Book Talk with Lawrence Buell: Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave., Cambridge & Zoom
Thu., Apr. 2, 2026, 5:30 – 7 p.m. 
Registration is required.
Please register to attend in person.
Please register to attend on Zoom.
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. While no single event could fully encompass the breadth and influence of Buell’s scholarship, this occasion offers an opportunity to honor his foundational contributions to the study of Transcendentalism and to American literary and cultural history more broadly.
Professor Buell will deliver a talk of approximately 35–45 minutes reflecting on the aims and arguments of his new book, followed by a conversation with CSWR Director Charles Stang and time for questions from the audience. The event invites sustained reflection on Thoreau’s legacy as well as on current and future directions in Transcendentalism studies.
LAWRENCE BUELL is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. His previous books include Literary Transcendentalism (1973), The Environmental Imagination (1995), Emerson (2003), and Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently (2023). Among other prizes and awards, he has received the Christian Gauss Award for Emerson and the Modern Language Association’s Jay Hubbell Award for lifetime contributions to American Literature studies (2007). He has lectured worldwide on American Transcendentalism. He has received lifetime service awards from both the Emerson Society and the Thoreau Society. In 2007, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Programming Series: Transcendence and Transformation, Transcendentalism
Gazette Classification: Ethics, Religion, Social Sciences
Sponsor: Center for the Study of World Religions
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator, [email protected]
More info: cswr.hds.harvard.edu…