VERO BEACH — As the United States approaches the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Vero Beach will present distinguished author and scholar Dr. Leonard Gougeon in a free, community-wide lecture entitled, “Lincoln, Emerson and the Civil War.” Gougeon will speak at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 22. The presentation will concentrate exclusively on the relationship, both personal and political, that developed between Abraham Lincoln and Ralph Waldo Emerson during that divisive war which began on April 12, 1861.
Gougeon is a professor of American Literature and a Distinguished University Fellow at the University of Scranton, where he has taught for thirty-five years. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and specializes in nineteenth-century American literature. His research has focused on the relationship of major antebellum literary figures to the reform movements of the time, especially antislavery and the woman’s movement.
His writings have appeared in major scholarly journals such as The New England Quarterly, American Literature, Studies in the American Renaissance, and The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. In 2008 he received the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society’s Distinguished Achievement Award for his scholarship on Emerson and the Transcendental movement.
A former president of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, Dr. Gougeon is the author of four books about Emerson, including Emerson & Eros: The Making of a Cultural Hero. He is also co-editor of Emerson’s Antislavery Writings. His two most recent books about Emerson were published last year. Reviewers called Virtue’s Hero: Emerson, Antislavery, and Reform “the definitive account of a life of activism that we knew about but did not, until now, fully appreciate,” “meticulously researched,” “a book that no student of Emerson, abolitionism, or antebellum American culture can afford to ignore.”
Released last August, Emerson’s Truth, Emerson’s Wisdom: Transcendental Advice for Everyday Life indicates how Emerson’s timeless wisdom can serve readers today in discovering spiritual truth, developing self-reliance, dealing with bereavement and loss, experiencing both personal love and cosmic love, achieving worldly success, and more.
The PowerPoint presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer period.
The UU Fellowship is located at 1590 27th Avenue on the southeast corner of 27th Avenue and 16th Street.
For more information, call 772-778-5880.
