CANCELLED - Reading Group: Transcendentalism

Wed., Apr. 15, 2026, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.



This group meets on Wednesdays, 10-12 pm (1/28, 2/11, 3/4, 3/11, 3/25, 4/8)
Registration is required.
Please register to attend each session.

American Transcendentalism emerged in the mid-1800s from New England Unitarianism and European Romanticism. It distinguished itself by rejecting convention, challenging traditional religious doctrines of authority and election, opposing dominant philosophies, discarding genteel literary styles, and defying political complacency regarding slavery, gender inequality, and disenfranchisement. At Harvard, Transcendentalists were seen as mystics, misfits, rogues, and dissidents. Their refusals, however, sparked a social movement based on friendship and collaboration, united by a radical spirituality promising personal renewal and social transformation.  This reading group invites participants to explore both sides of that legacy. We'll focus on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller in the fall, and on figures including Bronson Alcott, Theodore Parker, Orestes Brownson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and Caroline Dall in the spring. 
  
RUSSELL C. POWELL is a research affiliate at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. He has held teaching positions at Boston College, Amherst College, and Princeton University. Russell is currently completing a book manuscript focused on Ralph Waldo Emerson's relevance to modern ecological thought, particularly as an architect of the concept of “nature” and its religious and political resonances in the United States. He is also an associate editor of the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, & Culture. He sits on the advisory board of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University. 

Programming Series: Transcendence and Transformation
Gazette Classification: Religion
Sponsor: Center for the Study of World Religions
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator, [email protected]