on Dickinson's writing desk with light cascading through her curtains

Call for Submissions:
Phosphorescence and
Tell It Slant 2026

The Emily Dickinson Museum is now accepting proposals for our 2026 programs: Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series – a virtual event held monthly from April through September AND the 14th annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival, held September 21 – 27! The Museum’s poetry programming features established and emerging poets who represent the diversity of the flourishing contemporary poetry scene and fosters community by placing poetry in the public sphere.

To submit for the Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series and/or the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival, please click on the appropriate submission link and complete the free application process. All submissions must be received through SurveyMonkey Apply (via Amherst College) using the submission links provided below. Email or paper submissions will not be considered.

If you wish to submit multiple proposals, please complete a new application for each proposal. You may submit up to 2 submissions per program, and you may submit to both programs. 

TIMELINE:

All proposals must be submitted by Sunday, February 15, 2026, 11:59pm ET. 

Phosphorescence submissions will be notified of their acceptance status by April 2. Festival submissions will be notified of their acceptance status by May 1. Participating poets and presenters will be asked to sign a letter of agreement confirming participation on assigned dates.

Learn more about each program below.

About Phosphorescencea banner for PHOSPHORESCENCE Contemporary Poetry Series

Produced by the Emily Dickinson Museum, the Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series celebrates contemporary creativity that echoes Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice. The Series is a place to connect virtually over a shared love of poetry and an appreciation for Dickinson’s literary legacy. Groups of poets may read remotely from the location of their choice or travel to the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA, to have their reading live-streamed to a virtual audience. Poets will indicate their preference for reading location on their submission form.

Featured poets are promoted on the Museum’s event web page, through a mailing list of over 32,000 addresses, and through the Museum’s social media. Each participating poet receives a $200 honorarium. There is no fee to submit proposals.

View last year’s Phosphorescence lineup

Watch past Phosphorescence readings on YouTube

READINGS: Readings will take place on Thursdays at 6PM ET on the following dates: April 23, May 21, June 18, July 16, August 20, and September 24. This year, the Museum invites submissions from groups of 2-3 poets who plan to read together if selected. Solo submissions will not be considered. Readings are 15 minutes long on average per reader. Poets are welcome to promote sales of their books and awareness of other media during the program. (The Museum does not sell books for this series.) Poets should be prepared to engage in a facilitated conversation after their readings.

The following submission qualities are especially encouraged:

  • Builds community
  • Features BIPOC and/or LBGTQ+ voices
  • Highlights a connection to Dickinson’s life and legacy
  • Pushes poetic boundaries

SUBMIT FOR PHOSPHORESCENCE

Only complete submissions made through the SurveyMonkey Apply (via Amherst College) platform linked above will be considered. (You may be prompted to create a free account if you do not already have one.)

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Sunday, February 15, 2026, 11:59pm ET.

Please direct questions about submissions to EDMprograms@EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org

About the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival

Produced by the Emily Dickinson Museum, the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival celebrates the poetic legacy of Emily Dickinson and the contemporary creativity she continues to inspire from the place she called home. The Festival’s name, “Tell It Slant,” pays homage to Dickinson’s poem, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” This title underscores the revolutionary power of poetry to shift our perspective and reveal new truths.

The Festival is a hybrid event, with programs happening in-person at the Museum and online, for both in-person and virtual audiences throughout the week of September 21 -27. We invite you to “dwell in possibility” and submit your most inventive proposals for in-person or virtual, generative workshops and panels! Submissions for virtual programs should be for live, synchronous content only. Honoraria of $350 are provided per event. There is no fee to submit proposals.

View last year’s Festival schedule

The Festival organizers especially welcomes the following submission qualities:

  • From groups of 2 – 4 facilitators
  • Generative writing programs
  • Creatively encourage audience participation or foster a strong sense of community
  • Engage young attendees and/or those new to poetry
  • Ensure people with a range of abilities can participate meaningfully

Organizers are seeking submissions for the following program types:

IN-PERSON OR VIRTUAL WORKSHOPS:

  • Public poetry workshops are typically 90-minutes long.
  • Workshops must be interactive and generative, centering around skill-building activities.
  • Virtual workshops must be adaptable for large virtual audiences of around 200.

IN-PERSON OR VIRTUAL PANELS:

  • Public poetry panels are typically 90-minutes long.
  • Panels must consist of at least three people, including a facilitator.
  • Panels should foster a strong sense of community and include moments for audience participation. They may include short readings by panel members.
  • Virtual panels will be recorded and live-streamed to large virtual audiences of around 200.

SUBMIT FOR THE FESTIVAL

Only complete submissions made through the SurveyMonkey Apply (via Amherst College) platform linked above will be considered. (You may be prompted to create a free account if you do not already have one.)

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Sunday, February 15, 2026, 11:59pm ET.

SUBMIT FOR PHOSPHORESCENCE

SUBMIT FOR THE FESTIVAL

Phosphorescence submissions will be notified of their acceptance status by April 2. Festival submissions will be notified of their acceptance status by May 1. Participating poets and presenters will be asked to sign a letter of agreement confirming participation on assigned dates.

Please direct questions about submissions to EDMprograms@EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org

a model dressed as Dickinson with her back to the camera sitting at her writing desk

‘Revolution is the Pod’:
Emily Dickinson’s American Poetry
NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Program
July 19-24 or 26-31, 2026

Application deadline: March 6, 2026, 11:59pm ET

Designed for K-12 educators, this workshop will examine Dickinson’s poetry in light of the rhetoric of her day, as Americans grappled with a national identity one century on from the American Revolution. Through creative writing and engagement with contemporary poets, participants will also explore how Dickinson’s rule-breaking, revolutionary poetry sparks the imaginations of new generations.

