Walter Harding Lecture

Walter Harding, who taught in SUNY Geneseo's English department from 1956 to 1982, was arguably the twentieth century’s most important scholar of Henry David Thoreau. Among his seven books on this great American writer, The Days of Henry Thoreau, first published in 1966, stands out as the definitive biography. Professor Harding edited or compiled 34 additional books, including works on other American transcendentalists such as Bronson Alcott and William Ellery Channing. At his retirement, he held the highest ranks awarded to a SUNY faculty member, Distinguished Professor and University Professor. He was the first SUNY faculty member to be awarded the degree of Honorary Doctor of Letters.

In 1941, Walter Harding helped to found the Thoreau Society, which houses the world’s largest collection of Thoreauviana.

After his death in 1996, the annual Walter Harding Lecture was established with the generous financial support of the Harding family.

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Year	Speaker	Title	Audio	Video
2011	Prof. Martha Nell Smith, Professor of English, University of Maryland, Founding Director of MITH	Digital Forensics: Texting Emily Dickinson	Listen	Watch
2010	Dr. Caleb Crain, author of American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation	Melville's Secrets	Listen	Watch
2009	Prof. Michael Warner, Seymour H. Knox Professor of English and Professor of American Studies, Yale University	The Evangelical Black Atlantic	Listen	Watch
2008	Prof. Frances Smith Foster, Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Women's Studies and associated faculty in African-American Studies and American Studies, Emory University	Freedom's Journal and Its Work: Or Facts, Falsehoods and Common Sense	Listen	Watch
2007	Prof. Betsy Erkkila, Henry Sanborn Noyes Professor of Literature, Northwestern University	Romancing the Revolution: Jefferson's Declaration	Listen	*****