Transcendentalism Initiative Events

Research Talks are held Mondays from 12:00–1:30 p.m. in the CSWR Common Room unless otherwise noted. Select a talk title for program details and registration.

September 8 (Tuesday)
Emancipating Ecology: The Emerson-Thoreau Fault Line and Why It Matters for the Climate Crisis
Russell C. Powell

September 14
Transcendental Imagination: The Case for a New American Renaissance
Kristen Case

September 21
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Radical Reconstruction, and the Antislavery Roots of American Social Science
Peter Wirzbicki

September 28
A Transcendentalist Peace: American Pacifism from Lydia Maria Child to Jane Addams 
Lydia Moland

October 5
Choosing Good or Evil—Royce and Emerson on Knowing the Difference
Scott Pratt

October 13 (Tuesday)
Frederick Douglass and Jesus Christ
Ryan Carr

October 19
The Reformist Language of Plants: Marianne Dwight's Botanical Watercolors
Alice Galazin

October 26
The Passion for Micrology: Nietzsche and Thoreau on the Magic in the Nearest Things
Nicholas Low

November 2
"For Children Who Care to Learn": Caroline Dall, Self-Culture, and Patty Gray's Journey to the Cotton Fields
Lydia Ciollo-Willsky

November 9
Transcending the Ordinary: Thoreau's Second Experiment
Robert Thorson

November 16
Transcendentalism, Memorialization, and Harvard's Slavery History
Elise Lemire

November 30
Plato, the American Genius: The Life of Emerson's Orient
Simon Cox

December 7
How Divinity Scholars Put the Human at the Center of the Humanities
Ulrike Wagner

December 14
Thomas Merton in the Transcendentalist Tradition
Alda Balthrop-Lewis

September 9, 16, 23, 30 – Exploring Spirituality in Nature Writing: A Writing Workshop Series in Creative Nonfiction with Rochelle Johnson

This workshop is currently full. To join the waitlist, please contact Laurie Sedgwick at ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu. Registration is limited to 12 participants.

Drawing on the American nature writing tradition and its Transcendentalist roots, this creative nonfiction workshop explores nature writing as an expression and exploration of spirituality. Through brief readings, discussion, guided writing exercises, and prompts, participants will consider how encounters with the more-than-human world can illuminate spiritual experience. The workshop will conclude with individual feedback from the instructor on a short essay submitted by each participant.

Rochelle L. Johnson is an award-winning writer and scholar of American literature and environmental humanities. A recipient of the 2026 John Burroughs Nature Essay Award and the 2025 Georgia Review Prose Prize, she holds the Bernie McCain Chair in the Humanities at the College of Idaho.

October 2–3 – Phenomenological Ecology Lecture and Workshop with Ryan Shea

• Friday, October 2, 3:30–5:00 pm
  Opening Talk & Discussion: Imaginative Seeing in Goethe, Coleridge, and Emerson: Pathways to a Phenomenological Ecology
  Open to all.
• Saturday, October 3, 9:00 am–5:00 pm
  Workshop: Living Transcendentalism: Phenomenological Ecology and Participating in Nature’s Wholeness
  Registration required; limited to 15 participants. Registration includes attendance at Friday’s opening talk.

Drawing on Emerson, Thoreau, Goethe, and the tradition of phenomenological ecology, these two related programs explore imagination and attentive observation as ways of deepening our relationship with the natural world. Friday’s public lecture considers imagination as a form of participatory knowing, while Saturday’s limited-enrollment workshop explores plants through close observation, drawing, and writing.

Ryan Shea is a researcher and educator at The Nature Institute in Ghent, New York, and a doctoral researcher at the University of Cologne. His work focuses on experiential and participatory ecology, Goethean phenomenology, and new ways of perceiving and understanding the natural world.

For more information and to register, please visit the CSWR Events Page.

October 22, 9:00 am–5:00 pm – Stanley Cavell’s Transcendental Etudes
Braun Room, Harvard Divinity School | Open to the public.

A full-day conference commemorating the centenary of philosopher Stanley Cavell’s birth and exploring his engagement with Transcendentalism.

May 6–7, 2027 – Transcendentalism Initiative Conference
James Room, Harvard Divinity School | Open to the public.

A two-day conference culminating the Transcendentalism Initiative’s year of research and bringing together scholars and broader audiences for conversation and exchange.

Friday, October 2, 2026, 3:30-5 pm, Common Room, CSWR 
Imaginative Seeing in Goethe, Coleridge, and Emerson: Pathways to a Phenomenological Ecology — Ryan Shea

October 13, 4:00–5:00 pm – In This Twilight: Tar Paintings in Conversation with American Transcendentalism by Christopher Volpe
CSWR Common Room, Harvard Divinity School | Open to the public.

Artist Christopher Volpe presents In This Twilight, a body of work inspired by Whitman, Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau. Using industrial coal tar as his primary medium, Volpe explores the relationship between Transcendentalist thought and contemporary ecological and spiritual crises, inviting reflection on nature, impermanence, and our changing world.

November 9, 4:00–5:30 pm – In This Twilight Artist Talk with Christopher Volpe
Emerson Chapel, Divinity Hall, Harvard Divinity School | Open to the public.

Artist Christopher Volpe discusses In This Twilight and its engagement with American Transcendentalism, the natural world, and questions of ecological and spiritual change.

December 10, 4:00 pm – Charles Ives and the Concord Sonata with Donald Berman
Williams Chapel, Harvard Divinity School (location to be confirmed) | Open to the public.

A talk and performance of Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata with pianist Donald Berman, exploring Ives’s musical engagement with American Transcendentalism.