Where did the America we know today—so different in its fundamental views about almost every aspect of life as to be unrecognizable to our countrymen of two centuries ago—really come from?
How, for example, did the colonial idea of the classroom as a place devoted to “breaking the will” and “subduing the spirit” of students, change to that of a vibrant, even pleasurable experience—including innovations such as kindergarten and recess—with children encouraged to participate actively in their own education?
By Ashton Nichols, Ph.D, Dickinson College
Dr. Ashton Nichols is Professor of English Language and Literature and Walter E. Beach ’56 Distinguished Chair in Sustainability Studies at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Here are the titles for the first 6 courses of this series:
- May 14, 2023 – Emerson, Thoreau, and Transcendentalism
- May 21, 2023 – The Roots of American Transcendentalism
- May 28, 2023 – Emerson and the Idea of America
- June 4, 2023 – Emerson and Transcendentalism
- June 11, 2023 – Emerson’s Influence
- June 18, 2023 Thoreau—An American Original
- June 25, 2023 – Thoreau at Walden and Beyond\
- July 2, 2023 – Thoreau’s Politics
- July 9, 2023 – William Ellery Channing and Unitarianism
- July 16, 2023 – Theodore Parker—Social Reform in the Pulpit
- July 23, 2023 – Amos Bronson Alcott
- July 30, 2023 – Louisa May Alcott
- Aug 6, 2023 – Margaret Fuller and Rights for Women
- Aug 13, 2023 – Transcendental Women
- Aug 20, 2023 – Moncure Conway—Southern Transcendentalist
- Aug 27, 2023 – Transcendental Eccentrics
- Sept 3, 2023 – Transcendental Utopias—Living Experiments
- Sept 10, 2023 – Transcendentalism and Education
- Sept 17, 2023 – Thoreau, Abolition, and John Brown
- Sept 24, 2023 – Frederick Douglass
- Oct 1, 2023 – Transcendentalism’s 19th-Century Legacy
- Oct 8, 2023 – The Legacy in the 20th Century and Beyond