Communal Studies: Dedicated to the Understanding and Study of
Intentional, Contemporary, Historic and "Utopian" Communities
List of Conference Participants
Koreshan State Historic Site
CSA Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting Program
October 2-4, 2008
Deborah Altus
Washburn University
Continuity and Change in the FIC: Moving from the Fellowship of Intentional Communities to the Fellowship for Intentional Community
Abstract: This paper will explore the history of the Fellowship for Intentional Community. Special attention will be placed on examining transformations in the organization, such as the change from the original “Fellowship of Intentional Communities” (established in 1948 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, at a conference of Community Service, Inc.) to the current “Fellowship for Intentional Community” (incorporated in 1987). While the original FIC was geographically more concerned with the Eastern third of the United States, the current FIC has deliberately worked to serve North America. The original spirit to promote and support intentional community, though, has been maintained from the beginning of the organization to the present day. This paper will discuss continuity and change in the FIC over the decades and consider reasons behind the transformations the organization has undergone.
Biography:
Deborah Altus has been involved in the study of communal societies for about twenty years, with a focus on Walden Two communities and hip-era communes. Deborah is immediate past president of the CSA and a board member of the International Communal Studies Association. She is also on the Editorial Review Board of the FIC and a former FIC associate board member.
Harvey Baker
Dunmire Hollow Community
The Fellowship for Intentional Community: Reflections on Continuity and Change from the Inside
Abstract: In this paper, Harvey Baker will explore his twenty-year involvement with the Fellowship for Intentional Community. His participation in the organization spans the period since its rebirth in the 1980s to the present day, a time in which the FIC has seen huge growth and enormous activity – ranging from the publication of numerous Communities Directories to the development of an extensive interactive Web Site and the organization of many “Art of Community” conferences around North America. Harvey will discuss the development of the organization over the last two decades from the inside, from its bootstrap beginnings to the energetic challenges of a mature organization repeating its prior successes. He will discuss the FIC’s responses to internal and external pressures for change, and its one major organizational transformation in the mid-1990s.
Biography:
Harvey Baker is a founding member of Dunmire Hollow Community, near Waynesboro, Tennessee. He has been active in the FIC for over twenty years, serving on its Board and numerous committees since 1988. Harvey is a former president of the CSA, and continues to serve as its auctioneer.
Deborah Altus and Harvey Baker:
Reflections on Personal Transformations Influenced by the Fellowship for Intentional Community
Abstract: Deborah and Harvey will both reflect on the personal transformations that they have experienced as a result of their work with the FIC. They will consider what their involvement has meant for each of them over the years, what knowledge and skills they have learned as a result of their participation, and how their involvement has influenced the direction of their respective work and lives. The personal reflections by the presenters will purposefully be short in order to allow plenty of time for discussion with the audience.
Douglas Canterbury-Counts aka Kailash Shankara
Kashi Ashram
Kashi Ashram: Living The Yoga of Relationship
Abstract: In 1976 Guru Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati and a handful of devotees moved from the Holy Land of Brooklyn to seven acres of rural Florida to begin a pilot project that has grown into a vibrant interfaith community with outreach service programs throughout the United States, Africa and India. From that original seven acres the Ashram now spans eighty acres of pristine Florida wilderness and is the home to the internationally recognized HIV/AIDS program, the River Fund, the Kashi School of Yoga, and is currently developing a unique Senior Independent Residence program, By the River, that has been awarded more than six million dollars in funding by the State of Florida. This presentation will offer a photojournal of the evolution of Kashi and her creative projects that honor Ma’s vision to “feed everyone.”
Biography:
Douglas Canterbury-Counts is a licensed psychologist and practicing neuropsychologist, with a doctoral degree from Temple University and a wide range of clinical experience. Doug is trained in the area of psychospiritual transformation, holding an earned Master's of Divinity degree with an emphasis in the psychology of C.G. Jung. Brought to Kashi Ashram in 1992 by his mentor, Rebbe Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, he and his family found a home and a spiritual path he didn’t even know he was looking for. His dharma name, Kailash Shankara, means the sacred mountain of the Giver of Joy and the Giver of Peace. His calling is to live into his name.
Christine Donahue
Nova Southeastern University
Building Bridges through Better Communication
Abstract: Although speech is a common modality that almost everyone masters, clear expression of thought is not necessarily a simple task. Globalization brings countless cultures into instant contact with each other. Even within a homogenized culture, there are differing styles of communication. Comprehension can be hindered by another party’s word choice and connotation. Nonverbal communication, including posture and body language, contribute to a speaker’s message. Cultural norms, such as silence or interruption, can lead to misunderstanding. Language is a basic cultural construct of every society, but not everyone is able to use it effectively. How can people learn to communicate more effectively?
