July 7 – 10, 2011 Concord, Massachusetts

Keynote Speaker: Laura Dassow Walls

All are welcome to register to attend community-wide events in Concord and Lincoln,
Massachusetts, and at the Walden Pond State Reservation.

Program Information

• Printable Program pdf
  
• Registration pdf
  

• Important Program Notes
• Lodging Information
• Map

Book Signing List of Authors Open to the public.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Masonic Temple, 58 Monument Square, Concord, MA

8:30-noon Exploring Walden Woods (Baker Farm) with Dick O’Connor,
Independent Scholar. Meet at 8 am in the parking lot behind Masonic Temple to carpool.

Walk to the former James and Jacob Baker Farms in Walden Woods in Lincoln. The Baker Farm of Thoreau's Walden will be toured and the probable site of John Field's house identified. There will be a visit to Pleasant Meadow Field on Fairhaven Bay and a walk up Heywood's Brook (Ellery Channing's "Spanish Brook") during which information about the Baker and Billings families and other area inhabitants will be presented, followed by an excursion up Route 126 to view the Jacob Baker Farm of Thoreau's day which includes  the 1728 John Billings house, and returning will pass the original 18th century Baker house.

Meet at 8:30 A.M. on Thursday July 7 in the parking lot behind the Masonic Hall for carpooling to the Lincoln Conservation Land by Lindentree Farm on Old Concord Road in Lincoln.

Walden Pond and Walden Woods historian Dick O'Connor was assistant to the curator at the Society's Thoreau Lyceum from 1987 to 1995 and more recently with environmental scholar Brian Donahue has completed a GIS map of the historical land ownership in Walden Woods.

This walk has never been offered as part of a previous Annual Gathering and much historical information regarding this area and its former inhabitants will be made public for the first time.

8:30-3:30 pm Registration Masonic Temple, Entryway

8:30-10:30 am Coffee, Doughnuts and Healthy Snacks Masonic Temple, Downstairs

9:30-11:30 am Workshop I - Part I Masonic Temple

1. Panel Presentation: How Much Land Does A Man Need? (Main Floor)
Introductory workshop for touring the Caesar Robbins House
Historical Center, sponsored by the Drinking Gourd Project.

• Robert Gross, Draper Professor of Early American History,
University of Connecticut
• Lois Brown, Elizabeth Small Professor of English,
Mount Holyoke College
• Jack Larkin, Former Chief Historian at Old Sturbridge Village
• Joanne Pope Melish, University of Kentucky

10:30-noon Workshop II Masonic Temple

1. Presentation: “Now I can swallow another year of this world without other sauce” Thoreau and the Cranberry, Stephen A. Cole, Natural Resources & Sustainable Communities Coastal Enterprises, Inc (Downstairs)

11:30-1:30 pm Workshop I - Part II Masonic Temple
Drinking Gourd Bike Tour and Lunch provided by
La Provence at the Caesar Robbins Historical Center (Parking Lot)
Pre-registration required for bike rental & lunch.

Noon Lunch on your own

1:30-3:00 pm Workshop III Masonic Temple

1. Panel: Seeking “a more perfect Indian wisdom”: Native Americans and Thoreau's Environmental Ethos
(Main Floor)

• Animality and Indians in the Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, Jessie Bray,
East Tennessee State University
• “Being a pretty good Sachem himself”: Thoreau’s Indian virtues, Brent Ranalli,
Cadmus Group
• Closing the Circle: Encounters with the Dakota and Anishinabeg, Corinne H. Smith,
Anna Maria College

2. Presentation: Environmental Perspectives: Thoreau's and Our's (Downstairs)

• John Wawrzonek, Engineer, Nature Photographer

3:30-5 pm Workshop IV

1. Panel Presentations (Main Floor)

• Picturing Thoreau in the 21st Century: Recent Portraits of the “Hermit of Walden,” Mark Sullivan, Villanova University
• Presenting Descriptions without Reflections: “Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” Katsuya Izumi, University at Albany
• Thoreau among Poets, Howard Nelson, Cayuga Community College

2. Presentation (Downstairs)

• Recipes for Living a Thoreauvian Life in the Modern Home, Joanna Greenfield, author of The Lion’s Eye: Seeing in the Wild The Lion’s Eye was recommended by the Sierra Club, The Green Book Festival, Booklist, Publisher’s Weekly, Vanity Fair, and several international public radio stations. Visit Joanna: blog and YouTube.

