Studying Elizabeth Bishop at Vassar
Dr. Virginia Konchan selected as NEH Summer Scholar
Dr. Virginia Konchan, adjunct professor of English, has been selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities as an NEH Summer Scholar for 2017. In July, Dr. Konchan will participate in "Elizabeth Bishop and the Literary Archive," a month-long seminar at Vassar College, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet's alma mater.
"I first started studying Elizabeth Bishop as an undergrad and was fascinated both by the conversational intimacy of her poems, and her epistolary conversations with Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell," says Dr. Konchan. "Her writing style, along with that of Wallace Stevens – a poet she herself imitated while living in Key West – has greatly influenced my own."
NEH summer scholars will have ample time to work in the archives on independent projects for publication and to revise or develop new syllabi for teaching. Summer scholars will also have the opportunity to collaborate on a proposed volume of essays that focuses on the poet and her archives.
Read a selection of Elizabeth Bishop's poems here
Dr. Konchan is the author of the short story collection Anotomical Gift (Noctuary Press) and three poetry collections, most recently The End of Spectacle(Carnegie Mellon University Press). She teaches creative writing classes at Marist.
This summer, the 537 NEH Summer Scholars who participate in all the 24 different seminars will teach more than 93,975 students the following year. NEH Scholars receive a stipend to cover travel, study, and living expenses.