By examining the basics of communication it is possible to identify breakdowns in conflict resolution and improve verbal relational skills of individuals. We can assist each other in the process of clarification; therefore, cooperation may begin with even the most simple of relational tasks – talking to each other.
Biography:
Christine Donahue is currently working on her master’s degree in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Nova Southeastern University in Davie, Florida. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in education at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. She has taught high school English for 26 years in a culturally diverse school in Fort Lauderdale. Combining her interests in linguistics, multiculturalism, and peace building, Donahue is concentrating her studies on ways to mediate conflict through better communication. She believes that although conflict is natural, we can all be winners if we are willing to work together at positive, constructive solutions.
Paul Douglas
Towson University, Baltimore, MD
Three Harmonist Towns: The Pursuit of Perfection
Abstract: The Harmony Society provides a unique source for using material culture to understand transformations in community dynamics and belief. The Harmonists created three subsequent villages in 19 th century America, thus giving them the opportunity to perfect what they saw as the ideal community while awaiting the millennium. Changes in the philosophy of the group can be seen by examining their arts, architecture and town planning. To an unusual extent among communal groups, the Harmonists were somewhat sophisticated and worldly in their arts and architecture. Some objects reflect the communal nature of the Harmonists; other items show symbolic motifs important to the group; and still others reveal that the community leaders wanted to reveal a sophisticated facade to those from the outside world who visited.
This illustrated presentation will examine the relationship between material culture and community beliefs.
Biography:
Paul Douglas, Professor of American Studies, received his PhD from George Washington University, was a Fulbright Lecturer in Turkey, and has taught as an exchange faculty in China. His publications include articles on American inventors, the building of the Smithsonian “castle” in Washington, the folk art of painted window screens in Baltimore, the English publication of Giovan Straparola’s Italian folk tales, and the career of Charles Carrington, the notorious Paris book publisher. Most recently he published a translation of a 19 th century French travel narrative to California and has in press a book on the material culture of the Harmonists.
Holly Folk
Western Washington University
Windows on the World: Cellular Cosmology, Zetetic Astronomy, and the Legend of Agartha
Abstract: This paper considers the importance of “world configuration” in three different utopian case studies: the Koreshan Unity; Zion City, Illinois; and the Order of the Solar Temple. These groups posited three different alternative theories for the structure and composition of the planet earth. Cyrus Teed and his followers held that the world was hollow and concave; Wilbur Glenn Voliva thought the world was flat, surrounded by a ring of ice mountains. Finally, initiates in the Solar Temple believed in a hollow earth, with a subterranean civilization beneath the surface. I will show that their ideas about the shape of the world offers insight into their worldviews, by locating these beliefs in their historical context and considering how such ideas were used in their respective communities. To varying degrees, alternative earth theories appear to function as commitment mechanisms, as ideological boundaries separating believers from outsiders, and even as a means of social control within the group. At the same time, these ideas extended beyond the boundaries of the communities associated with them, starting in the late 19th century and circulating as subaltern discourses into the present day.
Biography:
Holly Folk teaches in the Liberal Studies Department of Western Washington University. A cultural historian who works broadly in the areas of 19th and 20th century American religion, she is especially interested in groups that fall outside the ‘mainstream,’ including new religious movements, communes and utopias, Native American religions, and Buddhism in America. Folk is working on a book on early chiropractic and its ties to 19th century alternative medicine, and plans to continue to research how the metaphysical subculture of the Progressive Era responded to questions about science and religion. She hopes to study the Arts and Crafts movement in a future project.
Lawrence Foster
Georgia Institute of Technology
Sex and Conflict in New Religious Movements: A Comparison of the Antebellum Oneida Community under John Humphrey Noyes with the Mormons under Joseph Smith
Abstract: Severe internal tensions and external hostilities frequently result when new religious movements attempt to introduce unconventional marital and sexual beliefs and practices. This paper will compare and contrast how the Oneida Community under John Humphrey Noyes and the Mormons under Joseph Smith and after dealt with the severe disruption caused by their efforts to introduce systems of group marriage and polygamy, respectively, in their communities before the Civil War. What were the chief difficulties the two groups faced as they undertook their marital/sexual transitions, and how did they overcome those difficulties? To what extent did their controversial new practices eventually become forces for group cohesion, on the one hand, or for disruption, on the other? What accounts for the relative “success” these two groups experienced introducing new sexual and marital systems, when compared with the frequent disintegration experienced by other groups that have experimented with similar changes?
