CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS:

Feminists, Utopians, and Social Reform in the Age of Emerson and Thoreau

Concord is arguably the most renowned historical and literary town in the United States. It was home to the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott, all of whom lived just a few easy blocks away from one another. It was in Concord that Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Alcott composed their major works. All the leading Transcendentalists and antebellum social reformers also spent important time in Concord, drawn to the New England village by the uniqueness of its history and its inhabitants.

Concord is also the location, of course, of Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau enacted his celebrated experiment in living for more than two years. Walden Pond today is one of the most iconic locations in the United States.

NEH Summer Scholars in the Concord workshop not only visit the site of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden, but they enjoy privately guided tours as well of the Emerson house, the Old Manse (Hawthorne’s first home in Concord), and the Orchard House (where Louisa May wrote Little Women). All of these sites—not to mention the Concord Museum and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery—are within easy walking distance of Concord’s historic Colonial Inn, where participants stay during the one-week workshop. NEH Summer Scholars in Concord also have the opportunity to examine the extensive and unique manuscript and archival collections found in `Special Collections’ at the Concord Free Public Library.

November 2011

Dear Colleague,

On behalf of the Community College Humanities Association (CCHA), it is a pleasure to encourage you to apply for the `NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture’ workshop:  “Concord, Massachusetts: Feminists, Utopians, and Social Reform in the Age of Emerson and Thoreau.”  Some sixty years after the “shot heard round the world” was fired at the North Bridge, an extraordinary confluence of literary and social forces brought together the likes of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Amos Bronson Alcott and his soon-to-become more famous daughter, Louisa May, in the small village of Concord, Massachusetts.  The result—as local Concordians like to say—was a “second Revolution” that forever changed the American literary and cultural landscape. 

This workshop explores that landscape, and it provides the opportunity for community college faculty—full-time, part-time, and adjunct—to spend a week in one of the most historic towns in America—a town that proudly reveres and celebrates its unique literary, historical, and cultural heritage.

Comments from previous participants suggest why the Concord program on “Feminists, Utopians, and Social Reform in the Age of Emerson and Thoreau” has been so successful:

• “The [Concord] workshop did a wonderful job of showcasing what an interesting nexus Concord is for history, literature, science, religion, politics, etc. We had teachers from across a variety of disciplines.”
• “I left this conference more enthusiastic about teaching, my own research, and being a community college professional, than I've ever left any other event in the past 10 years.” 
• “The directors, the location, the accommodations, the visiting faculty, [and] the agenda made my week in Concord the most exciting and valuable educational experience of my career.” 

Cover letter and participant guidelines, full text

The Old North Bridge, site of the “shot heard round the world.”

For more information, please contact:

Sterling Delano:
sterling.delano@villanova.edu

Diane Whitley Bogard:
dbogard@austincc.edu

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in
this program do not necessarily reflect those of the National
Endowment for the Humanities or the Community College Humanities
Association.