Attempts to discern the spirit of the nineteenth-century, Emerson says, come down to a “practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live?” This interdisciplinary course investigates the works of the American Transcendentalist movement in its restless discontent with the conventional, its eclectic search for better ways of thinking and living. It engages students with the major works of Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman and others alongside documents of the scientific, religious, and political changes that shaped their era and provoked their responses. The 200-level course was developed by Peter Balaam at Carleton College.