Biography:
Larry Foster earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago under Martin E. Marty. He is a professor of American History at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, where he has taught since 1977. Larry has published widely in American social and religious history and has served as president of both the Communal Studies Association and the Mormon History Association (although he is not a Mormon). His first book, Religion and Sexuality (1981) compares the introduction of new marriage, family, and sex-role patterns among the celibate Shakers, “free love” Oneida Community, and polygamous Mormons in antebellum America. His two other books--Women, Family, and Utopia (1991), and Free Love in Utopia (2001) further explore the complex transformations of family, gender, and sex roles in these three communally oriented religious movements during the 19th century. He received the CSA Distinguished Scholar Award in 1998.
Diana M. Garno
1879: Women and Icaria’s Community Split
Abstract: 1879 was the culmination of Icarian efforts to define and practice full equality in their Community. For over thirty years, citoyennes (women) had refused to accept men’s “sentiment of equality.” At an Iowa Assembly Meeting in April 1876, a group of members read a list of fourteen ‘Grievances.’ Number thirteen objected to men’s “absolute lack of regard for the opinions of citoyennes.” Discussions and activities in the next three years escalated this concern to a call for equal voting and office-holding rights. ‘Progressive’ and ‘Conservative’ party members determined that they could no longer live together. The Colony split in two: Nouvelle Icarie and Jeune Icarie. The Jeune Icarie ‘Progressives’ drafted a Constitution on May 1, 1879 that heralded equal rights for all adults “without distinction of sex.” This proposal will offer details surrounding this transforming event and its effect on the lives of women in Icaria thereafter.
Biography:
Diana Garno wrote her dissertation, “Gendered Utopia: Women In The Icarian Experience, 1840-1898” under Christopher H. Johnson at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. She has taught at a number of Michigan Universities and Community Colleges, wrote, read and published papers, mostly about the Icarians. Her dissertation serves as the basis of her book, Citoyennes And Icaria. She is current taking leave from teaching to be a caregiver for her husband at home. She is also working on another book about Icarians and Community life.
Christian Goodwillie
Hancock Shaker Village
Heaven in a Hollow Earth: The Koreshan-Shaker Connection
Abstract: Throughout their history the United Society of Believers, commonly called Shakers, have engaged in open dialogues with members of other fringe faiths and social movements. Members of these outside groups who have achieved a sympathetic relationship with the Shakers have been referred to as members of the “outer court.” Prominent among these was Cyrus Reed Teed, who had an on-going interaction with the Shakers during the late nineteenth century. This paper will examine that relationship, and its manifestation in publications, visiting between the two groups, and the consideration of a full merger between the Shakers and Koreshans. While ultimately no such merger took place, the Shakers came closer to uniting with the Koreshans than with almost any other group (save disillusioned Millerites) in their long history.
Biography:
Christian Goodwillie is Curator of Collections at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He has published articles in The Magazine Antiques, Early American Life, America In Britain, American Art Review, and Berkshire Living. He has the authored (or co-authored) four books: Shaker Songs, Handled With Care: The Form of Function in Shaker Craft, Millennial Praises: A Shaker Hymnal, and Gather Up the Fragments: The Andrews Shaker Collection.
Matthew J. Grow
University of Southern Indiana
Center for Communal Studies
Polygamy, Publishing, and “Joint Stockism”: Parley P. Pratt and the Mormon Periphery during the Succession Crisis of 1844-1847
Abstract: This paper explores issues of authority and the relationship between the center and periphery within early Mormonism in the years immediately after the mob murder of founder Joseph Smith in 1844 as a case study of a communal group in a time of transformation. Most previous scholarship on the competition between various factions to be recognized as Smith’s legitimate successor has focused on the Mormon center of Nauvoo, Illinois, demonstrating how Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles consolidated their authority over most Mormons.
But the succession battle raged as well in the periphery of Mormonism (where a majority of Mormons lived). Two areas were of particular importance: the large eastern cities, with relatively small numbers of Mormons but with access to the nation’s publishing centers; and Great Britain, with its large population of Mormon converts. Rumors of polygamy and lack of control over Mormon publishing threatened the Apostles’ claims in the East. In England, a failed joint stock company, which had intended to assist the English converts in emigrating to the U.S., posed the largest problem to the Apostles’ efforts. Apostle Parley P. Pratt (who left rich primary sources which form the basis of my analysis) played a key role in consolidating the Apostles’ authority by imposing new controls over Mormon publishing, battling rumors of plural marriage, and finding new methods for emigration of the English Saints.
