1. Read Emerson's "American Scholar" and compare it with his "Divinity School Address."
2. Read Emerson's essay "History." Compare the view of history expressed in it with that in the poem "Hamatreya."
3. Read and analyze Emerson's poem "Each and All," or some other Emerson poem of your choice. Discuss the poem in relation to Emerson's Transcendental philosophy, as expressed elsewhere in his writings.
4. Read Emerson's "Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England." How does this retrospective assessment compare with the expression of Transcendentalism in Emerson's life and writings, or in Thoreau's?
5. Read Coleridge's Aids to Reflection and discuss its influence on Emerson and on Transcendentalism.
6. Read Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's essay "Language" (available in the 1975 AMS Press facsimile reprint of her Last Evening with Allston). Compare what she writes on the subject with what Emerson writes in "Language" (Chapter IV of his Nature).
7. Read Theodore Parker's "A Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity" (printed in Perry Miller's anthology The Transcendentalists), and compare it with Emerson's "Divinity School Address."
8. Research Bronson Alcott's Fruitlands or George Ripley's Brook Farm. Consider the ways in which Transcendental idealism was expressed in the utopian community you choose.
9. Research the educational philosophy of Bronson Alcott or Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and discuss how it reflected Transcendental concerns and ideas.
10. Research the life of one Transcendental thinker aside from Emerson and Thoreau — Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, or another of your own choice — and discuss it in relation to the development and expression of Transcendental thought.
11. Research the history of environmentalism in the United States. How has Thoreau's thought influenced it? Specifically, explore Thoreau's influence on John Muir.
12. Research and discuss the influence of Thoreau on Gandhi and on Martin Luther King, Jr.
