Recent Past Conferences

Paper: “Aphoristic Science:
 Poetry, Empiricism, and Short Forms in Nineteenth-Century Ecology”

Abstract

My paper brings together two typically disparate features of the nineteenth century: the emergence of ecological science and the development of an open-ended aphoristic style. In contrast to the common English-language understanding of “aphorisms” as synonymous with pithy maxims, I trace an alternative tradition of expansive, open-ended aphorisms that emerged in German literature beginning in the late eighteenth century. This tradition originated with physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who kept Sudelbücher, or “waste-books,” full of suggestive notes and scientific aphorisms meant to inspire the reader to continue the experimental process. Scholars like J. P. Stern and Franz H. Mautner have identified the poetic nature of even the most scientific aphorisms, showing how aesthetic subjectivity expands the breadth of objective observation. Although research on the aphoristic tendencies of writers like Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt have been fruitful, scholars have yet overlooked the aphoristic (in this open-ended sense) writing of American ecologists like Henry David Thoreau and Susan Fenimore Cooper. I argue that these writers similarly approach nature from this poetic-scientific perspective which manifests in their writing as ambiguous, experimental aphorisms that disrupt systematic taxonomy in favor of continuous interpretation and rereading. By examining Thoreau’s Journal and Cooper’s Rural Hours, I illustrate how the aphorism and literary language generally was central to the emerging scientific discourse of nineteenth-century ecology. Recovering this aphoristic approach, I claim, disrupts the rigid disciplinarity of the sciences while also suggesting a more robust scientific-literary practice in our time of climate crisis and general science skepticism.

Paper: “Endlessly Rereading Thoreau’s Journalistic Fragments”

(part of my organized panel “Endlessness: Open-ended Interpretation and the Affordances of Short Forms”)

Abstract

My paper examines the nineteenth-century journal as an inherently endless form. Although journal writing necessarily ends with an author’s death, the practice of daily journal-keeping implies continuation and a lack of conclusiveness. Moreover, the archival impulse alongside the scholarly desire to collect and edit authoritative editions enables continuous reading, interpretation, and discovery from the original journal manuscript. In this paper, I take Henry David Thoreau’s Journal as exemplary of this open-ended style of writing, which not only provided Thoreau with an endless fountain of creative inspiration, but also continues to supply present-day ecologists with data and environmental insight. Other short diaristic forms in the nineteenth century, like the commonplace book or daybook, tend to close off maxims or events into their brief entries. Thoreau’s Journal, by contrast, functions centrifugally, using quotations or observations as springboards for new streams of thought or new styles of writing. In particular, I suggest that Thoreau’s observations and descriptions of natural phenomena create a space for readers to branch off and discover new, creative insight within their own ecological context. I call this philosophical and experimental approach Thoreau’s “radicle empiricism,” which takes the directional and networking apparatus of plant root systems as a model. Scholars like Branka Arsić and Kristin Case have recently attended to Thoreau’s vegetal thinking and writing, and Laura Dassow Walls specifically traces the samarae, or “winged seeds,” in the Journal. However, I argue that a rooted model better displays Thoreau’s empirical process, where taproots (“radicles”) and offshoots of thinking coexist as a nonhierarchical approach to science. The fragmented, open-ended style of the Journal further encourages readers to continue tracing their own offshoots, leading to an endless drive toward new, creative discovery.

Paper: “Feeling Thoreau’s Radicle Empiricism”