 

3. Tour the Thoreau Collection at Concord Museum, David Wood

• Pre-registration required.

5:00-7 pm Thoreau Farm Trust Picnic Thoreau Farm, 341 Virginia Road, Concord

• Bring your own picnic. Drinks provided.

7:30-9 pm The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society Panel Masonic Temple, Main Floor

Emerson's Nature Writing, Sean Meehan, Chair

• The Supremacy and Artistic Being of Nature,
Nicholas Guardiano, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
• The Morning After the Deluge: Creative Instability in
the Work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and J.M.W. Turner, Dominique Zino, CUNY Graduate Center
• The Poetic Curve of Nature: Emerson, Thoreau, and the Nature of Metonymy, Sean Meehan, Washington College

9-10 pm Beer, Wine and Cheese Social Hour Sponsored by the Emerson Society
Masonic Temple, Downstairs

Friday, July 8, 2011

Walking Tours Meet at Masonic Temple
6:45-9:15 am Join Peter Alden, naturalist and author of several Audubon field guides, on a trip to the Great Blue Heron colony near White Pond. Peter Alden and
Edward O. Wilson are the originators of Walden Biodiversity Days.
Meet in parking lot behind Masonic Temple.

8:30-10 am Gate Post Tours: Walking Tour of Concord Meet at the Masonic Temple on the Frontsteps

9:30-3 pm Registration Masonic Temple, Entryway

9:30-10:30 am Refreshments: Coffee, Doughnuts and Healthy Snacks (Downstairs)
The Hospitality Area is open to Annual Gathering attendees throughout the day.

10:30-Noon Workshop V Masonic Temple

1. Panel: Thoreau and the Wild (Main Floor)

• Thoreau’s “Mild” Sublime, Ron Hoag, East Carolina University
• Wildness and Thoreau’s Poetry of the Forest, Michael Berger, Christ College
• Freedom and Wildness in Thoreau's Birds, Tom Potter, President, The Thoreau Society

2. Panel Presentations (Downstairs)

• Mapping Walden Woods
Brian Donahue, Harvard Forests; and Dick O’Connor, Independent Scholar

Noon Lunch provided by La Provence
Masonic Temple, Hospitality Area
Pre-registration required for Meal Ticket.

1-2:30 pm Workshop VI Masonic Temple

1. Panel Discussions (Main Floor)

• “This Moral Earthquake”: The Fugitive Slave Law and Henry Thoreau’s Ecological and Topographical Consciousness, James Finley, University of New Hampshire
• “We do not ride on the railroad”: Thoreau, Technology and Environmental Ethos, Brendan Mahoney, Binghamton University (SUNY)
• Virtuous Environmentalism and Luxury, Paul J Medeiros, Providence College

2. Presentations (Downstairs)

• Cabin Fever: A Modern Conversation with Henry David Thoreau,
Tom Montgomery-Fate, College of DuPage
• Thoreau and Humboldt: Then and in Google Maps and Google Translate time, Antonio Casado da Rocha, University of the Basque

3. Walking Tour: Teaching Thoreau Down by the Riverside

• Jayne Gordon, Massachusetts Historical Society

3-4:30 pm Workshop VII Masonic Temple & CFPL

1. Panel Discussion: Digital Humanities Projects (Main Floor)
Panel Chair, Kurt Moellering, Editor, Thoreau Society Bulletin

• Digital Thoreau, Paul Schacht, SUNY Geneseo College
• World Wide Waldens, Susan Frey, Walden Woods Project
• Mapping Thoreau Country, Susan Gallagher, Board Member, The Thoreau Society

