Thanks to PBS, Thoreau is back. For those of us who were intrigued by Thoreau in our teens and twenties, the recent Ken Burns documentary Henry David Thoreau invites us to re-evaluate the importance of Thoreau’s life, his writing, and his legacy on our lives in 2026. Our course begins with Emerson’s “American Scholar Address,” delivered the day after Henry Thoreau, who was in the audience, graduated from Harvard. Two months later, Thoreau began keeping a Journal, and remarkably, over the next 25 years, he produced about two million words — roughly 7,000 pages. Overshadowed by Walden in the public eye, his Journal is nevertheless his magnum opus. We will read numerous selections that will give us the flavor of the whole.We’ll end by examining Thoreau’s 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience,” which stems from musings in his Journal about democracy, government, and individual freedom. Is that essay as pertinent today as it was to Gandhi and King in the 20th century? And does Thoreau’s Journal speak to us over the years? We’ll see. Texts will be provided online and in person; the Journal collection will cost $17.

This course will consist of discussions between the Study Leader and participants.