The Oxford Handbook of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Abstract The Oxford Handbook of Ralph Waldo Emerson is the most expansive collection of critical essays on Emerson to date, a survey that approaches Emerson from the vantages of climate change, racial justice, print culture, the digital humanities, the new religious studies, health humanities, and affect theory among other critical perspectives. Curated between a preface by editor Christopher Hanlon—who makes the case for a capacious and present-tense Emerson—and an afterword by Cornel West—an activist-scholar whose influential work on Emerson merges with a career of advocacy for economic and racial justice—this collection assesses the state of Emerson scholarship while charting a path for new work on this most essential American writer.