Transcendentalism Initiative

In the third episode of "Living Texts," Phyllis Cole explores how Margaret Fuller took the Transcendentalist ideal of self-reliance and transformed it into a much broader argument for women’s freedom in Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Fuller begins from...

In the second episode of "Living Texts," John Kaag explores Ralph Waldo Emerson's lifelong engagement with theodicy—the enduring philosophical and religious question of how suffering and evil can exist within a universe imbued with the divine. Beginning...

By Ryan Shea | Edited by Russell C. Powell An encompassing ecological vision may be one of our best hopes not only for a healthy and habitable future, but also for a wise and worthwhile present. Such an ecology cannot be less than a science, but it can...

The Center for the Study of World Religions’ Transcendentalism Initiative will host a special screening of Episode 2 of Henry David Thoreau, a new documentary directed by Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers and produced by Ken Burns. The film is...

As part of our Transcendentalism initiative, we are pleased to host a book talk with Lawrence Buell in celebration of the publication of Henry David Thoreau: Living Disobediently (Oxford University Press, 2024). While no single event could fully encompass...

Charles Stang and Sarah Schorr discussed Thoreau’s extraordinary encounters with, and meditations on, the sun and the moon, and the significance of those for their ongoing book collaboration, Skywater. CHARLES STANG joined the Faculty of Divinity in 2008...

A Talk by Lewis Hyde. Sponsored by the Constellation Project. It has happened before, the occupation of an American city by federal forces, and national guard troops commandeered without local consent. It happened first in 1854 when President Franklin...

HDS alum Richard Higgins, the author of Thoreau’s God , explored Henry David Thoreau as an original voice in American religion. Although a harsh critic of the Christianity of his day, Thoreau was religious to the bone and had a profound sense of the holy...

We celebrated the publication of the book, Ephemeral Field Journal: Climate + Love in Claude Monet’s Garden (Kehrer Verlag, September 2025) by Artist-in-Residence Sarah Schorr with an essay by CSWR Director Charles Stang. When Claude Monet settled in...