News: Grant honors philosopher

Ralph Waldo Emerson topic of new summer institute

Published: Monday, December 2, 2002

In celebration of Ralph Waldo Emerson's 200th birthday, UNM Philosophy Department Chairman Russell Goodman will organize a summer institute for college professors to discuss the popular author.

Goodman, who has taught courses about Emerson and other American transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau, proposed the grant to the National Endowment for the Humanities a year ago and was surprised when it was accepted.

The summer institute, "Ralph Waldo Emerson at 200: Literature, Philosophy, Democracy," will be conducted at St. John's College in Santa Fe.

Goodman was awarded more than $150,000 for the summer institute.

Emerson, born May 25, 1803, was a famous transcendentalist philosopher and political voice of pre-Civil War America.

Issues such as "a sense of the authority of the individual" and "a sense of the possibility for humanity" were all concerns of the transcendentalists and are still relevant today, Goodman said.

The purpose of the institute is for professors to present and discuss new insight from contemporary perspectives about Emerson and transcendentalism. Goodman hopes that knowledge about Emerson will have a trickle-down-effect that will eventually reach college students.

Goodman has worked with the National Endowment for the Humanities in the past, an organization that, Goodman said, looks "for projects that bring the humanities into the life of the American people."

Professors were invited by Goodman from a variety of universities including personal friends and distinguished voices in the intellectual community.

Professor of Religion and African-American Studies Cornell West of Princeton University, political science professor Thomas Dumm at Amherst College, literary critic Barbara Packer and Emerson authority Stanley Cavell have all agreed to participate in the institute.

Goodman said that many of the visiting lecturers have already published books on or relating to Emerson's historical impact.

The event will last five weeks with each week focusing on a different theme. Professors will examine current publications relating to Emerson as well as Emerson's impact on philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Thoreau.

In the third week of the program, speakers will discuss American intellectuals and their response to the acquisition of western colonies and manifest destiny.

"One of the reasons for having it out here is to look at Emerson and his relationship to the war with Mexico in 1840," Goodman said.

"In a way what I did with this institute was design a course of study for myself, with the people I learned from and still have a lot to learn from," Goodman said. "This is my ideal course on Emerson."

The institute's first seminar will start July 7, 2003.