Coming to campus

- November 28, 2005

Coming to Campus is a section announcing visiting speakers of note.

Those who wish to submit items for this section should send a brief description (maximum 300 words) of the event, including the date, time, and place, and giving the name, title, outstanding accomplishments and, if available, a color photo of the speaker to: Visiting Speaker, Advance, 1266 Storrs Road, Storrs, CT 06269-4144 or by e-mail: advance@uconn.edu, with Visiting Speaker in the subject line.

The information must be received by 4 p.m. on Monday, a minimum of two weeks prior to the event.

Publication will depend on space available, and preference will be given to events of interest to a cross-section of the University community.

“Making Sense of Walden,” a lecture by Robert Gross, will take place on Sunday, Dec. 4, at 3 p.m. It will take place in Room 130 of the Biology/Physics Building.

Gross is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Professor of Early American History in the history department.

Gross will discuss why Henry David Thoreau went to live in Walden woods from 1845 to 1847, and what he made of that experience. He will place Thoreau’s experiment in “deliberate living” in the context of his life and of his native Concord and New England. He will also explore how Thoreau transformed that experience into a literary classic and foundation text of the environmental movement.

Gross specializes in U.S. social and cultural history, the American Revolution, Transcendentalism, and New England studies. He has received many honors, including fellowships from the Guggenheim, Howard, and Rockefeller Foundations. His book, The Minutemen and Their World, won the Bancroft Prize in American History. He is also author of The Transcendentalists and Their World, a social and cultural history of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and the Concord, Mass. community in which they lived. Gross earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1976.

The talk is sponsored by the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History and Connecticut Archaeology Center at UConn. Admission is free.