Approaches to Teaching Thoreau’s Walden and Other Works

In a recent survey of college teachers, Walden was mentioned more frequently than any other work as a text regularly included in nineteenth-century American literature courses. Today’s students are as likely to encounter Thoreau in freshman composition classes as they are in upper-level environmental literature seminars. The challenge of teaching Thoreau, then, Richard J. Schneider says, is how to make most effective use of his obvious appeal amid the variety of possible course structures, critical theories, and pedagogical methods.