2. Panel Presentations (Downstairs)

• Points and Lines: Thoreau’s Infi nitely Light Tread, Mary G. Bernath, Bloomsburg University of PA
• An Eye for the Body: Thoreau, Gaia, and a New Ecologic Vision, Greg Martin Aldersgate UMC
• Celebrating Thoreau’s Hunting Ethos; Inspiring Environmental Awareness and a Passion for Wilderness, Michael Stoneham, West Point Academy

3. William Munroe SpecialCollections Presentation Concord Fee Public Library

• A Discussion of Digital Projects at the Library: Past and Present, Leslie Perrin Wilson, Curator (Pre-registration required).

5:30-7 pm Dinner provided by La Provence First Parish Church
Pre-registration required for Meal Ticket.

Dillon Bustin and Jacqueline Schwab 7:30 pm at First Parish, Concord Music on Thoreau, Walden and Transcendental Concord Pre-registration required for Performance Ticket (See Registration Form) "American Reneaisance: Music on Thoreau, Walden and Transcendental Concord at First Parish" Tickets for those not attending the Annual Gathering can be purchased for $15 at the Shop at Walden Pond and eStore. Tickets will be $20 at the door.

Jacqueline’s Soundtrack Recordings The Civil War (Elektra/Nonesuch 9 79256-2) Grammy Award, 1992 Baseball (Elektra/Nonesuch 9 79340- 2) The West (Sony 62727) Lewis and Clark (RCA 67566-2) Not for Ourselves Alone (PBS Records 9 47521-2) New York (RCA Victor 63546-2) Mark Twain (Columbia/Legacy 86091) Ansel Adams (Green Linnet 3140) "Jacqueline Schwab is one of the most immediately recognizable pianists in America, although very few people actually know who she is." – Scott Alarik, The Boston Globe "Jacqueline Schwab brings more feeling and intensity to music than anyone I know. Her playing is insistent, physical, heartfelt and ... unusually moving." – Ken Burns

Saturday, July 9, 2011

6:45-9:15 am Join Peter Alden, naturalist and author of several Audubon fi eld guides, on an excursion to Fairhaven Bay
and Emerson’s Cliff. Peter Alden and Edward O. Wilson are the originators of Walden Biodiversity Days.
Meet in parking lot behind Masonic Temple.

7 am Walter Harding Memorial Walk at Walden Pond led by Corinne H. Smith

8-9 am Refreshments

9-10:30 am Annual Business Meeting, Tom Potter, President, Presiding First Parish Church

10:45-Noon Dana S. Brigham Memorial Keynote Address First Parish Church
Henry David Thoreau: Writing the Cosmos, Laura Dassow Walls, University of Notre Dame

Laura is just stepping into her new role as the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, where she will continue to teach Transcendentalism, 19th-century literature, and literature and science, and continue work on her biography of Thoreau. During her years at the University of South Carolina she published The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America (2009) and coedited The Oxford Handbook of Transcendentalism with Joel Myerson and Sandy Petrulionis (2010). Her earlier books include Seeing New Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and 19th-Century Natural Science (1995) and Emerson’s Life in Science: The Culture of Truth (2003).

Noon Lunch provided by La Provence, First Parish Church
Pre-registration required for Meal Ticket.

1:15-2:30 pm Workshop VIII Masonic Temple

1. Panel Presentations: (Main Floor)

• “What Is the Sea to a Fox?” Why Would Thoreau Ask?: Imaging the Atlantic in Cape Cod,
Albena Bakratcheva, New Bulgarian University
• Thoreau’s Human Ecology, Richard J. Schneider, Wartburg College

2. Presentation: (Downstairs)

• “I Wish To Speak A Word For Nature”: Personal Experiences of the Wild,
Charles Phillips, Board Member, The Thoreau Society

