The mid-nineteenth century U.S. cultural movement called transcendentalism has been described as an origin point of US philosophy, contemporary environmentalism, and racial and social justice. But transcendentalist writers such as Henry David Thoreau have also been accused of cultural appropriation, and been claimed by contemporary conservative thinkers for their resistance to government overreach and enthusiastic individualism. In this course, we'll consider transcendentalism in its mid-nineteenth-century historical context as we seek to make sense of its divergent legacies.