This spring, the Stanford Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series returns with four captivating talks from Stanford faculty, offering fresh insights into history and the humanities. Stanford history chair Caroline Winterer opens the series by exploring how 19th-century transcendentalists like Henry David Thoreau and John Muir navigated the upheavals of rapid technological and social change, drawing insightful parallels to the challenges we face today.

Is the search for calm and meaning in a chaotic world a modern challenge? Not at all. In the 19th century, the transcendentalists—a group of writers, artists, and thinkers—grappled with the upheaval of rapid technological and social change associated with the Industrial Revolution and the rise of consumerism, much like we do today. In this lecture, historian Caroline Winterer examines figures such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and John Muir, whose reflections on nature, individuality, and self-reliance shaped enduring ideas about living mindfully and purposefully. What insights can their responses to life’s big questions—about meaning, morality, and human nature—offer for navigating our own era of stress and transformation?

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