Biography
Matthew J. Grow recently began a new position as an assistant professor of history and director of the Center for Communal Studies at the University of Southern Indiana. He is the author of “ Liberty to the Downtrodden”: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer (2009) and articles published in Church History, American Nineteenth-Century History, Journal of Mormon History, and Utah Historical Quarterly. Grow is currently writing a co-authored biography of the early Mormon leader Parley P. Pratt. He received his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Notre Dame in 2006.
Martin Haber
John Dewey High School
City University of New York
Between ‘Topias’: Orwell and Jack London Reconsidered from Afar
Abstract: Stemming from an NEH-sponsored workshop entitled "Landmarks in American History" Teachers' Institute on "Jack London, Beauty Ranch, and Re-imagining the American Dream," this paper focuses on what the utopian experiment Beauty Ranch was meant to represent, and compares it with George Orwell' struggles to complete his dystopian masterpiece, 1984. It explores the respective "Socialisms" of the two writers, and applies them to how London tried to work his out in "The Iron Heel" and "The Road", while Orwell wrote of his in "The Road to Wigan Pier." In the end, it is really the two "worlds" of these writers that will be compared and contrasted.
The pastoral vision London had when it concerns his Beauty Ranch, though not widely known, is of special interest. He said, "I see my farm in terms of the world, and I see the world in terms of my farm". Was Orwell's retreat from the responsibilities and harried life he led in London a parallel vision of "a return to the soil", or simply a much-needed sanctuary to wrestle with the inner demons through, and to create his darkest satire in?
Biography:
Martin Haber is a New York City-based public school teacher, and a teacher-trainer. He teaches a "College Now" course to high school students called "20th Century World". He has taken part in a number of teacher seminars and institutes on a wide variety of topics in the Humanities. His essay on Frederick Douglass was published by Teachers and Writers Collaborative, and has articles published in various education journals. He has long been interested in utopian literature and experiments.
Peter Hoehnle
Iowa Valley Resource Conservation and Development
“Colonisten und Indianer”: The Relationship between the Amana Society and the Meskwaki Nation, 1855-2008
Abstract: For 150 years, the Amana Society and the Meskwaki Nation have had a unique and unlikely relationship. The Meskwaki inhabited the Iowa River Valley long before the Amana Society located there in 1855. In 1857, a special act of the Iowa General Assembly allowed them to purchase a settlement near Tama, Iowa, fifty miles from Amana. The Meskwaki returned to Amana, to trade and to visit throughout the Amana communal period (1855 – 1932). On occasion, the two groups provided mutual assistance, and Meskwaki families were regular visitors in communal Amana. Both groups practiced forms of communal living on large tracts of commonly owned land. The unique relationship between these groups provides contrast between Native American ideas of community and the German Pietistic traditions embraced by the Amana Society. The cultural exchange between them reflects their shared love for the Iowa River Valley and a mutual respect that illustrates the philosophical, cultural and religious outlooks of two distinct, yet decidedly different “communal societies.”
Biography:
Peter Hoehnle is the project manager for the Iowa Valley Resource, Conservation and Development located in Amana, Iowa. He serves on the CSA board and recently became co editor of the CSA newsletter.
Don Janzen
Louisville, Kentucky
One Hundred Thousand Miles of Community: A Visual Tour of Shaker and Other Communal Villages
Lucy Jayne Kamau|
Professor Emeritus, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago
New Harmony, the Owen Boys, and the Origin of the Smithsonian
Abstract: There is a series of letters in the Yale rare manuscripts between Sen Benjamin Tappan and William Owen and other community members regarding suggestions for the Smithsonian Institute. William wrote back a very long and detailed proposal that is almost identical to what was finally adopted. Robert Dale gets credit for pushing the Smith as a congressman, and David Dale gets credit for the architecture, But it is William who really managed to guide the project to adoption. William, during his life, got nothing but flack for being a poor businessman and for being generally feckless. He once was stranded in New Orleans for about 6 months or so because he took a load of produce down, got slapped with a debt left by someone else in the family, was forbidden to leave until it was paid, had no place to live, had no money, wrote desperately to his well-heeled brothers, and got zilch. He was finally rescued by his father's agent. His brothers sounded like some modern-day politicians on foreclosures: I'm not going to bail out people who can't handle money. He died at 42, broke. William is due for a bit of glory. This paper will explore the important role played by William and members of New Harmony in establishing one of the most important museums and research centers in the world.
