The 73rd Thoreau Society Annual Gathering –

Dear UU Fellowship of Athens (Ohio),

You are cordially invited to join Thoreau enthusiasts for four days of entertaining and informative events and outdoor activities in Concord, Massachusetts.

See Annual Gathering Agenda and Registration link herewith.

Sincerely yours,

The Thoreau Society Annual Gathering Team

 

Agenda

 

Thoreau Society Annual Gathering, Concord, Massachusetts, July 9-13.  Visit the Thoreau Society page for information on lodging and planning your trip.  Early bird registration is available through May 30th, 2014.

Reserve Now

Registration Fee: $175

(Early Registration starts at $150).

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Dramatic Performances 
7-9pm Sense: A Play Reading, Tamara Rose

Play: Einstein and Thoreau, Connie Baxter Marlow

Masonic

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Walden Pond State Reservation Program
8-9:30 am The Contemplative Connection: Linking Art, Science, and Higher Law in a Moment’s (or a Morning’s) Practice, Donald McCown
9-4

Registration

Masonic
10-Noon

Workshop I

Masonic

 Panel

“Turning the Screw on Machine Culture; Thinking of Thoreau While Going Sixty Miles an Hour,” Michael Stoneham, Panel Moderator

Raising Cain: Activistic Antiheroism and Anarchist Agitation in Thoreau’s Life and Works, Adam Lashinsky

“The Greatest American Anarchist” Henry David Thoreau and the Historiography of Anarchism, Daniel R. Vollaro

The Paradox of Countercultural Virtue Ethics, Brent Ranalli

Panel

Murder, Mayhem and the Higher Law:  Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s Response to John Brown’s Raid, Janet Beck, Panel Moderator

Thoreau and Violent Histories, Alexandra Manglis

Title forthcoming, Nikita Pokrovsky

“Ren” in Thoreau’s Spiritual Land, Xiujuan Yao

Noon-1pm

Lunch

Masonic
New: Lunch offered at the Masonic Temple on Thursday this year.
 1-2 pm

Workshop II

Masonic

Presentation

Walden’s Shore: Henry David Thoreau and 19th Century Science, Robert M. Thorson

Dramatic Performance

 Thoreau, Cynthia J. McGroarty
 2:15-3:45

 Workshop III

Masonic

Panel

“It Would Have Been Strange If He Had Lived:” Thoreau and the Law of Death, Kristi Lynn Martin

Thoreau and the Art of Dying, Howard Nelson

Artoosiqu’: From Inanimate Matter to Mystical State in “The Maine Woods”, Audrey Raden

Panel

Thoreau’s Creative Example Inspired Art, Paul H. Carr

“Henry’s brilliant sister”: The Relationship of Sophia Elizabeth and Henry David Thoreau, Kathy Fedorko

Thoreau’s Views on Music, Michiko Ono

Concord Free Public Library

CFPL
“Thoreau’s Illustrated Atlas” and “Thoreau’s Field Notes of Surveys” plus Charles Davies” Elements of Surveying and Navigation: With Descriptions of the Instruments and the Necessary Tables” – January 1, 1851 as aids to decipher a letter to Thoreau from William Davis Tuttle December 1854,  Allan H. Schmidt
 4-5:30pm

Workshop IV

Masonic

Panel

Who Cares about Seven Drafts?  One Creative Writer’s Response to Thoreau’s Process, Corinne H. Smith

Henry David Thoreau: My Writing Teacher, Tom O’Malley

Let Us Consider Active and Authentic Learning:  Thoreau’s Creative Educational Philosophy, Karen Buckland

 Panel

Two Cultures Unvisited:  Does Thoreau Force Consilience?, John F. Barthell

Henry David Thoreau as Historian, J. William T. Youngs

Transatlantic Contexts: Coleridge and Thoreau, Samantha C. Harvey

 6-7:30 pm

 Thoreau Farm Picnic

Thoreau Farm
 7:30-9 pm

 Emerson Society Panel

 Masonic
Emerson’s Eclectic Creativity

Chair:  Roger Thompson, SUNY at Stony Brook

1.  “Between Tradition and Novelty, Emerson’s Progressive Religion,” Nicholas Aaron Friesner, Brown University

2.  “Emerson and the Environment,” Michael Popejoy, Purdue University

3.  “Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Gorham Palfrey, and the Influence of Free Soil” James Finley, University of New Hampshire

 6-10 pm

 Emerson Society Social

 Masonic

 Friday

Morning Walks

The new heron colony at Sleepy Hollow and the Old North Bridge and Liberty Street. This will be a round trip circular walk of about two miles with frequent brief stops for birds and plants. Meet in front of Masonic Temple at 6:45 a.m. Return by 9:15 am (or sooner via Monument St.) Led by Concord naturalist Peter Alden.

 

PLEIN AIR ON THE SQUARE
Turn your photos, sketches and observations into art, setting up for a plein air community art session in the historic Monument Square in the heart of Concord. Share what you’ve created with fellow AG participants by displaying the completed artwork in the Masonic Hall entry hall.

 10-Noon

Workshop V

 Masonic

Panel

“The solid earth! the actual world!”: Thoreau Studies and the Material Turn: A Roundtable Discussion

(Sponsored by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment)
Kristen Case, University of Maine Farmington, “‘Try this experiment again’: Thoreau’s Journal, Science Studies, and the New Materialism”

Cristin Ellis, University of Mississippi, “Feeling What You See: Objectivity and Reflexivity in Thoreau’s Lively Science”

James Finley, University of New Hampshire, “Is The Maine Woods to Object Oriented Ontology what Walden is to Ecocriticism?”

