Transcendentalism Initiative Essay Series

Essays from scholars, independent researchers and writers across a range of disciplinary backgrounds

Transcendentalism Initiative
Michael Corhell's photo of ice and water at Walden

Transcendentalism Essay Series

Edited by Russell C. Powell

Transcendentalism Then—And Now

Lawrence Buell reflects on a lifetime of reading Emerson and Thoreau, arguing that Transcendentalism is a philosophy of continual self-renewal, calling us at every age to resist conformity, sustain vision, and imagine the world otherwise.

Ralph Waldo Emerson portrait in black and white

Practicing Transcendentalism

Megan Marshall returns to the lives and words of the Peabody sisters to ask what use Transcendentalism is now. Through their example, Marshall finds that the movement’s enduring promise lies in its demand that thought become deed.

Howard Street Cemetery

Thoreau and the Future of the Senses

In this essay, Charles M. Stang investigates Thoreau's belief that we have lost the art of truly seeing, and that recovering—or rather, developing for the first time—our full sensory potential represents both an educational and spiritual imperative

Ice, Walden Pond

Retrieving Transcendentalism amid the Crisis of Attention

By Russell C. Powell, CSWR Research Associate | Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey Why Transcendentalism? And why now? The inauguration of our new research initiative on Transcendentalism at the Center for the Study of World Religions is an opportunity to...
Wood block image of Henry David Thoreau