Emily Dickinson Museum’s National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History and Culture Program
‘Revolution is the Pod’: Emily Dickinson’s American Poetry

Session I:
July 8 6:30-8:30PM ET live virtual session
July 19-24, 2026,  in-person in Amherst, MA

Session II:
July 15 6:30-8:30PM ET live virtual session,
July 26-31, 2026, in-person in Amherst, MA

Application deadline, March 6, 2026

APPLY

Learn more about the workshop:

Through this immersive exploration of Dickinson’s Amherst, small group coaching, and workshops led by world-class Dickinson scholars and contemporary poets, participants will:

  • Gain skills in reading manuscripts and teaching with objects;
  • Strengthen approaches to poetry and creative writing with students;
  • Explore Emily Dickinson’s revolutionary poetry and consider its use in empowering students as both writers and thinkers.

In the poem “Revolution is the Pod,” Dickinson argues that “Revolution” is a flower that must be seasonally tended (in fact, pruned) to remain vital. The theme of revolution is especially pertinent to Dickinson not only because her experimental verse defied the poetic conventions of her time, but also because she lived during a historical moment defined by many consequential revolutions that shaped American history and identity. These include the American Revolution, just 44 years prior to her birth and already mythologized in New England; the Second Great Awakening and its sweep of religious revivals; ongoing industrial and scientific revolutions; and most significantly, the American Civil War. Because our own age is similarly marked by rapid technological change and deep political divide, Dickinson’s poems carry a special resonance.

The Summer Institute in the poet’s home of Amherst, Massachusetts, allows participants to spend an immersive week in Dickinson’s environment, enriching their understanding of her poetry and its broader context in nineteenth-century New England. Students will have access to the Homestead (1813), the poet’s birthplace and home for forty years; The Evergreens (1856), the home of her family next door and an integral part of her intimate world; as well as special collections of manuscripts and related material culture held by Amherst College’s Frost Library and Jones Library.

The workshop brings together faculty who have written or edited significant works about Dickinson in the past five years, including a new biography, a complete edition of her letters, and an Oxford Handbook. The proposed program highlights new scholarship on place (connecting Dickinson’s Amherst to the Nonotuck Homeland), the influence of Dickinson’s letters and networks on her poetry, her nineteenth-century media contexts, and her engagement with the political and scientific debates of her day. With her life and verse as a lens, the workshop also explores the changing landscape and demographics of New England; the rapid professionalization of science and impact of fossil discoveries; the intellectual connections between Dickinson and figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson and poet/potter David Drake; and Dickinson’s impact on contemporary poetry and culture.

In addition to plenary talks and workshops, participants will be divided into three learning cohorts, which meet periodically across the week. Supported by cohort leaders with strong backgrounds in teaching and Dickinson, these small groups allow participants to engage in the lively discourse with peers that energizes and inspires good teaching. During curriculum group meetings, participants will complete a template that outlines an outcome-based learning project useful for their unique teaching circumstances. This “curriculum artifact” might include a unit; professional development program for colleagues; service learning project; or curation of an electronic resource or collection (text set, primary source collection, slide deck). At the final learning cohort session on Friday, participants will use a feedback protocol endorsed by The National Writing Project that prompts shared learning and encourages further conversations between teachers after the workshop has ended.

Program Schedule & Resource List

Stipend
Stipends are intended to compensate participants for their time commitment and to help defray the costs of participation, which may include expenses such as travel, lodging, and meals. Stipends are taxable income and amounts are determined by NEH based on the duration and format of the program. For 2026 ‘Revolution is the Pod’, participants who complete the one-week workshop receive $1300.

Lodging
Participants have the option to commute, reserve a hotel room for the week, or stay in Seelye Hall dormitory on the Amherst College campus from Sunday to Friday. Located in the center of downtown Amherst, Seelye is a 10-minute walk along paved sidewalks from Keefe Campus Center, where the workshop will be based, and a 10-minute walk along paved sidewalks to the Emily Dickinson Museum. Amenities in the dormitory include: First-floor laundry units, shared lounge spaces, and wifi. The dorm is first-floor accessible for wheelchair users. Please note that the dormitory is not air-conditioned. Individual air conditioning units may be installed for a fee by medical accommodation only. Bedrooms in the dorm include single and double occupancy. Bathrooms are shared. The cost of lodging per night is $42 for participants who choose to stay in the dormitory. Although the workshop ends midday on Friday, participants may arrange to stay on campus until Saturday morning for an additional fee.

Participants who prefer to reserve a hotel room will find many options within a short driving distance to the workshop location. Rates begin at $150/night, and access to a personal vehicle is recommended to commute to campus.

Meals
Participants will have the option of purchasing a daily meal plan that includes breakfast and lunch from Amherst College campus dining services. With the exception of Sunday night of the workshop week, dinner is not provided. Downtown Amherst has a wealth of dining options within walking distance from the workshop location, and delivery is also an option.

Travel
Amherst, Massachusetts is roughly a two-hour drive from Boston, three-hour drive from New York City, and Bradley International Airport is a one-hour drive. Ride-shares, such as Uber and Lyft, are available, as are private and shared ground transportation services through Valley Transporter. Amtrak stops in the nearby town of Northampton, Massachusetts, a 20-minute drive from Amherst.

