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BUFFALO, N.Y. – Since its founding in the late 1980s, The Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) has presented the organization’s highest recognition to only a handful of scholars. 

Every three years, the EDIS announces and solicits nomination letters for its Distinguished Service Award, honoring individuals who have shown exemplary and enduring dedication to the society’s mission through their outstanding contributions to Dickinson studies.

This year, all five letters enthusiastically recommended the same person for the rare distinction: Cristanne Miller, PhD, professor emerita of English in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.

Miller will receive the award later this month at the society’s conference in Taipei, Taiwan.

“The nomination letters underscore the profound impact of professor Miller’s scholarship on the field,” said Paraic Finnerty, PhD, associate professor in English and American Literature at the University of Portsmouth (UK) and EDIS president. “The materials emphasize her work as a founding EDIS member and one of its former presidents; her organization of key conferences; the co-founding of the Dickison Critical Institute to support emerging scholars; and her consistent advocacy for an inclusive, international society.”

Miller also edited the society’s “The Emily Dickinson Journal” for 10 years beginning in 2005, nine of them at UB with graduate student editorial assistants. Her influential works include “Emily Dickinson: A Poet’s Grammar” and “Reading in Time.”

She edited projects such as “Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them” and, most recently, “The Letters of Emily Dickinson,” co-edited with Domhnall Mitchell, a landmark collection named among the best books of 2024 by PBS, NPR and The London Review of Books. 

“I am truly honored and moved by this recognition,” said Miller. “And it’s really a UB effort!”

Elizabeth Petrino, PhD, a professor of English at Fairfield University who received her doctorate at UB, wrote one of the letters nominating Miller. Petrino will present Miller with the award in Taiwan.

“I later learned that George De Titta, professor emeritus of structural biology, also wrote a nomination letter,” said Miller. “He has been leading an informal poetry reading group for years and helped me organize the Emily Dickinson marathon readings here in Buffalo.”

The recognition might appear to be the capstone to a prolific and notable career, but Miller’s retirement last year has hardly slowed the pace of her work.

Harvard University Press has expressed interest in Miller and Mitchell editing a “selected letters” edition of the comprehensive collection of letters that continues receiving praise.

But that’s only part of a future that might not be immediately apparent to those familiar with Miller’s Dickinson work.

“Many of my colleagues don’t know that I spend almost as much time researching Marianne Moore as I do Emily Dickinson,” she says. “I still hold the title of research professor because of my ongoing work with the , hosted at UB, so the volume of work hasn’t decreased in retirement.

“It’s only the number of meetings I’m required to attend that has dwindled.”

As part of the Distinguished Service Award, EDIS asks each recipient what Dickinson poem they would like re-produced in calligraphy.

Miller chose a poem that begins, 

“It’s a lovely poem to commemorate years of work,” Miller says.