Books by Branka Arsic

Branka Arsic shows that Thoreau developed a theory of vitalism in response to his brother's death. Through grieving, he came to see life as a generative force into which everything dissolves and reemerges. This reinterpretation, based on sources overlooked by critics, explains many of Thoreau's more idiosyncratic habits and obsessions.

Arsic unpacks Ralph Waldo Emerson's repeated assertion that our reality and our minds are in constant flux. Her readings of a broad range of Emerson's writings are guided by a central question: what does it really mean to maintain that everything fluctuates, is relational, and so changes its identity?