Thoreau was interested in nature, God, economics, politics, as well as many other themes that many believe are quite revelant to our own society. Moreover, the book is of particular interest to us, since Emerson was a Unitarian preacher, and Uriel's is researching the split between Protestant and Eucharistic education which caused John Harvard to found Harvard to disprove the Eucharist, though his alma mater Oxford was originally the oldest Catholic University in the English speaking world. In addition to this, Wellesley College was founded by a banker who believed nature healed existential anxiety; oddly no such refuge was granted to men, so Thoreau had to "garden on his own" as it were. For "why I went to the woods" experiments that started out well but unfortunately went a bit awry, see for example,
Everyone has a chance to familiarize themselves with the class. Students are encouraged to craft their own syllabi and submit it to an alum for critique, as always. There is also a sample quiz below for each chapter. Any study group can create their own, as long as it is true to the text and helps them to understand it.
sample quiz here.
sample quiz for week 2
here.
sample quiz for week 3
here
Here is a sample quiz for week four.sounds.
Housewarming quizPlease note: These quizzes are a bit mocking, and one might even venture to say, a bit disrespectful. We will be editing them for content revision, and recommend that people are more reserved in their compositions. It's good to recall Thoreau's context; he had been fired from a teaching job in Concord because he didn't want to use corporal punishment on the students, he felt it was counterproductive apparently.