Thoreau Annual Gathering

July 9 – 13, 2025

 Ralph Waldo Emerson Society

 Emersonian Revolutions Today

 Bronson Alcott in 1871 wrote that “He helps us most who helps us to answer our own questions. [Emerson] gets us to do our own work, does not do it for us. He does his work well, for he never produces any finished piece of work. That is his great excellence.”  As well, Theodore Parker note that “Emerson belongs to the exceptional literature of the times – and while his culture joins him to the history of man, his ideas and whole life enable him to represent also the nature of man, and so the write for the future.” We might say that for Emerson, revolution was an ongoing process, a particular way of seeing the world. How and where do we see Emerson’s revolutionary processes in the world today? Papers might consider Emerson’s work in social and political reform (women’s rights, abolition, etc), as well as aesthetics, language theory, spiritual practice, self-culture, and his unique approaches to our perceptions of, and continuity with, nature.

 Please send 300 word abstracts plus brief bio to Bill Scalia at bscalia@alumni.lsu.edu by Friday, January 31, 2025.