Project Co-Directors:

Elias Bradley is Education Programs Manager at the Emily Dickinson Museum. Bradley has led the growth of school programming, academic partnerships, and educator professional development for 8 years. Prior to working at the Emily Dickinson Museum, Elias was Senior Educator at the public garden and Cultural Center Wave Hill, leading interdisciplinary school programs connecting history, art, and the living environment. Elias has a BA in English and History from the University of Illinois, and MA in Public History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

Brooke Steinhauser is Senior Director of Programs at the Emily Dickinson Museum where she oversees interpretation, education, visitor experience, and public programming. She was a workshop assistant for the Museum’s 2009 Landmarks workshop, and project director for the Museum’s 2017 workshop. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Muhlenberg College in Art History and a Master’s degree in Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program.  

Workshop Faculty:

Martha Ackmann taught in the Gender Studies Department at Mount Holyoke College for thirty years, including a popular seminar on Emily Dickinson in the poet’s house, now the Emily Dickinson Museum. She is a past president of the Emily Dickinson International Society and co-founder of Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers. Her book, These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson (W.W. Norton & Company, 2020), will be one of the assigned pre-reading texts for the Museum’s workshops. She has instructed teachers from across the country through programs including the New England Young Writers Conference and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Renée Bergland is a literary critic and a historian of science who teaches in the Department of Humanities at Simmons University where she is Program Director of Literature and Writing. Her most recent publication is Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science (Princeton University Press, 2024), which won the British Society for the History of Science’s 2025 Hughes Prize. She contributed an essay, “Dickinson Emergent: Natural Philosophy and the Postdisciplinary Manifold”, to the Oxford Handbook to Emily Dickinson (2022). Bergland is writing a forthcoming general audience book examining Dickinson’s poetry as interpreted through the lens of different sciences, including astronomy, 5 geology, and ecology. She is a member of the board of the Emily Dickinson International Society. 

Lisa Brooks is the Winthrop H. Smith 1916 Professor of American Studies and English at Amherst College. As a writer, literary scholar and historian, she works at the crossroads of early American literature & history, geography and Indigenous studies. Her writing and teaching considers questions about how we see the spaces known as “New England” and “America” when we turn the prism of our perception to divergent angles. Indigenous methodologies, including a focus on language, place, and community engagement, are crucial to her research, as is deep archival investigation. She was a contributor to the Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson (Oxford University Press, 2022) with my essay entitled, “Whose Native Place? The Dickinsons and the Colonization of the Connecticut River Valley.” 

Tiana Clark is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College. In addition to scholarships at Bread Loaf, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Frost Place Seminar, and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, she is the winner of the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She is a recipient of the 2021–22 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, a 2019 Pushcart Prize, and is a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. As Smith College Writer-in-Residence she is a judge of the Annual Poetry Prize for High School Girls. Her book I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood won the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and her 7 first book, Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016), was selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark’s essay “We keep revising our idea of Emily Dickinson. We may never get her right.” was published in the Washington Post in 2019 and she was a headliner of the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Tell It Slant Poetry Festival in 2021. Her latest book of poems, Scorched Earth, is a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award.

P. Gabrielle Foreman  is the Paterno Family Professor of American Literature and Professor of African American Studies and History at Penn State. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State and is founding director of the Colored Convention Project. She is known for building collaborative teams that bring the records of seven decades of early Black organizing to digital life.  With artistic director Lynnette Young Overby and poet Glennis Redmond, she has also worked for a decade to bring early Black history to the stage. In 2022, Foreman was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship. 

Cristanne Miller is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Edward H. Butler Professor of Literature at University of Buffalo, emerita, where she publishes on nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry and culture, including Emily Dickinson: A Poet's Grammar (Harvard University Press, 1987), Reading in Time: Emily Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century (Harvard University Press, 2012), an edition of Dickinson’s complete poems: Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them (Harvard University Press, 2016), winner of the MLA Scholarly Edition Prize and translated into Portuguese; and The Letters of Emily Dickinson, co-edited with Domhnall Mitchell (Harvard University Press, 2024), named as a best 10 Books of the year by PBS News 3 Hour, NPR, and the London Review of Books. Miller co-edited the 2022 Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson with Karen Sánchez-Eppler. She serves on the advisory board of the Emily Dickinson Archive, and formerly on the board of the Emily Dickinson International Society. 

Karen Sánchez-Eppler is L. Stanton Williams 1941 Professor of American Studies and English at Amherst College. The author of Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism and the Politics of the Body (1993) and Dependent States: The Child’s Part in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (2005), and co-editor with Cristanne Miller of The Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson (2022). She is currently writing a brief critical biography, Emily Dickinson / Critical Lives, for Reaktion Books and working on two other book projects: The Unpublished Republic: Manuscript Cultures of the Mid-Nineteenth Century US and In the Archives of Childhood: Playing with the Past. Her scholarship has been supported by grants from the NEH, ACLS, the Newberry Library, the Winterthur Library, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Fulbright Foundation. She spent the 2019-20 academic year as Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the American Antiquarian Society, is one of the founding co-editors of The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, past President of C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, President of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation Board of Directors, and a longtime member of the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Board of Governors. 

Jane Wald is the Jane and Robert Keiter Family Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum. Before beginning her tenure at the Dickinson sites in 2001, she worked at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. She has been responsible for several major restoration and documentation studies at the Museum and is the author of “‘Pretty much all real life’: The Material World of the Dickinson Family,” in the Blackwell Companion to Emily Dickinson (2008), “The ‘Poet Hunters’: Transforming Emily Dickinson’s Home into a Literary Destination,” in the Emily Dickinson Journal (2018), and “A Short Biography of the Homestead and The Evergreens” in the Oxford Handbook to Emily Dickinson (2022).

