Public Research Talk: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Radical Reconstruction, and the Antislavery Roots of American Social Science - Peter Wirzbicki
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Franklin Sanborn lived two lives. He is best known as a Transcendentalist firebrand: a friend of Emerson and Thoreau, a member of John Brown’s famed “Secret Six,” and one of the first chroniclers of the Transcendentalist movement. Through his work, he helped preserve the spirit of Transcendentalism in the late nineteenth century. Yet he may have been even more influential as a leader of the American Social Science Association, the nation’s first social science organization, which played a major role in the professionalization of history, economics, and sociology.
These two worlds appear radically different: one defined by the exuberant romanticism and political idealism of the antebellum era, the other by the restrained scientific study of society. This talk asks whether these two sides of Sanborn can be reconciled. In doing so, it considers how the spirit of Transcendentalism may have evolved and survived in the…
Programming Series: Transcendentalism. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, September 21, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Common Room, CSWR
42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Exploring Spirituality in Nature Writing: A Writing Workshop Series in Creative Nonfiction
This workshop is currently full. Thank you for your interest! If you'd like to be added to the waitlist, please contact Laurie Sedgwick at ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Registration was limited to 12 participants.
This workshop series meets on four consecutive Wednesdays—September 9, 16, 23, and 30—from 4:00–6:00 p.m. Because each session builds on the previous one, participants are expected to attend all four sessions.
When William Ellery Channing claimed in an 1828 sermon that “we are brought into harmony with the creation” in proportion to our pursuit of our own “likeness to God,” he could not have known that his theology would help inspire a literary tradition that continues to explore spiritual growth through encounters with the natural world. American nature writing developed some of its strongest roots in the ideas of Channing and the American Transcendentalists he influenced. Emerson explored selfhood and spirituality through nature, famously writing of standing in the woods and sensing that he was…
Programming Series: Transcendentalism. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Wednesday, September 23, 2026, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM.
Conference Room, Center for the Study of World Religions, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Public Research Talk: A Transcendentalist Peace: American Pacifism from Lydia Maria Child to Jane Addams with Lydia Moland
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In 1839, abolitionist Lydia Maria Child called the first Peace Convention in Boston “unquestionably the greatest event of the nineteenth century.” “Posterity will marvel,” she wrote, “at the early adoption of such transcendental principles.” Seventy-five years later, Jane Addams honed transcendentalist ideas into a theory of pacifism that Child would have recognized—one built on moral self-reliance, faith in individual transformation, and a dedication to justice through applied democracy. These women's ideas, and the example of their lives, are deeply relevant today as we struggle, in a war-torn world, to imagine a lasting peace.
Lydia Moland is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Philosophy at Colby College. She is the author of Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life (2022), a biography of abolitionist Lydia Maria Child. Her writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington…
Programming Series: Transcendentalism. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, September 28, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Common Room, CSWR
42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Exploring Spirituality in Nature Writing: A Writing Workshop Series in Creative Nonfiction
This workshop is currently full. Thank you for your interest! If you'd like to be added to the waitlist, please contact Laurie Sedgwick at ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Registration was limited to 12 participants.
This workshop series meets on four consecutive Wednesdays—September 9, 16, 23, and 30—from 4:00–6:00 p.m. Because each session builds on the previous one, participants are expected to attend all four sessions.
When William Ellery Channing claimed in an 1828 sermon that “we are brought into harmony with the creation” in proportion to our pursuit of our own “likeness to God,” he could not have known that his theology would help inspire a literary tradition that continues to explore spiritual growth through encounters with the natural world. American nature writing developed some of its strongest roots in the ideas of Channing and the American Transcendentalists he influenced. Emerson explored selfhood and spirituality through nature, famously writing of standing in the woods and sensing that he was…
Programming Series: Transcendentalism. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM.
Conference Room, Center for the Study of World Religions, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Imaginative Seeing in Goethe, Coleridge, and Emerson: Pathways to a Phenomenological Ecology — Ryan Shea
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In “The Poet,” Emerson said that imagination is “a very high sort of seeing.” This talk explores the imagination as an organ of direct intuitive perception that might become the foundation for a new phenomenological science of ecology. The first part explores the historical and cultural resonances among conceptions of the imagination in German Idealism, British Romanticism, and American Transcendentalism, as represented by Goethe, Coleridge, and Emerson. The second part engages the audience in interactive imaginative exercises that invite participants to see new things for themselves.
