Its Genesis, Work, & Further Evolution
“It is time we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave our education off? when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities…”
As our country’s first inland community, the crucible of the American Revolution, and the home of some of America’s most prophetic voices, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts, Concord, Massachusetts has symbolized our striving as a nation to fulfill the promise of our ever “New World”: “liberty and justice for all”… “brotherhood from sea to shining sea.”
The Center grew out of the work of a circle of Concord friends. In 1978 a weekend conference was held at the Concord School of Philosophy & Literature on the theme: The Grail & America: A Journey of Peace with Francis Edmunds, Founder of Emerson College, Sussex, England. Further conferences and gatherings followed. In 1982, Dialogue, A Journal of Insights was launched, picking up the thread of Emerson and Margaret Fuller’s magazine, The Dial. In 1986, the written word unfolded into the spoken word with the founding of the Center for American Studies at Concord.
At its inauguration, the Center dedicated itself to carrying on Concord’s heritage, by relating the enduring principles and practices of our past to the very real challenges facing our nation today. Central among these has been the “translation” of Transcendentalism (the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller and their colleagues) into a language for our modern scientific age.
The Center for American Studies has pursued its mission through research, publications, educational programs, and — in the spirit of applied American Studies — action projects.
Central to the success of our work to date have been the collaborations and close working relationships that have been developed with individuals in kindred initiatives. “To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions,” notes Thoreau at the conclusion of his “Reading” chapter in Walden.
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In the initial phase of the Center’s work, we put on educational programs for a wide range of audiences, including fellow citizens, students, educators, business executives and professionals, Elderhostelers, and over 500 international leaders from 68 nations. These programs introduced the audiences to seven periods of American history (the Native American, Puritan, Colonial, Transcendentalist, Turn of the Century Industrial, 60’s, and Hi-Tech World of the 20th and 21st centuries), as seen through the window of Concord.
Alongside these educational programs, the Center hosted talks, seminars, conferences, executive roundtables, Lyceum programs, the “Thomas Whitney Surette Concert Series,” the “Village University Week,” the first performance of “The Compassion Play,” and the “International Walden Earthcare Congress” on the 20th anniversary of Earth Day.
In the winter of 1995, the Center published the first Russian biography on Ralph Waldo Emerson, entitled Ralph Waldo Emerson: In Search of his Universe by the noted Russian author, Nikita Pokrovsky. The book has been a bestseller in Moscow.
On April 23, 1995, the Center launched the call for the drafting of a “Bill of Economic Rights and Responsibilities.” Since then, a central focus of our research work has been the issue of social renewal. A fruit of this labor was the youth movement, “Democracy in Practice,” which was launched in 1999, and the Center’s ongoing development and presentation of the “Concord Resolution.”
In 2003, the Center proposed the publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s complete masterwork, The Natural History of the Intellect, and subsequently raised the funds and facilitated the contacts for the project. The alternative title that Emerson gave to the book was the Natural History of the Spirit. In our day, “Natural History” is translated with the word “Sciencequot.” Accordingly, Emerson’s work represents, we believe, America’s seminal testament to that emerging discipline, which carries the physical, natural, social, and cognitive sciences on to their fulfillment in a fully realized spiritual science or science of the spirit?
In 2003, in concert with the preparation of Emerson’s masterwork for publication and with the ongoing research work in the area of social renewal, the Center inaugurated a series of talks, seminars, and roundtables, which carried on its commitment to translating Transcendentalism into a language for our modern scientific age.
In 2005, these presentations led to the inauguration of the “Concord Convocation,” which drew participants from across America and over seas. The title of the first convocation was: Toward a Science of the Spirit. Since 2005, the Concord Convocation has become an annual event, accompanied by a summer conversational series and roundtable on Goethe’s and Thoreau’s contribution to such a fully-realized science of the spirit. The Natural History of the Intellect was published in 2007.
In 2008, the Center launched the Concord Shakespeare Festival, building bridges between the old world and anew, and in 2009 the Abraham Lincoln Symposium. 2009 also marked the commencement of the collaboration with Patch Adams, the first “Concord Fellow,” and his Gesundheit Institute, committed to the healing of our “body-social.”
As the Center approaches its 25th anniversary, the words of Reverend William Channing focus our ongoing labors:
“There is a new age for man, a revelation of the sacredness of human life. Our object is to take up this movement as it was left by the great German [and Transcendentalist] leaders, and organize it anew in the interests of human liberty. Something better than Transcendentalism is yet to come.”
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“… That is the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.” [and women].
~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden