Transcendentalist Women and Children

This seminar will explore the relations between Transcendentalism and women's rights, family relations, and perceptions of childhood and education. It will draw almost exclusively on writings from the period. 

N.B. The seminar will be conducted in English.  International students are welcome.

• Étudiants assidus : final grade: 50% oral participation, 50% final written exam.
• Étudiants en régime spécial : 50% oral exam, 50% written analysis (5 pp.) of an assigned document from the period.

NB: This is a seminar, not a lecture course, which means that active participation in the discussions is mandatory not optional—hence the 50% oral participation in the final grade.

Ouvert aux étudiant·es en mobilité sous réserve du nombre de places disponibles.

Required Reading

• Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Norton Critical Edition, ISBN: 0-393-97157-0.
• Louisa May Alcott, "Transcendental Wild Oats," Journals (excerpts),  Little Women and Jo's Boys (excerpts). Recommended edition: The Portable Louisa May Alcott, ed. Elizabeth Lennox Keyser, Penguin Books, ISBN: 0-14-027574-6.

N.B. Additional documents from the period will be handed out (or provided as pdf files) during the semester. 

Background Readings (optional)

• Megan Marshall, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, Houghton Mifflin, 2013.
• Susan Cheever, Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography, Simon & Schuster, 2010.
• Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture, Knopf, 1978.
• Phyllis Cole, Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism, Oxford, 1998.
• John Stuart Mill, On the Subjection of Women, 1869.