Affiliated Researchers
Alda Balthrop-Lewis
abalthroplewis@fsu.eduVisiting Scholar, Transcendentalism Initiative
Alda Balthrop-Lewis is Associate Professor of Religion at Florida State University. She studies ethics—the norms, principles, relationships, and practices people use in their efforts to live well. In Thoreau's Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2021)...
Ryan Carr
rc3116@columbia.eduVisiting Scholar, Transcendentalism Initiative
Ryan Carr is a lecturer at Columbia, where he teaches classes in American studies, English, and the Core Curriculum. He is the author of Samson Occom: Radical Hospitality in the Native Northeast (Columbia, 2023) and co-editor of the forthcoming Writings...
Kristen Case
kristenacase@gmail.comVisiting Scholar, Transcendentalism Initiative
Kristen Case is a poet and scholar whose books include American Pragmatism and Poetic Practice , Little Arias , Principles of Economics , Henry David Thoreau's Kalendar , and Daphne . She has co-edited several essay collections on American writers and is...
Peter Catapano
catapano@nytimes.comAssociate, Transcendentalism Initiative
Peter Catapano is an author and editor who has worked at The New York Times since 1998. He is the founding editor of the Times’ philosophy series The Stone , which ran for eleven years, and co-editor of four essay collections. His writing has appeared in...
Phyllis Cole
pbc2@psu.eduAssociate, Transcendentalism Initiative
Phyllis Cole is a past fellow of Harvard Divinity School's Women's Studies in Religion Program and currently a Professor Emerita of English, Women's Studies, and American Studies at Penn State Brandywine. She has been an officer or board member of the...
Simon Cox
simon.shadowbear@gmail.comAssociate, Transcendentalism Initiative
Simon Cox received his PhD in the Study of Religion from Rice University in 2019 and is the author of The Subtle Body: A Genealogy (Oxford University Press, 2022). He is a Research Fellow at the Esalen Center for Theory and Research and a Visiting Scholar...
Alice de Galzain
alice.degalzain@gmail.comVisiting Scholar, Transcendentalism Initiative
Alice de Galzain is a postdoctoral researcher and former Marie Skłodowska-Curie Seal of Excellence Fellow at Sorbonne Université (2024–2026). She is a Visiting Scholar with the Transcendentalism Initiative at the Center for the Study of World Religions at...
Rebecca Gould
rkg3sheep@gmail.comVisiting Scholar, Transcendentalism Initiative
Rebecca Kneale Gould is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, where she co-directs the Religion, Philosophy, and Environment Focus. Trained in the study of religion, her research explores the intersections of religion...
Richard Higgins
rhiggins@hds.harvard.eduAssociate, Transcendentalism Initiative
Richard Higgins is a writer, book coach and the author or editor of five books, including, most recently, Thoreau’s God , from the University of Chicago Press, which explores Thoreau’s iconoclastic religious quest, and Thoreau and the Language of Trees...
Lewis Hyde
hyde@kenyon.eduAssociate, Transcendentalism Initiative
Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator, cultural critic, and MacArthur Fellow whose work explores the public life of the imagination, artistic practice, and the cultural commons. He is the author of The Gift (Random House, 1983), a landmark work that...
Rochelle Johnson
rochellejohnsonwriter@gmail.comVisiting Scholar, Transcendentalism Initiative
Rochelle L. Johnson received the 2026 John Burroughs Nature Essay Award and the 2025 Georgia Review Prose Prize for her “ Phantom Pains ,” which also was aggregated by Long Reads, Memoirland, and the international scientific magazine Nature in its “Nature...
John Kaag
jkaag@hds.harvard.eduAssociate, Transcendentalism Initiative
John Kaag is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His research and teaching focus on American philosophy, existentialism, and the history of ideas. He is the author of American Philosophy: A Love Story (FSG, 2016), Hiking...
Elise Lemire
elise.lemire@purchase.eduVisiting Scholar, Transcendentalism Initiative
Elise Lemire is Professor Emerit of English and Global Literatures at Purchase College, SUNY. Her research focuses on race, memory, and memorialization in the northeastern United States, with particular attention to Concord, Massachusetts, the shared...
Nicholas Low
nlow@hds.harvard.eduAssociate, Transcendentalism Initiative
Nicholas E Low received his PhD in the Study of Religion from Harvard University in 2023. He is currently an affiliate at the CSWR, and a research fellow at the Esalen Institute’s Center for Theory and Research. His work seeks to illuminate the religious...
Megan Marshall
mmarshall@hds.harvard.eduAssociate, Transcendentalism Initiative
Megan Marshall is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), and The Peabody Sisters (Mariner, 2006), a...
Lydia Moland
llmoland@colby.eduVisiting Scholar, Transcendentalism Initiative
Lydia Moland is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Philosophy at Colby College. She is the author of Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life (2022), a biography of abolitionist Lydia Maria Child. Her writing has appeared in The Wall...
Francesco Piraino
fpiraino@hds.harvard.eduAssociate
Francesco Piraino is a sociologist of religion, culture, and art. He obtained his PhD in Sociology in 2016 at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), and have held research positions at KU...
Scott Pratt
spratt@uoregon.eduVisiting Scholar, Transcendentalism Initiative
Scott L. Pratt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. His research and teaching focus on American philosophy, including pragmatism, feminist philosophy, philosophies of race, and Indigenous philosophy, as well as philosophy of education...
Sarah Schorr
sschorr@hds.harvard.eduArtist in Residence
Sarah Schorr is an artist-in-residence at the Center for the Study of Religion at Harvard Divinity School. A captivation with light, water, and modes of embodied contemplation runs through her work. Her new book, Ephemeral Field Journal: Climate + Love in...
Mona Simpson
monasimpson@me.comAssociate, Transcendentalism Initiative
Mona Simpson is the author of the novels Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road, My Hollywood, Casebook, and Commitment. Born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, she moved to Los Angeles as a teenager. She studied poetry with Seamus Heaney...