2:45-4 pm Workshop IX

1. Panel Presentations: (Main Floor)

• Of Ants and Ethos: the Intersection of Thoreau and E. O. Wilson,
Ron Balthazor, University of Georgia
• Henry Thoreau’s Walden as the First Historical Experience of Down-Shifting, Nikita Pokrovsky, Professor and Head of the Department of General Sociology at the National Research University, Higher School of Economics in Moscow

2. Presentation: (Downstairs)

• Co-creating a Conscious Earth, Robert & Christine Gerzon
Robert Gerzon, author of the highly acclaimed Finding Serenity in the Age of Anxiety, is a pioneer in
the mind-body-spirit approach to personal growth and healing. He is an inspirational speaker
and a popular guest on radio and TV programs, including Oprah. He lives in Concord, MA with his wife Christine.

7:30-9:00 pm Book Signing & Refreshments Sponsored by Shop at Walden Pond
Masonic Temple, Downstairs

• Join our presenters and special guests for this popular event!
  

Book Signing: Saturday, July 9, 2011 at 7:30-9:00 pm, Masonic Temple (Downstairs)
We will do our best, but we cannot guarantee the availability of every book or that every author will be in attendance.

1. Lawrence Buell, Environmental Imagination; Emerson; American Transcendentalists: Essential Readings,
2. Bob Gross, The Minute Men and Their World; An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture and Society in The New Nation, 1790-1840
3. Jack Larkin, Where We Worked: American Workers and the Nation They Built 1830s–1930s (2010); The Reshaping of Everyday Life 1790-1840; Where We Lived: Discovering the Places We Once Called Home. The American Home 1775-1840.
4. Lois Brown, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins: Black Daughter of the Revolution
5. Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780–1860
6. Stephen Cole, The Rangeley and Its Region: The Famous Boat and Lakes of Western Maine,The Cranberry: Hard Work and Holiday Sauce
7. Kevin P. Van Anglen, Environment: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (The Lamar Series in Western History) by Mr. Glenn Adelson, Mr. James Engell, Brent Ranalli, and Kevin P. Van Anglen
8. Howard Nelson, The Nap by the Waterfall; Earth, My Likeness: Nature Poetry of Walt Whitman
9. Joanna Greenfield, The Lion’s Eye: Seeing in the Wild
10. David Wood, An Observant Eye: The Thoreau Collection at the Concord Museum
11. Leslie Wilson, In History's Embrace: Past and Present in Concord, Massachusetts; Historic Concord and the Lexington Fight
12. Peter Alden, Field Guides
13. Thomas Potter, Sensual Harmonies
14. Gayle Moore, Wild Harmonies
15. Michael Berger, Thoreau’s Late Career and “The Dispersion of Seeds”: The Saunterer’s Synoptic Vision
16. Tom Montgomery-Fate, Beyond the White Noise, Steady and Trembling, Cabin Fever
17. Laura Dassow Walls, The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America; Emerson's Life in Science: The Culture of Truth; Seeing New Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Natural ScienceThe Oxford Handbook of Transcendentalism; More Day to Dawn: Thoreau's 'Walden' for the Twenty-first Century; Material Faith: Thoreau on Science
18. Albena Bakratcheva, The Call of the Green: Thoreau and Place-Sense in American Writing
19. Robert Gerzon, Finding Serenity in an Age of Anxiety
20. Jeffrey S. Cramer, The Maine Woods: A Fully Annotated Edition by Henry D. Thoreau ; Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition by Henry D. Thoreau, I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau; Excursions; The Quotable Thoreau
21. Connie Baxter Marlow, Book: Greatest Mountain: Katahdin's Wilderness, DVD Series: The American Evolution: Voices of America
22. Rochelle Johnson, Passions for Nature: Nineteenth-Century America’s Aesthetics of Alienation.  University of Georgia Press, 2009; Essays on Nature and Landscape by Susan Fenimore Cooper.  Edited and with an introduction by Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson. Foreword by John Elder. University of Georgia Press, 2002; Rural Hours [1850], by Susan Fenimore Cooper.  Edited and with an Introduction by Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson.  University of Georgia Press, 1998.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

6:45-9:15 am Join Peter Alden, naturalist and author of several Audubon field guides, on a trip to Great Meadows NWR, Concord. Peter Alden and Edward O. Wilson are the originators of Walden Biodiversity Days. No parking on Sundays in lot behind the Masonic Temple. Use Municipal Parking Lot on Keyes Road. Meet in front of the Masonic Temple.