Biography:
Lucy Jayne Kamau is Professor Emeritus at Northeastern Illinois University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and, in addition to NEIU, has taught at Western Washington University and the University of Nairobi, in Kenya. She has presented numerous papers and has published on Robert Owen’s New Harmony and related subjects. She was president of the CSA from 2000 to 2002 and served on the Board of Directors from 1992 to 2004.
Laura Johnston Kohl
Peoples Temple Survivor and former Synanon resident
Seeing the Faces (Reflection on People’s Temple)
Abstract: Laura Johnston Kohl was part of Peoples Temple from 1970 until 1979, both in the United States and in Guyana. She survived the deaths of 914 of her friends in Guyana, and returned to San Francisco. Her unique perspective of life in community included surviving the tragic events at Jonestown, and being part of Synanon at the time of its collapse. This presentation will focus on her participation in Peoples Temple and put faces on some of her friends in Peoples Temple. Laura went on to live in Synanon for ten years and would discuss any thoughts or questions about Synanon after the presentation or at any other time during the conference.
Biography:
Laura Johnston Kohl joined the Peoples Temple in 1970, and lived in California. In March, 1977, she went to Guyana to build a community in Jonestown. After the deaths of her friends in November, 1978, she returned to California. Within the year, she moved into Synanon and lived there until it folded in 1990. Since then, she has become a parent, a public school teacher, and a Quaker, living in San Diego.
She has been interviewed on numerous occasions by scholars for research projects, for documentaries, plays and movies, on television, in journals, in newspapers, on radio, and in person. She has written a number of articles for the Jonestown Report, and has just finished her autobiography. She is currently contacting publishing houses to print the manuscript.
Jim Kopp
Watzek Library, Lewis and Clark College
No Place In Oregon: Unrealized Dreams Of A Religious Community And An Art Colony
Abstract: Among the 250+ communal groups spawned in the past 150 years in Oregon are two attempts that stand out for their specific focus, the passion of their promoters, and their failure to be realized. As such, they reflect in practice the “no place” concept of Thomas More’s “utopia.” The Rev. John Sellwood sought to establish “a Christian utopia” in the 1870s that was to be called Hopeland. But the “Rules to be Observed by All the Residents of Hopeland, Oregon” were too rigid for most and Hopeland remained a dream. In 1900, Ralph Whitehead had a dream for “a convent in the woods” that would be an oasis for artists and artisans, but this dream was also thwarted, largely due to vagaries of human nature. This paper examines Sellwood’s Hopeland and Whitehead’s proposed art colony at Alsea and places them in the broader context of Oregon’s communal heritage.
Biography:
Jim Kopp is Director of the Watzek Library at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. His research interests center on Oregon’s communal endeavors and a book, Eden Within Eden: Oregon’s Utopian Heritage, is forthcoming in Spring 2009. He resides in Aurora, Oregon, where the earliest utopian community was established in the state, and he serves on the Board of Directors for the Aurora Colony Historical Society. Aurora also has been the home of two previous CSA conferences and will host the conference again in 2009, for which Jim is Program Chair. He is a life member of the CSA.
Charles LeWarne
After the End at China Bend: The Latter Days of the Love Israel Family
Abstract: After 35 years existence in a Seattle neighborhood and then a rural ranch, the countercultural and spiritual Love Israel Family experienced both success and turmoil until financial reverses in 2003 essentially broke up their communal life (The ranch was visited by many CSA members during the 1997 Tacoma conference). Properties they acquired over the years included acreage in the far northeastern corner of Washington state near a curve in the Columbia River called China Bend. In this setting - which was graphically different from either Seattle or the ranch environs - many one-time members including loyalists and dissidents acquired property, raised vegetables, garlic, and wine grapes. After a former Family elder established a winery there, China Bend increasingly became a center where old friends and colleagues congregated, including their former leader Love Israel. With the ranch property lost, China Bend seemed a likely base where remaining members might resettle. That did not quite materialize, but it continues to be a place where former Family members congregate in an atmosphere somewhat reminiscent of their earlier days, a home to some and the site of Family gatherings and reunions for many.
Biography:
Charles P. LeWarne, of Edmonds, Washington, is a past president of the CSA. He is a native of the Puget Sound area who received a Ph. D. in history from the University of Washington in 1969. He is the author of Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885-1915 (1975 and later editions) as well as other works on communalism and on Washington state. The Love Israel Family: Urban Commune, Rural Commune is scheduled for publication in 2009. He received the Distinguished Scholar Award of the CSA (1997) as well the Robert Gray Medal of the Washington State Historical Society which recognizes lifetime achievement. He is active in these and other historical and community organizations.
