Cross listed with WGST 4188/7188

This course fulfills the English Department DI but not the A & S DI requirement 

This Writing Intensive course will focus on Emily Dickinson and how her life and her writings have been adapted in film and television in recent years. While alive, Dickinson wrote both poems and letters prolifically, yet hardly any of her work was published. When her work was published in her lifetime, it was not only edited but largely adapted, as her manuscript writings were translated into print, with spelling, word choice, and punctuation modified; when the first book edition of her poems was published posthumously in 1890, bringing her more fully into the public eye, her writings were further adapted. It would not be until 1955, with the publication of Thomas H. Johnson’s variorum edition, that readers would gain a more accurate sense of Dickinson’s poems as she wrote them in all of their marvelous intensity, uniqueness, and brilliance. Since then, scholars have continued to uncover, digitize, and discuss Dickinson’s manuscripts—both her poems and her letters—helping us to gain a more direct sense of immediacy to her writings. While we have gained a clearer picture of Dickinson’s manuscripts and writing processes over the past several decades, at the same time, Dickinson’s life and writings have been adapted in a new and different way through film and television. These adaptations themselves have further shaped our understanding of Dickinson and even the physical space of where she lived in Amherst, Massachusetts.

While we will focus on Dickinson and adaptations of her life and work in this class, in doing so we will attend to the social and cultural contexts of women’s rights and education; race, slavery, and the Civil War; and social class. We will unpack these contexts as they existed in the nineteenth century and how they have shaped our present moment, and we will consider how the adaptations we will watch engage with these contexts as they attempt to bring Dickinson to life. As we read Dickinson’s writings, we will consider how her own social position afforded her opportunities for writing and how these opportunities shaped her own literary output. While the traditional mythology surrounding Dickinson has been a poet writing in isolation, by placing her in context we can better understand the social and cultural forces that impacted her writing and that continue to be reflected upon in recent adaptations of her life. Questions we will consider in this course include, but are not limited to: In what ways does Dickinson continue to live on through adaptation in our present moment? What are the possibilities and limitations of adaptation? How can investigating adaptations of Dickinson help us to better understand the relationship between the past and the present? 

You will have opportunities to write both creatively and critically in this class and to explore ideas that you find interesting. Assignments will include a creative notebook project, regular Canvas discussion prompts, reflection essays, a prospectus for a final project, and a final project in a medium of your choice.