7:30-10 am Canoeing on the Concord River
Meet at 7:00 am in the Concord Municipal Parking Lot on Keyes Road to carpool. Pre-registration required.

10-11 am Morning Service First Parish in Concord, Unitarian Universalist

Thoreau Society members are invited to attend a service at the Unitarian church where Thoreau was christened as a baby, where his funeral was held, and the church he resigned from at age 24. Worship leader: Rev. Jenny Rankin, Sermon on “Religious Naturalism” by First Parish member Don Miller.

10:30-Noon Workshop X

Panel Presentations (Main Floor)

• Henry Thoreau: Pioneer Environmental Educator,
Jack Miller, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto
• Henry David Thoreau in a Digital Age: Methods to Identify,
Disseminate and Distribute his Works, Practices and Life Experiences, David Dilts

Film and Performance (Downstairs)

• Thoreau, the Futurist and the Emerging Human, Connie Baxter Marlow, Independent Filmmaker

Noon-2 pm Thoreau Farm Trust Open House Thoreau Farm

Birth House of Henry D. Thoreau
Bring your lunch. Tours given by house architect Larry Sorli.

2-4:30 pm School of Philosophy Orchard House
A program sponsored by “Creating A Vision: The Power of Place”: A Centennial Celebration of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House and by Henry David Thoreau’s Environmental Ethos: Then & Now, the 70th Thoreau Society Annual Gathering.
Pre-registration required.

Panel: The Power of Place: Concord, the Region, the World

• Henry David Thoreau: From Cosmos to Concord, Laura Dassow Walls,
University of Notre Dame
• Bronson Alcott’s Search for Place, Ted Dahlstrand,
Retired, Ohio State University at Mansfield
• Ecologies of Place: Situating Susan Fenimore Cooper Amid her Concord Contemporaries,
Rochelle Johnson, The College of Idaho

5-6 pm Special Gallery Event, Concord Art Association, 37 Lexington Road

Into the Woods: Landscape, Art and Thoreau
Featuring artist Nick Miller and talk by art historian Barbara Novak
Pre-registration required.

6-7:30 Dinner Buffet provided by La Provence Concord Art Association (Air Conditioned Venue)
Pre-registration required for Meal Ticket.

Join Barbara Novak and Brian O’Doherty in conversation with renowned Irish painter, Nick Miller.
Nick Miller is a leading Irish contemporary artist honored for his contribution to the arts in Ireland. He
works in the open air and his expressive use of paint and brushwork is central to his landscape genre.
Miller adopts different modes of working in each case. His “Tree House 360°” series of paintings
(on exhibit at the Concord Art Association from June 16 to August 18) involved working from a tree
house in Connecticut for seven weeks, inspired by the writings of Henry David Thoreau. The resulting
work has a unique intensity of vision captured on huge panels giving the viewer the experience of being
fully immersed in nature.

BARBARA NOVAK is an artist, Barnard Professor of Art History and distinguished critical theorist of
American painting. She is the author of a highly acclaimed trilogy on American art and culture. Voyages
of the Self: Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature was published in the fall of 2007
and is recognized as a sweeping contribution to American cultural history, brimming with fresh insights
and unexpected revelations.

BRIAN O’DOHERTY, described in The NewYorker as “one of New York’s most beloved artist/intellectuals”
emerged as a highly infl uential fi gure on the American art scene of the 1960s. In addition to his work as a
visual artist, he is a renowned writer and critic and a significant cultural figure on both sides of the Atlantic.
His contributions from an infl uential position at the National Endowment for the Arts to visual art and fi lm/video
in the United States are widely recognized.
Free Admission. Pre-registration is required.