Course Description
Summary
A comprehensive survey of American Transcendentalism through the writing of its major figures (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller) as well as more overshadowed club members like Orestes Brown, Bronson Alcott and Ellery Channing. We will explore the debates the movement set off among thinkers of the 19th Century, especially concerning slavery, Abolitionism, and women's rights, and come to a keen understanding of Transcendentalism not just as a philosophical ideal, but as a radical new way of living that only could have flowered in the roiling America of the 1830s and 1840s. Students will write frequent responses to their reading throughout the term and two papers.
