“Thoreau’s Revolutions” Annual Gathering 2025 Call for Proposals
Next year, 2025, is the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord—a touchstone event for Concord, for Thoreau, and for us. F. O. Matthiessen says in his classic 1941 study of Transcendentalism, “Thoreau’s vitality as a revolutionary is still unexhausted,” and that remains true today.
Our Annual Gathering theme is “Thoreau’s Revolutions”—his efforts to understand the political, social, cultural, economic, and spiritual revolutions that shaped his world, and his efforts to foment revolution in his own time. We seek proposals that address Thoreau’s attitude towards the American Revolution as well as broad interpretations of “revolution” in Thoreau’s life and writing—from his celebration of John Brown as a true American patriot to his effort to imagine radical alternatives to the economic and social order of his day to his deepening fascination with the revolutions of the natural world, shaped by seasonal and epochal cycles and sharpened by his late reading of Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Possible topics might include:
- Thoreau and the Minutemen;
- Thoreau’s response to Revolutionary War history;
- Thoreau’s move to Walden Pond as a revolutionary act;
- Abolitionism as the next phase in an ongoing American revolution;
- Thoreau’s revolutionary rhetoric and writing practice;
- Revolutionary time in Thoreau, including cyclical time and upheavals;
- Thoreau’s beanfield as a revolutionary space;
- Thoreau’s engagement with the social, economic and cultural revolutions of the mid-19th century;
- Thoreau’s role in later revolutions, including the 1960s counterculture, environmentalism, and racial justice;
- Revolutions in our reading of Thoreau and his legacy.
DEADLINE: December 1
Once we receive all the proposals, the Annual Gathering Committee will engage in a rigorous review process, after which we will be in touch. Please direct any questions to rebecca@thoreausociety.org. We look forward to hearing from you!