“The life of Thoreau straddles the era that witnessed the birth of our modern, market- based, urban culture. A singular figure and writer, even amongst the Transcendentalists, whose impulses he shared. He was also, to borrow his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson’s term, a “representative man.” Though he remains the towering figure in the history of nature writing, he symbolizes the way in which nature became for a certain class and subset of Americans—hipsters, bohemians, artists—and other. A creature of New England village life, Thoreau’s life was interspersed with what even he would consider wilderness excursions. Notably, he went to Maine, and he went there to find a landscape that would take him beyond ordinary, 'civilized' experience. The landscape was raw, and it had much to teach him. 'Nature was here something savage and awful though beautiful,' he wrote.“
– Adam Tuchinsky, Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at USM
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Henry David Thoreau and Maine: A Bicentennial Series at the University of Southern Maine Events Program
University of Southern Maine
Thoreau and Maine: A Symposium
Saturday, October 21, 2017
University Events Room, 7th Floor, Glickman Library, University of Southern Maine
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Thoreau and Maine: A Symposium
University of Southern Maine
Plenary Address, "Thinking Through Thoreau," Philip Gura, William S. Neuman
Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture, University of North Carolina