Josh Lockyer
University of Georgia
From Developmental Communalism to Transformative Utopianism: An Imagined Conversation with Don Pitzer
Abstract: This paper uses comparative ethnographic research in contemporary intentional communities to articulate the concept of transformative utopianism. Transformative utopianism builds on Pitzer’s concept of developmental communalism and suggests a change in its phrasing, arguing that transformative is a better adjective than developmental for describing both changes in communal structures and the process of utopian striving in intentional communities. Transformative utopianism recognizes the usefulness of Pitzer’s concept of developmental communalism for promoting more productive understandings of intentional communities; at the same time, it divorces the concept from the potentially confusing meanings associated with the term developmental. Building on the idea of developmental communalism, transformative utopianism suggests that utopian striving can best be understood as a process that stretches across networks of individuals and communities dispersed in time and space who, through direct or indirect connections, build upon the partially realized utopian endeavors of others in an ongoing struggle with the tension between the real and the ideal. This paper contributes to more solid theorization of intentional communities by recognizing that even as the utopian visions of individual communities remain incompletely realized, they provide the foundation for other, newer utopian community building projects, more specifically, today’s ecovillages.
Biography:
Joshua Lockyer teaches in the Department of Ecological and Environmental Anthropology at the University of Georgia, including a freshman seminar on Ecovillages. He is also a Research Fellow with the interdisciplinary Research Group on Lifestyles, Values and the Environment at the University of Surrey. Joshua studies the growing, global movement of ecovillages and sustainability-oriented intentional communities. His interests extend from utopianism and agency to the use of sustainable technologies in intentional community contexts to the anthropology of environment and development. He believes that intentional communities represent an opportunity to bring his varied research interests together to address contemporary socio-environmental challenges through both education and applied work. Joshua received the inaugural Communal Studies Association Research Fellowship to support his doctoral research in Celo Community and Earthaven Ecovillage in western North Carolina.
Etta Madden
Missouri State University
Disaffiliation from Damanhur: What’s New in Communal Dissatisfaction?
Abstract: In 2007, 32 years after the founding of the Federation of Damanhur in the Piedmont region of Italy in 1975, the spiritually-based eco-society community hosted the International Communal Studies Association (ICSA). Also notable the same year, the community saw an exodus of approximately 40 of the group’s members. Those dissatisfied to the point of departure included one of the ICSA conference organizers as well as a public relations leader for the Federation.
This presentation will recognize the stated reasons for disaffiliation and then connect these reasons to similar comments about other spiritual, communal groups such as the Shakers, the Amana Colony, and the Bruderhof. Finally, the presentation will conclude with speculations about the role of the Internet in fostering disaffiliation, similarly gesturing to the practices of disaffiliates from other communal groups. A goal of the presentation is gathering suggestions for further analysis, especially regarding the rhetorical and visual aspects of the blogs supporting and disparaging Damanhur.
Biography:
Etta Madden is Professor of English at Missouri State University. She is the co-editor of Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias and author of Bodies of Life: Shaker Literature and Literacies. She recently received a Fulbright Scholar Award to serve as Senior Lecturer in American Literature within the Dipartimento di Filologia Moderna, Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere at the University of Catania, Sicily, in February 2009.
Mary Lou Mayo
Kean University, Union, New Jersey
The Many Ways of Community: A Thirty-five Year Study of Transformation
Abstract: This paper examines a condominium association over a thirty-five year period, 1972-2007, and traces its evolution from a seasonal community of families with young children, to a more diversified year-round settlement of empty nesters, singles and divorced individuals. Social and economic forces of the larger society transform the community demographically, culturally and financially. As material and individualistic values pervade the association, a series of conflicts splinter the relationships, to the point that the community reflects the postmodern society in its fragmentation. Conclusions are drawn concerning the nature of community today along with lessons for collaborative housing arrangements.
Biography:
Mary Lou Mayo is Professor of Sociology at Kean University in New Jersey, where she previously chaired the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Her research interests and publications are in the area of family, gender roles, and community. Her most recent article on community (2008) was an entry in the Sage Encyclopedia of Social Problems on the sociological meaning of community in the context of social problems. She combines the academic study of community with teaching about it and with community service, by taking students from the New York area to work in southern West Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains.
