Walt Whitman, Emerson’s Poet

For Ralph Waldo Emerson and the circle of radical thinkers and writers he inspired, only a new poetry for a new American nation could fulfill the true promise of Transcendentalism. When Walt Whitman arrived, he was quite different from what Emerson anticipated. Celebrate National Poetry Month by exploring with us how the Transcendentalists’ revolutionary ideas about nature, philosophy, religion, politics, and the individual inspired Whitman's radical breaks with convention, which shaped an unprecedented national literature and a new, enduring American self. 

Instructor Steven Phillips has graduate degrees in literature from the University of Chicago and filmmaking from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He was creative director and partner of a company that produced film, video, media installations, and staged productions around the world. Since retiring, he has worked with community-service, public humanities, and higher education nonprofits, as well as earning an MA in American Studies from Columbia University. For the last six years, he has taught at Lifetime Learners Institute at CT State Community College Norwalk, where he regularly offers classes in philosophy, literature, politics, and American history. This program is co-sponsored by the Lifetime Learners Institute.