Learning Cohort Leaders: 

Bruce Penniman taught writing, speech, and literature at Amherst Regional High School for 36 years, and served as the Site Director of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project at the University of Massachusetts, where he taught numerous graduate courses for teachers. He is the author of Building the English Classroom: Foundations, Support Success (NCTE: 2009). He served as a mentor teacher for the Emily Dickinson Museum’s NEH Landmarks workshops in 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2017, and has led many Emily Dickinson poetry discussion programs for the Museum. 

Wendy Tronrud has a Masters in Teaching from Bard College and a PhD in Literature from CUNY Graduate Center, with a focus in 19th-century American and African American Literature, transhistorical poetry, archival studies, and pedagogy. She has taught at Queens College and Cooper Union, mentored and taught in Bard College’s Master of Teaching program, and been a faculty member for the Bard Prison Institute. She is an active member of the Emily Dickinson International Society and co-chair of the Society’s Pedagogy Committee.

Education Specialist/Learning Cohort Leader:

Deb Polansky has been a Program Supervisor and Field Instructor for Master of Arts in Teaching Students at Brandeis University, as well as a teacher trainer for NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). Prior to her work in teacher education, she was a fourth-grade teacher at Shady Hill School for many years. She serves on the Emily Dickinson Museum Board of Directors and is an active member of the Emily Dickinson International Society.

You are eligible to apply if you are a:  

  • United States citizen, including those teaching abroad at U.S. chartered institutions and schools operated by the federal government;
  • resident of U.S. jurisdictions; or  
  • foreign national who has been residing in the United States or its jurisdictions for at least the three years immediately preceding the application deadline.  

You are not eligible to apply if you:  

  • are a foreign national teaching abroad
  • are related to the project director(s)  
  • are affiliated with the applicant institution (employees, currently enrolled students, etc.)  
  • have been taught or advised in an academic capacity by the project director(s)  
  • are delinquent in the repayment of federal debt (taxes, student loans, child support payments, and delinquent payroll taxes for household or other employees)  
  • have been debarred or suspended by any federal department or agency  
  • have attended a previous NEH professional development project (Seminars, Landmarks, or Institutes) led by the project director(s)  

NEH does not require participants to have earned an advanced degree.  

In any given year, an individual may attend only one Institute or Landmarks workshop.  

J1 and F1 visa holders should confer with their sponsoring institution regarding their eligibility to receive a stipend from another institution. 

To be considered for selection, applicants must submit a complete application as indicated on the individual project’s website. Any questions about applications should be directed to the individual project team at Education@EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org.

Read participant expectations.

Read the NEH Principles of Civility for professional development programs.

NEH's Applicant and Participant FAQs

Workshop-specific FAQs:

Q: Can I receive credit or Professional Development Points for my participation in this summer institute?

A: Participants who complete all Workshop sessions will receive a certificate confirming their participation and contact hours. Participants may use this to apply for Continuing Education Unit credits in their home states.

For further questions, please email the project directors at Education@EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org.

Applications must be submitted through the form found on Survey Monkey Apply. Your submission will provide the selection committee with information about the following:

  • Your teaching background
  • Your interest in this workshop
  • How you would use this information and learning with your students

Application timeline:

  • Applications are due March 6, 2026 
  • You will be notified on April 6, 2026
  • Successful applicants must confirm participation by April 17, 2026

The Museum seeks a geographically diverse group of participants and a range of grades K-12 for both weeks of the Workshop. The selection team especially welcomes participants with a strong interest in interdisciplinary learning.

APPLY

 

TESTIMONIALS

The Emily Dickinson Museum has offered four previous versions of this workshop through the NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture grant program. The following testimonials come from K-12 educators who participated in the 2017 workshop, “Emily Dickinson: Person, Poetry, Place”.

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This virtual info session is designed to help educators prepare applications for this opportunity:

Contact Us:
If you have read the FAQ page and have further questions, please email the project directors at Education@EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org.

This program has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
National Endowment for the Humanities logo
a woman walks into the newly reconstructed carriage house

Press Release:
Carriage House Earns Passive House Certification

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Patrick Fecher
publicrelations@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

A woman walks into the recently completed carriage house on a sunny day

EMILY DICKINSON MUSEUM EARNS PHIUS CERTIFICATION FOR RECENTLY CONSTRUCTED CARRIAGE HOUSE BUILDING

In collaboration with edmSTUDIO and Teagno Construction, inc., the Emily Dickinson Museum carriage house reconstruction has earned passive house certification. It is the first passive house historic reconstruction in the U.S.

(AMHERST, Mass., October, 9, 2025) – The Emily Dickinson Museum, edmSTUDIO, and Teagno Construction, Inc. have achieved passive house certification from PHIUS (Passive House Institute US) for the recently reconstructed carriage house building. The carriage house once stood to the east of The Evergreens, the home of Emily Dickinson’s brother Austin and his wife Susan. The exterior appearance of the carriage house is as faithful as possible in its design to evidence accumulated from historic maps, lithographs, and photographs. The interior layout mimics that of the historic carriage house while optimizing modern functions and flow.

