The Transparent Eyeball is a blog devoted to a collaborative study of Emerson and the innumerable circles of conversation in which he participated and in which we continue to find him. We welcome short—500-1,000 word—submissions from undergraduate and graduate students, teachers, independent scholars, early career as well as established scholars, artists, activists, and the general public. We especially encourage submissions that address Emerson’s relevance in our 21st-century moment; consider him in conversation with philosophers, poets, environmentalists, artists, and activists, within and beyond the nineteenth century; and explore him in transnational and interdisciplinary contexts.
Submissions may take any form—meditations, provocations, polemics, analyses, critical-creative hybrids, personal reflections—but should be original work, jargon-free, and accessible to the general public. Submissions will be received on a rolling basis and reviewed by members of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society Media Committee. Submissions may be returned to applicants with suggested revisions. Please submit your Transparent Eyeball contributions to TheTransparentEyeballBlog@gmail.com
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Call for Papers: Online workshop on Emerson and Zhuang Zi
Dear Colleagues, You might be interested in the following workshop on Emerson and Zhuang Zi Due to rapid processes of urbanization and globalization, self-identity, which
2024 Distinguished Achievement Award Announcement
We are delighted to announce that Branka Arsić is the recipient of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society’s 2024 Distinguished Achievement Award.
Introduction to Emerson and AI
Author: Thomas W. Howard, Bilkent University Note: This blog series is a companion to the panel “The End(s) of Originality?: The Transcendentalists and AI” at
Ralph Emerson and Self-Cultivation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Author: Marc Martorana, Fellow at Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms In “The Coming Humanist Renaissance,” Adrienne LaFrance calls on readers to revisit Emerson’s reaction to
Running Away, But Still Running in Circles
Author: Carolina Maciel The exploitation of the human being in relation to its creations is considered as a widely spread concern proposed by the Transcendentalists.
Emerson, Alcott, and Authorship: Transcendentalist Ideas in the Age of AI
Author: Emmy Brown, Georgia State University After a trip to Concord, I grew increasingly interested in the way the Concord circle of philosophers was deeply
Enlightened Machines?
Author: Jim Rittenhouse Alan Turing was an English mathematician. In 1950 he published a paper entitled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” in which he described the
-SIXTH SERIES-
Ralph Emerson’s Relevance in a College of Business
Dennis Elam PhD CPA, Associate Professor Accounting, Texas A & M University San Antonio I am an Associate Professor of Accounting at Texas A &
Emerson and Journaling
Jericho Williams, Spartanburg Methodist College At the small liberal arts school where I work, we begin the fall 2022 semester with an assortment of challenges,
In the Woods: Emerson and Cross Country Running
James A. Downs I was in the unique but no less fortunate position of being a recent graduate of SaintMichael’s College so that I would
Radically Inclusive Classroom Practices: Two Student-Centered Methods of Teaching Emerson to Ungraduates
Austin Bailey and Christina Katopodis, CUNY Graduate Center “I believe that our own experience instructs us that the secret of Education lies in respecting the
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Emerson and Race: A Provocation
Leslie Dumont, The University of California, Davis I believe Emerson has more to offer on the topic of blackness than what he has written explicitly
Emerson’s Copula: Transcendental Theopoetics
Bill Scalia, St. Mary’s Describing the landscape of theopoetics today is difficult because it’s hard to delineate the territory to which the term lays claim.
Transcendentalism and The Black Atlantic
Katie Simon, Georgia College Since the publication of Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic (1993), traditional frameworks for analyzing British and American literature have been challenged.
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‘I seem to have lost a beautiful estate’: Childhood and property in Emerson’s ‘Experience’
Kristina West, University of Reading Waldo was Emerson’s first-born child and just five years old when he died of scarlet fever on 28 January 1842.
Get Health: Reading Emerson in Pandemic Times
Stephen Rachman, Michigan State University For many years I have been turning over in my mind one of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s gnomic directives from The Conduct
Emersonian Sentimentalism and George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo
Georgia Walton, University of Leeds “Where do we find ourselves? We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we
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Emerson Therapy
Mary Barford, PhD (marybarford@gmail.com) It’s a sweltering summer day in central Illinois. My brother and I are walking miles along a railroad track toward
Emerson and Antaeus, the Broken Giant
Christina Katopodis, CUNY (all images via Wikimedia) Heracles and Antaeus by Euphronios (via Wikimedia) Emerson advocates, across his oeuvre but especially in his 1833 lecture
“a cigar had uses”: Emerson as Advertising Icon
Michael C. Weisenburg, University of South Carolina What does Ralph Waldo Emerson have in common with the Malboro Man and Joe Camel? All three
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Breathing Through Forms: The Influence of “The Poet” on the Poems of Dickinson
Rowan Beckford The brief poem “Let me not thirst with this Hock at my Lip” is concerned with a dichotomy of poetic wealth and impoverishment.
Between Self-Reliance and Responsibility: Rereading the Emersonian Sublime in an Age of Crisis
David Lombard, Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research In “The Over-Soul” (1841), Emerson defines the eponymous concept as the “Unity” or “whole” within which “every
Emerson Epigraphs in Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Michael S. Martin Henry David Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) is as sprawling and dense as any American nature journal
A Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dearest Ralph Waldo Emerson, I write to you through the gaping gulf of time, as your thoughts have bridged this gap and touched my soul.
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Legacies of Resistance: Emerson, Buddhism, and Richard Wright’s Pragmatist Poetics
Anita Patterson, Boston University In these dark and uncertain times, it is inspiring to learn how Emerson’s legacy has fostered a life-affirming intercultural dialogue
“Brahma” Contains Multitudes: Hinduism’s Influence on Emerson
Gary Ricketts Ralph Waldo Emerson inherited his father’s affinity for Hinduism and lived long enough to convey its importance to Western spirituality during the
An Essay about & an Excerpt from Living from the Soul
Sam Torode I believe that Emerson’s voice is needed now as much as ever, in this time of national crisis. Throughout his career, he spoke