Emily Dickinson International Society Triennial Conference
Paris – Cité Internationale Universitaire
24-26 June, 2016

‘The Angled Road Preferred against the Mind’
Experimental Dickinson

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN HERE.

Registration fees rise after May 15, 2016, so take advantage of our Early Bird Rates!

As the date of the Paris event approaches, we'd would like to draw your
attention to the fact that banquet tickets will not be available after
June 15. Please also note that on-site registration will not be
possible—so, make sure you have registered before joining us in Paris!

The full program of the EDIS in Paris Conference - Experimental
Dickinson is now ready for you. We hope you enjoy knowing a little ahead
of time what expects you, and are looking forward to seeing you in Paris! Conference Program can be downloaded here.

Accommodation information is available here.

Paris Sightseeing Tips can be found here.

To read the Call for Papers, click here.

Emily Dickinson couched her often radical ideas in compressed and highly demanding short lyrical forms, and in doing so placed a premium on experimenting with (in) language. Indeed, experimenting—from the same Latin root as “peril”—implies not only breaking new ground, or inventing new forms, but willfully rendering the determinants of one’s art (and sometimes of one’s life as well) uncertain, or “precarious” (see “I stepped from plank to plank”). In her unusual views on broad topics—Nature, life and death, God, love—, and in her daring use of speech figures, imagery, and metrics, Dickinson’s experimentations with language are repeatedly on display. Alicia Ostriker calls Emily Dickinson “America’s first radically experimental poet,” and characterizes her writings as “an experimental compound of analytic commentary, fantasy, autobiography, and poetry.” Dickinson boldly and tirelessly explored “the ‘Undiscovered Continent,’” “the Mind.” Her radical experimentalism in forms of poetry and forms of life, sometimes deceptively conveyed in idioms of conventionality, led her to think “lonelier thing[s]” than anyone “had seen,” adopting “that precarious Gait/Some call Experience.”

Conceiving innovative art forms to be essentially experimental has had many resonances throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. As her steadily growing popularity suggests, Dickinson and her writing are more relevant than ever, including as an experimental writer. For its ninth international conference to be held in Paris, June 24-26, 2016, EDIS invites proposals for workshops/panels and individual scholarly papers as well as artistic performances on the theme of “Experimental Dickinson.” Papers on other aspects of Dickinson’s writing are more than welcome and will also be accepted.

Deadline for all submissions: December 31, 2015.

Proposals (in English) to be sent to:
Prof. Antoine CAZÉ, Conference Organizer – antcaze@wanadoo.fr

Proposals will be reviewed by the Conference Committee:
Prof. Martha Nell SMITH (U of Maryland), EDIS President
Prof. Cristanne MILLER (U at Buffalo)
Prof. Eleanor HEGINBOTHAM (Emerita, Concordia U Saint Paul)
Prof. Vivian POLLAK (Washington U in St. Louis)
Prof. Daniel L. MANHEIM (Centre College)
Prof. Antoine CAZÉ (Université Paris Diderot Paris 7)
Prof. Isabelle ALFANDARY (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3)