At the outset of the design phase, museum staff worked with architects at edmSTUDIO to track down details of the original structure in historic maps, deeds, insurance documents, photographs, and archaeological reports. During the course of construction, museum staff discovered that the carriage house was most likely constructed at the same time as the Italianate portion of The Evergreens dwelling, built in 1856, rather than earlier as originally thought. In a photograph taken in about 1870, the carriage house appears as a prominent yet simple vernacular structure with window and door openings barely visible. Insurance maps from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries revealed that it was a wood frame structure with two levels and a metal roof. Wandering journalist Christopher Morley documented the structure in his 1936 travel memoir Streamlines. Details such as these gave the design team guidance about the exterior appearance and finishes. 

Phius Certified Projects have had their designs and energy models approved by the Phius

Certification Staff, and have been inspected on-site by certified third-party quality assurance professionals trained by Phius to work on Phius projects. The rigorous Phius certification process ensures the building is designed and built to perform up to the targets determined by the climate-specific, cost-optimized Phius Standard.

“Achieving Phius Certification for a project is an accomplishment worth celebrating as it is representative of the hard work of the project team and shows that this project will be among the most efficient and comfortable buildings in the world,” James Ortega, Phius Project Certification Manager.

Architects Monica Del Rio Perez and Tim Widman of edmSTUDIO collaborated on a design using construction techniques and materials that will result in significant energy savings and eliminate reliance on fossil fuels for heating and cooling. The Museum engaged Teagno Construction, Inc., who recently worked on the second phase of Homestead restoration, as general contractor for the project.

“The recreation of the Emily Dickinson Carriage House re-establishes the historic fabric of the site, enabling a more complete interpretation of the poet’s life and surroundings for the Museum. The project was an opportunity to create a dialogue between the past and the future via historical reference and developing building science focused on sustainability. As a hub for visitor engagement, the reconstructed Carriage House invites guests to draw inspiration from its lived literary legacy, architectural presence, and renewed purpose to educate in both fields,” Tim Widman, Principal at edmSTUDIOS.

“Having worked through a number of historic restoration projects for the Emily Dickinson Museum, it was an exciting new challenge to take on a Passive Build at this incredible property. We rarely get to work on projects that have such significance both historically, and from an energy efficiency perspective. Being included in this process has been an absolute honor, and we would like to say thank you to Jane Wald and her wonderful staff, the design team, our Phius consultants, subcontractors, and Amherst College. It truly was a fun project,” David Tynan, General Manager of Teagno Construction, Inc.

The carriage house reconstruction project was supported by a major pledge from former Board members and long-time friends John and Elizabeth Armstrong. “We’ve always been proud of our association with the Museum, recognizing its importance to our regional community and now–through the wonders of technology–to the world.” stated Elizabeth, adding, “We’ve been drawn over the years to supporting singular projects that open multiple possibilities for the Museum. The carriage house is just such a project.”

Jane and Robert Keiter Family Executive Director Jane Wald says, “Opening the carriage house is a significant milestone in long-range goals for the Emily Dickinson Museum established more than twenty years ago. Much has happened between then and now thanks to the many supporters who have shared the Museum’s vision–and especially thanks to John and Elizabeth Armstrong who have been steadfast friends of the Museum since its establishment. By moving some functions into the carriage house, the Museum can more quickly complete the last phase of restoring Emily Dickinson’s Homestead so that her daily life and literary legacy can be more fully presented and appreciated in the place it was created. Moreover, we couldn’t be more pleased that this commitment to passive house construction and environmental responsibility reflects Dickinson’s regard for the natural world and the inspiration she drew from it.” 

Archival photograph of The Evergreens and Carriage House (in middle ground of photo)

Archival photograph of The Evergreens and Carriage House (in middle ground of photo

For press-approved images: https://bit.ly/Press-Carriage-House

ABOUT THE EMILY DICKINSON MUSEUM

The Emily Dickinson Museum is dedicated to sparking the imagination by amplifying Emily Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice from the place she called home.

The Museum comprises two historic houses—the Dickinson Homestead and The Evergreens in the center of Amherst, Mass.—that were home to the poet (1830-1886) and members of her immediate family during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Museum was created in 2003 when the two houses merged under the ownership of the Trustees of Amherst College. The Museum is overseen by a separate Board of Governors and is responsible for raising its own operating, program, and capital funds.

ABOUT PHIUS

Phius is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting comfortable living for all and the well-being of the planet. This means driving down carbon emissions and working toward a net zero future. Phius works toward this goal by training and certifying professionals, maintaining the Phius climate-specific passive building standard, certifying and quality assuring passive buildings, certifying high performance building products and conducting research to advance high-performance building.

graphic for newer every day

Newer every day:
A Dickinson Birthday Celebration
Weds., Dec. 10, 6pm ET

VIRTUAL PROGRAM
This free event has limited capacity, we encourage you to register in advance.

REGISTER

graphic for newer every day

In an 1872 letter to her beloved cousin, Louise Norcross, Dickinson considered the passing of time and the enduring power of language. She wrote, “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.”

Join the Emily Dickinson Museum as we look back at a year full of new programs, sights, and sounds at the poet’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts. We will learn about recent developments in wallpaper conservation at The Evergreens, explore the art installation that opened in August in the Homestead, celebrate creative projects inspired by Dickinson in other parts of the world this year, and more. And along the way we’ll hear special birthday messages to the poet from fans you just might recognize.

Special guests will be joining us on zoom to discuss their artistic practice and what Dickinson means to their work. 
Adrien Broom will share photos from her exhibition Holding Space: The Historic Homes of Artists and Writers now on view at the Mark Twain House & Museum. Ligia Bouton and Matt Donovan will discuss A Something Overtakes the Mind, — their collaborative multi-media installation using objects from the Emily Dickinson Museum’s collections — on view now until December 21. 

