A Program in Partnership with the Thoreau Society
Author talks and writing workshops that encourage critical thinking and perceptive writing about the world and ourselves.
Spring 2025
Slow Wood: Brian Donahue in Conversation with Amity Wilczek
Sunday, March 23
2pm
At Thoreau Farm
At Thoreau Farm and online.
$10 to attend at Thoreau Farm / $5 to attend online. Registration Required.
A radical proposal for healing the relationship between humans and forests through responsible, sustainable use of local and regional wood in home building.
Brian Donahue is professor emeritus of American Environmental Studies at Brandeis University. He is a farmer, historian, and conservationist, and the author of prize-winning books about the past and future of New England farms and forests. He lives in Gill, MA.
Unsettling Thoreau with John Kucich
Sunday, March 30
2:00 PM
Goodwin Forum, Concord Free Public Library
Free Event. Registration Required.
Register
Author John J. Kucich discusses his book Unsettling Thoreau: Native Americans, Settler Colonialism, and the Power of Place (University of Massachusetts Press, 2024).
Drawing on Indigenous studies and critiques of settler colonialism, as well as new materialist approaches that illustrate Thoreau’s radical reimagining of the relationship between humans and the natural world, Unsettling Thoreau explores the stakes of Thoreau’s effort to live mindfully and ethically in place when living alongside, or replacing marginalized peoples. By examining the whole scope of his writings, including the unpublished Indian Notebooks, and placing them alongside Native writers and communities in and beyond New England, this book gauges Thoreau’s effort to use Indigenous knowledge to reimagine a settler colonial world, without removing him from its trappings.
John J. Kucich is a Professor of English at BSU, teaching courses in American literature, Native American Literature, English education, and sustainability. He has coordinated the Sustainability Program and the Integrative Learning and Research Initiative. He currently serves as president of the Thoreau Society. Before coming to BSU, he taught high school English for ten years. He has published two books: Unsettling Thoreau: Native Americans, Settler Colonialism, and the Power of Place (University of Massachusetts Press, 2024) and Ghostly Communion: Cross-Cultural Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century America (Dartmouth College Press, 2004), and edited two collections: Thoreau in the Nick of Time (Mercer University Press, 2025) and Rediscovering the Maine Woods: Thoreau’s Legacy in an Unsettled Land (University of Massachusetts Press, 2018).
Co-sponsored with the Concord Free Public Library.
A Day of Lichens
Sunday, April 6
Thoreau Farm
Join us for a day of close-looking and learning with the folks who brought you Lichenpedia.
Join for all three programs and get a discount! $25/person. Registration required.
Linguaphile: A Conversation with Julie Sedivy
Julie Sedivy has taught linguistics and psychology at Brown University and the University of Calgary. She is the author of Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self and Language in Mind: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics, as well as the coauthor of Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You. She lives in Calgary, Canada.