English 190
Research Seminar: American Transcendentalism
| Section | Semester | Instructor | Time | Location | Course Areas |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Fall 2019 | Otter, Samuel
|
TTh 9:30-11 | 206 Dwinelle |
Book List
Fuller, Margaret: The Essential Margaret Fuller; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Blithedale Romance; Myerson, Joel: Transcendentalism: A Reader; Thoreau, Henry David: A Year in Thoreau's Journal; Thoreau, Henry David: Walden
Other Readings and Media
Photocopied reader (available at Copy Central, 2411 Telegraph Ave.)
Description
We will immerse ourselves in the literary, political, philosophical, and aesthetic thought of the influential mid-nineteenth-century movement in the United States known as Transcendentalism. We will read fiction, essays, autobiographies, and poems by a range of writers inside and outside the shifting group, including major figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau; contributions by other Transcendentalist writers such as Bronson Alcott, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Theodore Parker, and Jones Very; and responses (often critical) by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville. Over the course of the semester, we will trace the development of thought and the debate among these writers about knowledge, intuition, contradiction, spirituality, individualism, economic critique, the natural environment, slavery, women’s rights, and the effort to imagine and enact alternative communities (especially the social experiment at Brook Farm in Massachusetts and Thoreau’s individualistic experiment at Walden Pond). We also will look closely at the contents of the Transcendentalist periodical The Dial (1840-1844). Course requirements include oral presentations and a substantial research paper (20 pages) written in stages across the semester.
Please click here for more information about enrollment in English 190.
Please click here for more information about enrollment in English 190.
Other Recent Sections of This Course
spring, 2020 |
||
190/1 |
||
190/2 |
||
190/3 |
||
190/4 |
||
190/5 |
||
190/6 |
||
190/7 |
||
190/8 |
||
190/9 |
||
190/10 |
||
fall, 2019 |
||
190/1 |
||
190/2 |
||
190/4 |
||
190/5 |
||
190/6 |
Research Seminar: Literature on Trial: Romanticism, Law, Justice |
|
190/8 |
||
190/10 |
||
spring, 2019 |
||
190/1 |
||
190/2 |
||
190/3 |
||
190/5 |
Research Seminar: California Books and Movies Since World War I |
|
190/6 |
Research Seminar: Carnal Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Literature |
|
190/7 |
||
190/8 |
||
190/9 |
||
190/10 |
||
190/11 |
||
190/13 |
||
fall, 2018 |
||
190/1 |
||
190/2 |
Research Seminar: Laughter and Vision: Explorations in the Novel of Ideas |
|
190/3 |
||
190/4 |
||
190/7 |
||
190/8 |
||
190/9 |
Griffin, Ben
|
|
190/10 |
No instructor assigned yet.
|
|
190/11 |
No instructor assigned yet.
|
|
190/12 |
Research Seminar: California Books and Movies Since World War I |
|
190/13 |
||
190/14 |
||
spring, 2018 |
||
190/1 |
Research Seminar: Trials of Literature: Romanticism, Justice, and the Law |
|
190/2 |
||
190/3 |
||
190/4 |
||
190/5 |
||
190/6 |
||
190/7 |
||
190/8 |
||
190/9 |
Research Seminar: The Faerie Queene: The Ethics of Imagination |
|
190/10 |
||
190/11 |
||
190/12 |
Research Seminar: California Books and Movies Since World War I |
|
190/13 |
||
fall, 2017 |
||
190/1 |
||
190/2 |
||
190/3 |
Research Seminar: Another Day in Purgatory: Irish Literature and the Afterlife |
|
190/6 |
||
190/7 |
Research Seminar: Monsters, Exiles, and Outlaws in Medieval Literature |
|
190/8 |
||
190/9 |
Research Seminar: Historiography and Narrative: Literature and the Interstices of History |
|
190/10 |
||
190/11 |
||
190/12 |
||
spring, 2017 |
||
190/1 |
||
190/2 |
||
190/3 |
||
190/4 |
||
190/5 |
Research Seminar: Writing a World in Crisis: Medieval and Modern |
|
190/6 |
||
190/7 |
Research Seminar: Place-Love: Fiction and the Melancholy of Form |
|
190/8 |
||
190/9 |
||
190/10 |
||
190/11 |
||
190/13 |
||
Back to Semester List
University of California, Berkeley
English Department
322 Wheeler Hall,
Berkeley, CA 94720-1030
general phone: 510-642-3467
©UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY ENGLISH DEPARTMENT