All are welcome to this free VIRTUAL program. Space is limited, register in advance. Pay Your Way tickets support free programs at the Emily Dickinson Museum.

This year there are three programs to celebrate Dickinson’s birthday with us!:

195th Birthday Open House
Saturday, December 6, 1-4:30pm ET
Free In-Person Program

Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute:
Celebrating Jane Austen at 250
Co-Presented with the Folger Shakespeare Library
Tuesday, December 9, 7:30pm ET
Paid Online or In-Person (at the Folger) Program

Newer every day
A Dickinson Birthday Celebration
Wednesday, December 10, 6pm ET
Free Virtual Program

Celebrate Emily Dickinson’s 195th Birthday with a Gift in her Honor

Emily Dickinson, the middle child of Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson, was born on December 10, 1830, in the family Homestead on Main Street in Amherst, Massachusetts. She celebrated 55 birthdays before her death in 1886. As an adult she wrote, “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.” (Johnson L379) This year, as we celebrate Emily’s 195th birthday, we invite you to honor her with a gift to the Museum. Our goal is 195 gifts by her 195th birthday, each one a gesture of appreciation to the poet who continues to inspire “Forever—is composed of Nows (Fr690).” Your contribution to the Emily Dickinson Fund keeps her voice vibrant and her story alive for generations to come. Thank you!

GIVE A BIRTHDAY GIFT

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Adrien Broom headshotAdrien Broom is an award-winning photographer, set designer, and filmmaker based in NYC and Connecticut. Drawing upon her multidisciplinary background in animation, fine art, photography, and decorative arts, Broom creates intricate, handcrafted sets that transport viewers to fantastical realms, exploring the intersection of nature and fantasy. Broom meticulously constructs physical sets that invite viewers into tangible, imaginative worlds. Her practice spans gallery and museum exhibitions, commercial projects, private commissions, and conceptual portraiture—all unified by her consistent artistic vision and creative philosophy. Influenced by diverse artists from Gregory Crewdson and Jim Henson to John Singer Sargent and Shona Heath, Broom has developed a signature approach to creating extraordinary worlds both photographically and as installations. Her award-winning work has been exhibited at the Centro di Cultura Contemporanea (Florence), Hudson River Museum (Yonkers), Southern Vermont Arts Center, and Edward Hopper Museum (Nyack among others). In 2025, Broom will present solo exhibitions at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Oklahoma and the Mark Twain Museum in Hartford, CT. Her touring exhibition, A Colorful Dream (2019-2026), exemplifies her commitment to inspiring wonder.

Ligia Bouton headshotLigia Bouton was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and currently divides her time between Massachusetts and New Mexico in the US.  Her creative work combines sculpture and photography with performance and digital video to recreate appropriated narratives and research drawn from the history of science, literature, and other sources.  Bouton’s recent projects have been shown at museums such as the Copenhagen Contemporary (Denmark), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Guildhall Art Gallery (London, UK), Minneapolis Institute of Art, SITE Santa Fe, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Bellevue Arts Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.  In 2016, Bouton’s work was featured in the exhibition, “Charlotte Great and Small,” celebrating the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire, England.  Bouton’s video work has been shown at Art Claims Impulse in Berlin, in the Biennial of Contemporary Art, Nimes, France, and at the Temporary Art Center, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, as well as in The Female Avant Garde Festival in Prague.  Reviews of this work have appeared in Art in America, Art Papers, The Art Newspaper, Art Ltd., and The New York Times.  She is the recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital grant for the opera “Inheritance” which premiered at University of California, San Diego in 2018 and a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship for her project “25 Stars: A Temporary Monument for Henrietta Swan Leavitt”.  Her work can be found in numerous public and private collections including Crystal Bridges Museum, the Albuquerque Museum, St. John’s College, and the Falconer Gallery at Grinnell College. Bouton is currently Professor of Art Studio at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Matt Donovan headshotMatt Donovan is the author of four books and two chapbooks: We Are Not Where We Are (an erasure of Walden, co-authored with Jenny George, Bull City Press 2025), The Dug-Up Gun Museum (a collection of poems about guns and gun violence in America, BOA 2022), Missing Department (a collaborative collection of art and poetry created with artist Ligia Bouton, Visual Studies Workshop 2023), A Cloud of Unusual Size and Shape: Meditations on Ruin and Redemption (a book of lyric essays, Trinity University Press 2016), Rapture & the Big Bam (selected by Lia Purpura for the Snowbound Chapbook Competition, Tupelo Press 2016), and Vellum (selected by Mark Doty for the Bakeless Contest, Houghton Mifflin 2007). Donovan is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, a Pushcart Prize, a Levis Reading Prize, and an NEA Fellowship in Literature. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including AGNI, American Poetry Review, The Believer, Kenyon Review, The New England Review, Poetry, Threepenny Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Donovan serves as Director of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.

graphic for 195th dickinson birthday

Emily Dickinson 195th Birthday Open House
Sat., Dec. 6, 1-4:30pm ET

IN-PERSON PROGRAM at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA
This program is now SOLD OUT. Please join us online for our virtual birthday celebrations (see below).

graphic for 195th dickinson birthdayYou are cordially invited to the Emily Dickinson Museum’s celebration of the poet’s 195th birthday! On Saturday, December 6, join us in person at the Homestead and The Evergreens for a free open house with tours, crafts, music, hot cider and gingerbread cookies! 

