Academic Beards

Jessica Beard is a 6th year doctoral candidate in the Literature department at UCSC. She attended SUNY Buffalo in 2003-2004 where she received an MA in the Poetics program and began her work on Emily Dickinson. She is currently working on a dissertation on reading and editing Dickinson’s manuscripts entitled, “’Bound—A—Trouble’: the Archive, the Canon and the Classroom.” The dissertation argues that in Dickinson’s work each poem contains multiple iterations that must be read and understood together. Such work demands that we actually read multiply. This project will include a chapter discussing the merits and difficulties of using digitized literary works to represent such multiplicity as scholars as well as teachers. It will also include a digital edition of a set of Dickinson’s poems in multiple forms and editions using the SOPHIE e-book program from USC. Jessica also co-organizes the Poetry and Politics research cluster at UCSC, bringing contemporary poets and scholars to campus for readings, lectures, workshops, and conferences.

http://ucsc.academia.edu/jessicabeard