Exploring Nietzsche’s reading of Emerson, Nicholas Low asks what it means to inherit Transcendentalism as a tradition that demands transformation rather than adherence, and how that legacy bears on Nietzsche's challenge to "become who you are."

A chance encounter with a historic Denver house leads Noelle A. Baker to uncover an unexpected convergence between Mary Moody Emerson and Margaret Fuller's Transcendentalism and the history of transgender community formation.

For Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, to see was to behold the sacred in the commonplace. In this essay, Richard Higgins treats sight within Transcendentalist tradition as a discipline for bringing wonder and spiritual awakening into focus. 

Margaret Fuller redefined education as a "reproductive" act. Ulrike Wagner examines how Fuller's criticism and series of Conversations translated Romantic philology into a democratic pedagogy, positioning women’s voices as a medium through which knowledge...

By examining a lesser-known witness to Margaret Fuller’s life and legacy—the Polish writer and political activist Adam Mickiewicz—Gosia Sklodowska shows how his recognition of Fuller as a fully embodied, prophetic reformer exposes the limits of the...

Examining a fragile ink drawing tucked away in an archive, Alda Balthrop-Lewis considers Thomas Merton's reprisal of Henry David Thoreau’s image of sleepers and railroads from the book Walden to ask whether those who have been run over might yet learn to...

Jane Bennett returns to the first and only meeting of Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman for how it helps disclose a personhood large enough to be human and ahuman at once, illumining the self's animal, mineral, and even atmospheric vibrancy.

What if the future of forests depends less on human management than on our willingness to learn from other species? Dan McKanan returns to Thoreau’s “Succession of Forest Trees” to trace a forgotten, democratic vision of ecological change.

John Kaag revisits Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story "The Celestial Railroad" to explore how Transcendentalism’s soaring ideals could drift into comfortable illusions—and how figures like Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and a changed Ralph Waldo...