Emily Dickinson, the middle child of Edward Dickinson and Emily Norcross Dickinson, was born on December 10, 1830, in the family Homestead on Main Street in Amherst, Massachusetts, now the site of the Emily Dickinson Museum. She celebrated 55 birthdays before her death in 1886. Some of the poet’s most favored themes were time and im/mortality; she wrote, “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.” (Johnson L379) 

Event registration is required. Free tickets are available; Pay Your Way tickets support free programs at the Emily Dickinson Museum.

REGISTER

This year there are 3 programs to celebrate Dickinson’s birthday with us!:

195th Birthday Open House
Saturday, December 6, 1-4:30pm ET
Free In-Person Program

Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute:
Celebrating Jane Austen at 250
Co-Presented with the Folger Shakespeare Library
Tuesday, December 9, 7:30pm ET
Paid Online or In-Person (at the Folger) Program

Newer every day
A Dickinson Birthday Celebration
Wednesday, December 10, 6pm ET
Free Virtual Program

 

Celebrate Emily Dickinson’s 195th Birthday with a Gift in her Honor Emily Dickinson, the middle child of Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson, was born on December 10, 1830, in the family Homestead on Main Street in Amherst, Massachusetts. She celebrated 55 birthdays before her death in 1886. As an adult she wrote, “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.” (Johnson L379) This year, as we celebrate Emily’s 195th birthday, we invite you to honor her with a gift to the Museum. Our goal is 195 gifts by her 195th birthday, each one a gesture of appreciation to the poet who continues to inspire “Forever—is composed of Nows (Fr690).” Your contribution to the Emily Dickinson Fund keeps her voice vibrant and her story alive for generations to come. Thank you! GIVE A BIRTHDAY GIFT

Educator Workshop
Learning from Dickinson’s Letters
Wednesday, December 3, 6:30pm ET

“My letter as a bee, goes laden“:
VIRTUAL PROGRAM

Join us for a virtual professional development program for educators exploring Dickinson’s manuscripts. This participatory zoom workshop will provide context and exercises that illuminate Dickinson’s frequently cryptic poetry. Attendees will leave this 90-minute session with new teaching strategies.

Registration is required and is offered on a sliding scale from $5 – $20. Please select the ticket price that is right for you and consider supporting the Museum and the participation of other educators through your purchase. Tickets are non-refundable.

You may request a Professional Development certificate upon registration.

View the full educator workshop lineup.

For any questions, please e-mail edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

REGISTER

graphic Educator Workshop - My letter as a bee, goes laden

Join Cristanne Miller, co-editor of The Letters of Emily Dickinson (2022), for a presentation and workshop on teaching with the poet’s letters. Over 1,000 of Dickinson’s letters have been collected–the earliest sent to her brother Austin at the age of 11 and the last written shortly before her death. This new definitive edition–the first in over 60 years–includes almost 300 previously uncollected letters and more than 200 “letter poems.” Each is newly transcribed, revealing some previous transcription errors and uncovering deliberately omitted material.

The resulting collection paints a portrait of Dickinson as witty, engaging, and deeply connected with her community as well as the literature and events of her day. The letters provide meaningful context to her poems and can also stand alone as rich primary sources. This workshop will begin with an overview of the letters and Q&A with Miller, followed by interactive activities and discussion of select letters with Museum staff.

REGISTER

Cristanne Miller is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Edward H. Butler Professor of Literature at University of Buffalo, emerita, where she publishes on nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry and culture, including Emily Dickinson: A Poet’s Grammar (Harvard University Press, 1987), Reading in Time: Emily DIckinson in the Nineteenth Century (Harvard University Press, 2012), an edition of Dickinson’s complete poems: Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them (Harvard University Press, 2016), winner of the MLA Scholarly Edition Prize and translated into Portuguese; and The Letters of Emily Dickinson, co-edited with Domhnall Mitchell (Harvard University Press, 2024), named as a best 10 Books of the year by PBS News Hour, NPR, and the London Review of Books. Miller co-edited the 2022 Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson with Karen Sánchez-Eppler. She serves on the advisory board of the Emily Dickinson Archive, and formerly on the board of the Emily Dickinson International Society.

graphic Educator Workshop - Dickinson’s Gardens and Volcanoes

Educator Workshop
Dickinson’s Gardens and Volcanoes
Tuesday, November 11, 6:30pm ET

VIRTUAL PROGRAM

Join us for a virtual professional development program for educators exploring Dickinson’s manuscripts. This participatory zoom workshop will provide context and exercises that illuminate Dickinson’s frequently cryptic poetry. Attendees will leave this 90-minute session with new teaching strategies.

Registration is required and is offered on a sliding scale from $5 – $20. Please select the ticket price that is right for you and consider supporting the Museum and the participation of other educators through your purchase. Tickets are non-refundable.

You may request a Professional Development certificate upon registration.

View the full educator workshop lineup.

For any questions, please e-mail edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

REGISTER

graphic Educator Workshop - Dickinson’s Gardens and Volcanoes

Join Drs. Cheryl Weaver and Wendy Tronrud, Dickinson scholars who have taught at both the secondary and post-secondary levels, for an interactive professional development workshop on two of Dickinson’s most evocative poetic landscapes–gardens and volcanoes. 

This workshop focuses on how teachers can use pre-reading strategies related to Dickinson’s historical and cultural contexts to support student readers of her poems. Beginning with an overview of how volcanoes and gardens are relevant to aspects of Dickinson’s poetry, Dr. Cheryl Weaver and Dr. Wendy Tronrud will engage participants in particular Dickinson poems, using related pre-reading strategies and introducing writing-to-learn strategies. Workshop participants will leave the session with strategies for use in or adaptable to any literature-related or humanities classrooms.