Ryan Shea is a full-time researcher and educator at The Nature Institute in Ghent, New York. Previously, he taught environmental philosophy, philosophy of science, interdisciplinary humanities, and nature writing at Providence College for eight years. He is also a doctoral researcher with MESH (Multidisciplinary Environmental…
Programming Series: Transcendentalism. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Friday, October 2, 2026, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
Living Transcendentalism: Phenomenological Ecology and Nature's Wholeness Talk and Workshop
Living Transcendentalism: Phenomenological Ecology and Nature’s Wholeness
Friday, October 2, 3:30–5:00 pm Opening Talk & Discussion: Imaginative Seeing in Goethe, Coleridge, and Emerson: Pathways to a Phenomenological Ecology
Saturday, October 3, 9:00 am–5:00 pm Workshop: Living Transcendentalism: Phenomenological Ecology and Participating in Nature’s Wholeness
Registration is required.
Please register to attend in person.
The Friday opening talk and discussion is open to all.
Registration for the Saturday workshop includes attendance at both the Friday opening talk and the Saturday workshop. Workshop participation is limited to 15 attendees.
Inspired by the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, this two-day workshop invites participants to cultivate a deeper relationship with nature's wholeness. Friday afternoon’s talk introduces the imagination as an organ of participatory knowing. Saturday’s all-day workshop is devoted to attending carefully to plants in their immediate appearances…
Programming Series: Transcendentalism. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Saturday, October 3, 2026, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Public Research Talk: Choosing Good or Evil—Royce and Emerson on Knowing the Difference with Scott Pratt
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In Studies of Good and Evil, Josiah Royce argues that moral agents must know both good and evil: One can act morally only by choosing good despite temptation. Yet Royce’s own framework complicates this distinction. Although he establishes the necessity of good and evil, he also concludes that no particular goods or evils are necessary, leaving moral agents without a certain means of identifying either when making a choice. This talk considers whether Ralph Waldo Emerson—despite interpretations that portray him as denying the existence of evil—offers another way to discern good and evil through the cultivation of what John Dewey later called aesthetic experience.
Scott L. Pratt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. His research and teaching focus on American philosophy, including pragmatism, feminist philosophy, philosophies of race, and Indigenous philosophy, as well as philosophy of…
Programming Series: Transcendentalism. Contact: Bhaswar F. Khan, CSWR Assistant Director
bkhan@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, October 5, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Common Room, Center for the Study of World Religions
42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. In this Twilight: Tar Paintings in Conversation with American Transcendentalism by Christopher Volpe
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Please join us for the opening reception of Christopher Volpe's exhibition, In this Twilight: Tar Paintings in Conversation with American Transcendentalism.
Titled with a line from Whitman's Leaves of Grass, In this Twilight opens a space between longing for spiritual union with Nature and awareness of ecological decline. This body of work draws on the literature of American Transcendentalism to reflect on today's intertwined social and ecological crises not only as scientific or political challenges but also as the result of longstanding spiritual crises.
Each painting's title references the writings of Whitman, Emerson, Fuller, or Thoreau, while the imagery draws on the common flora and fauna of New England.
The primary medium is industrial coal tar, a byproduct of fossil fuel production. These paintings are made from one of the defining toxic byproducts of industrial civilization—the very material through which modern society has transformed…
Programming Series: Transcendentalism. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Event Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Public Research Talk: The Reformist Language of Plants: Marianne Dwight’s Botanical Watercolors with Alice de Galzain
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Shortly after moving to the Transcendentalist utopian community of Brook Farm in April 1844, Marianne Dwight Orvis joined the “Fancy Group,” a collective of women who hand-painted goods for sale in Boston. She described the project as seeking the “elevation of woman to independence, and an acknowledged equality with man” (Letters from Brook Farm, 32). This talk examines how Dwight, by binding flowers into “books,” used the language of flowers to narrate her experience with Fourierism. It situates her botanical watercolors within the broader context of antebellum women’s engagement with reform and shows how her floral books symbolically articulated both the harmony with nature sought by Transcendentalists and the feminist possibilities of socialist communalism and labor reform.
