Walden's Carbon Footprint: People, Plants, Animals, and Machines in the Making of an Environmental Classic

Returning Thoreau’s work to its material origins, Eric Slauter’s talk will focus on the natural history and labor history of how Walden—the book—was made. Slauter’s research places this literary classic associated with environmentalism, manual labor, solitude, and idealism within the global supply chain of raw materials and amongst the wide cast of characters that made up mid-nineteenth-century publishing.

Eric Slauter is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution (University of Chicago Press, 2009) and of a series of compelling cross disciplinary articles on the intersections between political, legal, literary, and craft history in America.

A reception will follow the talk.