Dan McKanan
Harvard Divinity School
Transforming Christianity: Ecumenism and Supersessionism in the Fourierist Movement
Abstract: Fourierism, the communal philosophy that spawned dozens of American “phalanxes” in the 1840s, is generally categorized as a “nonsectarian” communal movement, analogous to the slightly earlier Owenite movement. Yet most American Fourierists shared an ambitious religious agenda: to transform American Christianity in line with their “Associationist” beliefs. Association, declared Parke Godwin, was “a direct manifestation of the spirit of Christianity,” while an early supporter of Brook Farm praised it as an embodiment of “Christ’s Idea of Society.” In practice, this religious vision was fleshed out in two ways. At times, movement propagandists implied that Association was the truest form of Christianity, destined to supersede existing churches, while at other times they portrayed it as an ecumenical program that would eventually reconcile liberals and evangelicals, Catholics and Protestants. In this paper, I will explore the implications of these contrasting visions for actual religious practice in Fourierist communities, as well as the reasons for the Fourierists’ ultimate failure to transform the Christian religion of the larger society.
Biography:
Dan McKanan is the Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School. Educated at Harvard, Vanderbilt, and the University of Chicago, he taught theology at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University from 1998 to 2008, serving two years as undergraduate department chair. Dan is the author of Identifying the Image of God: Radical Christians and Nonviolent Power in the Antebellum United States (2002), Touching the World: Christian Communities Transforming Society (2007) and The Catholic Worker After Dorothy: Practicing the Works of Mercy in a New Generation (2008). He is currently writing a general history of the religious left in the United States.
Carol Medlicott
Northern Kentucky University
Personal Entitlement Versus Gospel Order: The War Pension Claims of an Early Shaker Elder
Abstract: Issachar Bates of eastern New York State converted to Shakerism in 1801, during the movement’s first generation of major expansion. Like other Shaker converts in this period, Bates had a past history of military service, a past that he had to renounce in order to embrace the Shaker precepts of strict pacifism and separation from American nationalist discourse. Exhibiting a talent and charisma suited for frontier evangelism, Bates was sent west as a missionary, where he was instrumental in establishing the many Shaker settlements of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. He remained a much-loved figure in the west, but evidence suggests that as he aged he proved divisive in the community. In 1832, in the midst of a leadership realignment at the Shaker village of Watervliet, Ohio, and against the express policy of the Eastern Shaker ministry, Bates went to the civil authorities in Ohio to apply for his Revolutionary War pension, involving other Shaker brothers in that process as his witnesses. This paper explores those actions in the context of the generational transition in leadership then underway in the Shaker West.
Biography:
Carol Medlicott is Assistant Professor of Geography in the Department of History and Geography. She received her Ph.D in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2003. Her research considers a range of topics in historical and cultural geography, including nationhood, memory, sacred spaces, and musical geographies. Her work has been published in several journals, including Gender, Place, and Culture, National Identities, Journal of Historical Geography, and Terrae Incognitae, as well as edited volumes. She recently began studying several aspects of the Shaker "west," including music of the Ohio and Indiana settlements and the impact of travel and transportation processes on Shaker identity.
Emily Mieras
Stetson University
Building Community: Cohousing, Space, and the Redefinition of Private Life
Abstract: Using site visits and interviews with cohousing residents in six different communities in Oregon and Washington, this paper shows how spatial organization in cohousing—from the common house to common gardens—redefines community relationships and responsibilities. The cohousing movement has grown rapidly in the United States since the early 1990s, and the uses of space in cohousing embody the movement’s ideological impulses—to build communities based on common values, to promote environmental sustainability, and to challenge the disconnectedness people experience in contemporary American society. Meanwhile, cohousing exemplifies a reformist approaches to the built environment that draws on the tradition of nineteenth-century utopian communities, Progressive Era material feminists and settlement house workers, and ‘60s-era communes. The spaces of cohousing embody the movement’s distinctive balance between community values and private life and ownership. The residents’ own use of space embodies the fluidity between public and private life that marks both the movement’s strength and its greatest challenge.
Biography:
Emily Mieras is Associate Professor of American Studies at Stetson University. Her teaching areas include gender studies, cultural history, and community studies. Her research also centers on concepts of community; she is completing a history of college students and voluntarism in the Progressive Era, and is embarking on a project studying contemporary efforts at community-building, from master-planned communities to cohousing. She received her Ph. D. in American Studies from the College of William and Mary and her A. B. from Harvard College.