Abstract

My paper examines Henry David Thoreau’s writing about trees in his Journal as a form of “radicle empiricism.” A pun on William James’s philosophy of “radical empiricism,” where every relation felt as “real” is included in the system, radicle empiricism instead centers on the feeling of plant roots (“radicle” meaning “taproot”). By focusing on Thoreau’s Journal, I show how he traces the experience of plant communities through his iterative process of writing. Attending to his language about and around trees (in Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota), I argue, reveals his acute sense of affective relation with his ecological environment. Thoreau’s writing becomes a complex web of what Patrícia Vieira calls “phytographia,” where both humans and plants participate in the process of writing. Thoreau’s Journal extends a web of interspersed “feeling”: the plants feel and explore the world around them, and Thoreau feels and engages with the plants around him. While scholars like Kristen Case have compellingly illustrated Thoreau’s scientific Kalendar project and his later study on forest succession, I suggest that the seeds of these projects began in earlier metaphors and sketches throughout the Journal. Reading the entries as forms of “veer ecology”—drawing on Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert’s edited collection of that name—I argue that Thoreau uses the short, aphoristic style of the journal entry to explore the affective content of environmental themes. Focusing on plant growth and building on pea root research by Monica Gagliano, I claim that Thoreau’s language and penchant toward illustrations embodies a type of “radicle” empiricism that depends on an affective experience with one’s environment. Ultimately, I argue that Thoreau’s writing about plants in his Journal reveals a way forward in our current ecological moment; he reveals the importance of engaging, affective encounters with the environment that extend beyond the personal toward creative “radicle” inquiry.

Paper: “Thoreau’s Sudelbücher: His Journal as ‘Waste Book’”

Abstract

My paper examines journal-writing in the nineteenth-century United States as a parallel form of German writer Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s Sudelbücher, or “waste books.” First published as a collection of aphorisms in 1902, Lichtenberg’s Sudelbücher contain everything from proverbial ideas to scientific notes, originating from his time as a student at Göttingen. As “waste books,” the Sudelbücher were never intended for publication, but rather served as the raw material for a lifetime of experimental and subjective rumination. Similarly, Henry David Thoreau’s Journal, begun just after graduating from Harvard College, functioned as a “waste book,” providing Thoreau a place to record immediate impressions and observations irrespective of its publication potential. While many of Thoreau’s journal entries did appear in larger texts like Walden, his practice of literally tearing pages out of the Journal displays its “waste book” status. By making this comparison, I do not disparage Thoreau’s Journal as a “waste” but rather suggest that as “waste book” it allows Thoreau the freedom to think fluidly, subjectively, and open-endedly without concern for publication status. Further, I claim that this habit of “waste writing” grounds the nineteenth century’s creative and innovative approaches to science and philosophy by enabling exploration without the expectations of more polished, closed-off styles of writing. 

Paper: “Journalistic Ecology: ‘Radicle Empiricism’ in Thoreau’s Journal Manuscript”

Abstract

My paper reexamines journal-writing, especially in the nineteenth century, as a form that engages with the intellectual and environmental commons. Similar to the archipelagic formation of discrete islands, journals are not solipsistic or purely individualistic. Rather, they enable writers to engage with the stream of conversation happening around them, situating the writer in a relational position to the intellectual material published in periodicals and other “authorized” forms. In particular, I emphasize Henry David Thoreau’s Journal (especially the manuscript fragments housed at The Huntington Library) to show how Thoreau uses the journal form to engage with environmental theories circulating in the nineteenth century. By emphasizing the role of poetry in studying nature, Thoreau strives to translate scientific observation into literary form. While scholars like Kristen Case have compellingly illustrated Thoreau’s scientific Kalendar project and his later study on forest succession, I suggest that the seeds of these projects began in earlier metaphors and sketches throughout the Journal. Reading the entries as forms of “veer ecology”—drawing on Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert’s edited collection of that name —I argue that Thoreau uses the short, aphoristic style of the journal entry to explore environmental themes. Focusing on plant growth and building on pea root research by Monica Gagliano, I claim that Thoreau’s language and penchant toward illustrations embodies a type of “radicle” empiricism—the radicle being a plant’s taproot—where the contents of the Journal progresses like roots exploring their world underground. Therefore, Thoreau’s Journal not only anticipates recent plant science, which shows how roots are able to sense and explore the world around them, but it also suggests a way forward in our current ecological moment: to explore the intellectual, artistic, and environmental commons through personal, experimental, and creative “radicle” journalistic inquiry.