REGISTER

Wendy Tronrud is an Assistant Professor of English Education at Queens College, CUNY. She works on the intersection between education, poetry and visual arts across the nineteenth into the twenty-first centuries. She has published essays in Women’s Studies and ESQ in addition to art writing in The Brooklyn Rail and Camera Austria. She has recently co-edited an ESQ triple issue on Thomas Wentworth Higginson with Gerard Holmes. Currently, she is developing a book proposal on volcanoes in the nineteenth century. She is a co-chair of the Emily Dickinson International Society’s pedagogy community. 

Cheryl Weaver teaches IB Language and Literature at City Honors School in Buffalo, NY, United States. Her scholarly interests include nineteenth-century American literature, epistolary practice, and the pragmatics of postal delivery and postal history. She received the 2022 Emily Dickinson International Society Graduate Fellowship in support of research related to her dissertation, “‘You know it is customary’: Emily Dickinson and Nineteenth-Century Epistolary Practice.” In 2023, she was awarded the  Margaretta (Happy) Rockefeller Summer Research Fellowship at Historic Hudson Valley. She is a co-chair of the Emily Dickinson International Society’s pedagogy community. 

graphic Educator Workshop - The Earth reversed her Hemispheres –

Educator Workshop
Dickinson’s Planetary Poems
Wednesday, October 22, 6:30pm ET

“The Earth reversed her Hemispheres –-“:
VIRTUAL PROGRAM

Join us for a virtual professional development program for educators exploring Dickinson’s manuscripts. This participatory zoom workshop will provide context and exercises that illuminate Dickinson’s frequently cryptic poetry. Attendees will leave this 90-minute session with new teaching strategies.

Registration is required and is offered on a sliding scale from $5 – $20. Please select the ticket price that is right for you and consider supporting the Museum and the participation of other educators through your purchase. Tickets are non-refundable.

You may request a Professional Development certificate upon registration.

View the full educator workshop lineup.

For any questions, please e-mail edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org

REGISTER

I saw no Way – The Heavens were stitched –
I felt the Columns close –
The Earth reversed her Hemispheres –
I touched the Universe –

And back it slid – and I alone –
A speck upon a Ball –
Went out upon Circumference –
Beyond the Dip of Bell –

(Fr 633)

graphic Educator Workshop - The Earth reversed her Hemispheres –

Join Renée Bergland, historian of science and author of Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles, Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science for an interactive educator’s workshop.

During Emily Dickinson’s lifetime, the universe expanded in every direction. Developments in astronomy, geology, and biology enlarged the scales of space and time. To many, the realization that humans were a tiny part of Earth’s geological past was profoundly disturbing. Byron concluded that the planet Earth was doomed, and that the universe would end in “Darkness.” Others, including Dickinson, were more ambivalent. “I saw no Way – The Heavens were stitched – ” expresses a mix of despair at the loss of the old model of the universe and excitement about the possibilities of the new sciences. Dickinson’s poems insistently pressed different frames of reference together, inviting readers to find the relationship between different ways of thinking about the universe.

In this moment of planetary environmental emergency, Dickinson’s poetry gives us a way to talk about planetary grief and ecological anxiety, while also allowing us to imagine more hopeful frames of reference. This workshop will begin with a presentation of Dickinson’s planetary poems in the context of 19th-century science, followed by a discussion of how they invite us to expand our “Circumference” today. The workshop will conclude with a discussion of classroom activities and resources.

REGISTER

Renée Bergland is a literary critic and a historian of science who teaches in the Department of Humanities at Simmons University where she is Program Director of Literature and Writing. Her most recent publication is Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science (Princeton University Press, 2024). She contributed an essay, “Dickinson Emergent: Natural Philosophy and the Postdisciplinary Manifold”, to the Oxford Handbook to Emily Dickinson (2022). Bergland is writing a forthcoming general audience book examining Dickinson’s poetry as interpreted through the lens of difference sciences, including astronomy, geology, and ecology. She is a member of the board of the Emily Dickinson International Society. 

Tea with the Dickinsons- Tell It Slant 2025

Tea with the Dickinsons
An illustrated talk by Executive Director Jane Wald
Saturday, September 20, 3pm ET

HYBRID PROGRAM — in-person at the Emily Dickinson Museum AND streaming live for online registrants

This program is FREE to attend. Registration is required. 
Part of the 2025 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival!

Join us for the 13th annual Tell it Slant Poetry Festival, a week of events happening both online and in-person at the Museum! Register here to access the Festival schedule:

REGISTER FOR THE FESTIVAL

Tea with the Dickinsons- Tell It Slant 2025Introduced to the European market in the seventeenth-century, trade in tea – and subsequently in coffee and chocolate – became a means of establishing empires and generating the almost frantic consumerism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the West. Emily Dickinson and her family delighted in these exotic imported beverages and, like the rest of New England, acquired the requisite material goods to make and serve tea, coffee, and chocolate in their own family circle and for their guests. This talk will explore the meanings, settings, and equipment for “taking tea” in Emily Dickinson’s world, including original family objects now in the Museum’s collection.
 
An illustrated talk by Emily Dickinson Museum Jane and Robert Keiter Family Executive Director Jane Wald.
 


Support The Tell It Slant Poetry Festival and Honor Someone Special:
Admission to all Festival events is free, but online donations, especially those made in honor or memory of family, friends, or colleagues are heartily encouraged and vital to the future of this beloved annual event. All gifts are tax deductible and will be recognized as part of the Festival.

2025 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival Schedule