Alice de Galzain is a postdoctoral researcher and former Marie Skłodowska-Curie Seal of Excellence Fellow at Sorbonne Université…
Programming Series: Transcendentalism. Contact: Bhaswar F. Khan, Assistant Director, CSWR.
Monday, October 19, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave.
Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Stanley Cavell's Transcendental Etudes Conference
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Organized to commemorate the centenary of philosopher Stanley Cavell's (1926–2018) birth, Stanley Cavell's Transcendental Etudes brings together leading scholars to explore the enduring significance of his thought for contemporary conversations in religion, ethics, and politics. While Cavell is widely recognized for his contributions to ordinary language philosophy, aesthetics, literary criticism, and political theory, the religious dimensions of his work have received comparatively less attention.
Presented as part of the Center for the Study of World Religions' Transcendentalism Initiative, the conference explores the dimensions of Cavell's thought that emerge through his sustained engagement with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and the broader Transcendentalist tradition.
The conference will feature four keynote addresses and a concluding panel discussion examining the continued relevance of…
Programming Series: Transcendentalism. Contact: cswr@hds.harvard.edu.
Thursday, October 22, 2026, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM.
Common Room, Center for the Study of World Religions
42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
Public Research Talk: “For Children Who Care to Learn”: Caroline Dall, Self-Culture, and Patty Gray’s Journey to the Cotton Islands
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In the preface to the first volume, Patty Gray’s Journey to the Cotton Islands, Caroline Dall explains to her young readers that she writes this book because children should be told the truth. Imagining the plaintive complaint of a young reader who asks, “But what good will it do?” she answers, “My dear little sister, if you will read all about it, and understand it, you will help others to remember all that God has been teaching us in this terrible war, and what we are already beginning to forget” (vi-vii).
This talk will explore the ways that Dall, in her children’s book series Patty Gray’s Journey, translated slavery, the Civil War, and the aftermath of both for young readers. Her insistence that children must know difficult truths reflects her belief that resilience is forged through knowledge, a belief rooted directly in her Unitarian and Transcendentalist principles, particularly self-culture.
LYDIA…
Programming Series: Transcendentalism. Contact: cswr@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, November 2, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Common Room, CSWR
42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
Public Research Talk: Transcending the Ordinary: Thoreau's Second Experiment
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This talk will introduce Thorson's just-published book, The Walden Experiments: The Science of Henry David Thoreau. It will open with two examples of Thoreau's science in Walden, his "agent" for accessing "Universal Intelligence." In the first case, he will show a striking visual image of something yellow on black, which seized Thoreau’s visual perception as does abstract art. On closer inspection, he recognizes this to be "the sulphur-like pollen of pitch the pine" floating on the surface of Walden Pond that will eventually sink downward through his "great ocean of solitude" to reach the bottom, the sedimentary archive of deep-time where the airborne sexual grains of life will merge with cosmic dust in the place where "Walden sleeps with stars in its bosom." In this example, Thoreau’s art prompted his science, which became transcendental literature. Following a second example involving blue lake ice, Thorson…
Programming Series: Transcendentalism. Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator
ldsedgwick@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, November 9, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Common Room, CSWR
42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit cswr.hds.harvard.edu. Hindu View of Life Lecture: Special Dispensations, Sublime Realities: Keshab Chandra Sen and the Comparative Impulse in the Nineteenth Century
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Radhakrishnan’s lectures on Hindu views of life 100 years ago emphasize how the world then, after a devastating world war, was witnessing an interchange of thought between religions through the mingling of populations. Furthermore, the spirit of the age and the need of the hour determined the emphasis in each religion.
This lecture will explore how interchange of thought between religions flourished in certain circles in nineteenth-century India, through an examination of the thought and major works of Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884), a Bengali philosopher of religion and social reformer who pioneered a range of comparative religious projects. Through an examination of his compilations of excerpts from a diversity of religious texts as well as his relationship to religions outside of Hinduism, Sen serves as a major precursor to Radhakrishnan’s contributions to modern and contemporary views on religion in the…
Programming Series: Annual Lectures. Contact: cswr@hds.harvard.edu.
Monday, November 16, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.
Common Room, CSWR
42 Francis Ave. Cambridge, MA.