Rochelle Johnson, College of Idaho, “‘The only real elysium’: Thoreau’s Meeting of Spirit and Matter”

Kathleen Coyne Kelly, Northeastern University, “Thoreau’s Flute”

Michelle Neely, Assistant Professor of English at Connecticut College, “Reading Thoreau’s Animals”

Panel

Go Crimson: Harvard University in the Creative Imaginations of Phillis Wheatley and Henry David Thoreau, Ann Beebe

Thoreau in/and “Thoreau”: Genius of Life, Art, and Higher Laws, Albena Bakratcheva

Rustic Heracles Confronts Rustic Admetus:  Classical Hospitality in A Week on the Concord And Merrimack Rivers, Robert Klevay

Thoreau’s Space Travels in the Writings of Kenji Miyazawa, Shinji Iwamasa

Noon-1pm

Lunch

Masonic
1-2 pm

Workshop V

Masonic

Presentation

The Maine Woods, Scot Miller and Ronald Hoag

Dramatic Performance

Hawthorne and Thoreau, Richard Smith and Rob Velella
2:15-3:45 pm

Workshop VI

Masonic

Panel

“The Readers’ Thoreau” website, Paul Schacht, Panel Moderator

An introductory workshop on Walden: A Fluid Text Edition, Joe Easterly

Panel

Mapping Armageddon: How Melville’s Literary Cartography Complicates Thoreau’s, Patrick Chura

Cryptic Conversations: Unwitting/Unwilling Indebtedness to Thoreau in Contemporary Environmental Criticism, Jonathan Butler

Deeper into Thoreau’s Thicket:  A Gazetteer of Names for Concord Places, Dennis Nooson Presentation given by Michael Berger.

 4-5:30 pm

Workshop VII

Masonic

Presentation

Esther Anderson’s Thoreau Country, Leslie Wilson

Panel

“Thoreau. Wallace Stevens, “Sunday” and “Sunday Morning”, Ed Gillin

Clearing the Mind for Health and Serenity:  Thoreau’s “Walking”, Christine Japely

Into the Wild: In Search of Higher Law at the Sources of Civilization, Mark Howenstein

 6-7:30 pm

 Dinner

First Parish
 7:30-8 pm

Musical Performance

Outrageous Fortune

Saturday

Morning Walk

The fabulous beavers of Hutchin’s Pond in the Estabrook Woods.
Carpool north two miles for a one mile leisurely walk on a loop trail. Sitting quietly we can often see swimming beavers along with their treefalls and lodge.
Meet in the Christian Science church parking lot at 6:45 a.m.; return by 9 a.m. Led by Concord cruise lecturer Peter Alden.

7-8:30 am

Memorial Walk at Walden Pond, Corinne Smith

Walden Pond
9-10:30am

Business Meeting

First Parish
10:45-Noon

Keynote

First Parish
Thoreau’s Evolution From ‘Civil Disobedience’ to John Brown, John Stauffer
Noon-1 pm

Lunch

First Parish
1-2 pm

Workshop VIII

Masonic

Presentation

Seven Years In The Woods: In Search of a Higher Law, Michael Anthony Lorence, Innermost House, Diana Lorence

Presentation

Henry and Happiness, Ted David

Searching for Thoreau’s Compass, Jeff Hinich

2:15-3:15pm

Workshop IX

Masonic

Presentation

The Art of Amazement: Thoreau’s Macro Lens, Natasha Shabat

Presentation

“Adopting the Method of Nature”: Henry David Thoreau and John Joseph Matthews as Spiritual Stewards of the Land, Ryan Slesinger

“Thoreau: Reading Darwin,” Randall Fuller

3:30-4:30pm

Workshop X

Masonic

Presentation

Parallel Lives: Thoreau and Darwin–science, art, and spirit, Tom Potter

Panel

Creativity, Art and the Higher Law, Rev’d Dr Daniel Medina

Reading Walden by Moonlight: Thoreau’s “Moon” Lectures and the Other Side of Awakening, Brendan Mahoney

5-6 pm

Thoreau Institute, 44 Baker Farm Rd

Lincoln, MA
6-7:30 pm

Dinner

First Parish
7:30-9 pm

Book-signing

Masonic

Sunday

Morning Walk

Sun July 13. Fairhaven Bay and the Wright Woods of the Concord Land Conservation Trust on the “back side” of Walden Woods. Sit on the top of a small cliff overlooking the Sudbury River where Henry often reflected. Meet and carpool from the Municipal Parking lot behind the banks on Keyes Road at 6:45 a.m.; return by 9:15 a.m. Led by Concord author Peter Alden.

7:30-10 am

Exploratory Paddle

Join Deborah Medenbach on a canoe/kayak on the Sudbury River from the South Bridge Boathouse toward Fairhaven Bay. Bring a spirit of open cooperation with nature to see what appears for our exploration. Set at the pace of a water meander as gentle as the currents below, pause to take photographs, make notes, draw or look more closely.

Deborah Medenbach is a writer, artist and avid kayaker based in the Hudson Valley area of New York.

Meet at 7am, Concord Municiple Lot, Keyes Road, to carpool.

10-Noon

Walk

Thoreau Farm
Inspirational Morning Saunter at Thoreau Farm Birthplace, Corinne Smith
10-Noon

Workshop XI

 Masonic

Panel

An Experiment in Uncommon Schooling: Geneseo’s Thoreau-Harding Project Panel moderator: Ed Gillin, SUNY Geneseo

Panel

Thoreau’s view of arts and sciences in the service of a higher law, Reinhold J. Dooley

Thoreau and Religion, Richard Higgins

Thoreau’s Poetical-Economy, Adam Ross Rosenthal

 Noon-2 pm

Thoreau Farm Open House

2:30-5 pm

Orchard House

Panel

George Howe Colt ,Megan Marshall, and Phyllis Cole

 

Registration
Reserve Now