Arthur “Mac” Miller
Professor Emeritus of Literature
New College of Florida
Abstract: The Ruskin Community in Florida: An Alternative to the Koreshan Universe
Late in the American 19th and early in the 20th centuries, a sequence of idealistic (highly challenged, finally unsuccessful in keeping alive) intentional communities were intended to embody the social and educational ideals of John Ruskin (d. 1900). Dr. Miller's slide-show and running commentary covers the founding and demise of Ruskinite communities in Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. The social experiment in Florida overlapped the time-period of Dr. Teed's Hollow-Earth community in Estero, Florida. Dr. Miller's search for links between the two utopian experiments does continue.
Biography:
McA. ("Mac") Miller is Professor Emeritus of Literature at New College of Florida in Sarasota. A.B. Princeton; M.A., Ph.D. Duke. Miller is the grandson of the president and founder of Ruskin College in Florida. Professor Miller, like his grandfather, eagerly embraced change when he joined the alternative college at its formation; now know as New College of Florida. The Florida town of Ruskin is among the American communities founded loosely on the principles of British social and art critic John Ruskin.
Timothy Miller
University of Kansas
"The More Things Stay the Same, the More They Change: Maturation and Transition in Intentional Communities"
Abstract: We often tend to think of intentional communities as static entities, each of them frozen at some idyllic point in its history. In fact, however, communities, like all other human organizations, are dynamic institutions. This presentation examines the changes that several representative communities and groups of communities–among them the Shakers, the Hutterites, the Mormons, and the Farm--have undergone, and reflects on the processes of change, and the factors that induce change.
Biography:
Timothy Miller is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. His publications include, American Communes, 1860-1960: A Bibliography (1990), The Hippies and American Values (1991), The Quest for Utopia in Twentieth-Century America (volume one, 1900-1960) (1998), and The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond (1999) He has served on the CSA board and received the association’s Distinguished Scholar Award in 1999.
Charles Nuckolls
Brigham Young University
Community Formation, Solidarity, and the Problem of Free-Riders
Abstract: Rational actors generally will not join a group to pursue common ends when, without participating, they can reap the benefits of other people's activity in obtaining them. This is the problem of free riders. Parsons' (1937) discussion of the "Hobbesian dilemma" reflects the fact that the social order is a common good constantly at risk of subverstion by the action of free riders. Intentional communties in the process of formation, therefore, must be attentive to the risk, and build into their community the various design features that eliminate, or at least limit, the problem of selfishness. The paper addresses this issue in light of the contemporary experience of two cohousing communities, one in Utah (the Wasatch Commons) and the other in New Zealand (Earthsong Ecovillage).
Biography:
Charles W. Nuckolls (Ph.D. University of Chicago) is Professor of Anthropology at Brigham Young University. He is a psychological anthropologist, and specializes in the cultures of South India, Japan, and New Zealand. His books include: Siblings in South Asia: Brothers and Sisters in Cultural Context (1993); The Cultural Dialectics of Knowledge and Desire; and Culture: A Problem that Cannot be Solved (1998). Recent articles include: "Boring Rituals," and "Archaeology, Mormonism, and the Claims of History."
Yaacov Oved
Yad Tabenkin. Israel
Abstract: Multicultural and Pluralistic Trends in Communities
The global spreading of communities in the second half of the twentieth century and their diversity created pluralistic trends as a characteristic feature. The establishment of the Fellowship for Intentional Communities and the adoption of the policy of inclusivity, turned the pluralistic trends into a policy of multiculturalism.
Simultaneously there occurred changes mainly in non-religious communities that adopted the multicultural approach in their internal social relationships. This attitude expressed itself in tolerance towards various ideals and concepts in matters of belief and politics.
The pluralistic and multicultural approach was caused among other things by the spreading of pragmatism and post modernism in the last decades of the twentieth century that were characterized by conceptual relativism. These two concepts denied the validity of absolute ideological truths and raised in the communities the aspiration towards a society within which authoritarian ideology would be avoided. These trends in non-religious communities raised the belief that people can unite to live communally and can establish a communal milieu that will bring the participants to create compromise and consensus in their daily life style while safeguarding their individual beliefs.
Bibliography:
Professor Yaacov Oved is Professor Emeritus, Department of History, at Tel Aviv University, Israel. He is cofounder of the International Communal Studies Association and head of the Department of Communal History at Yad Tabenkin. He has published works in English and Hebrew on American and global communal history. He has been a member of Kibbutz Palmachim since 1949. He received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Communal Studies Association in 2000.
Susan Palmer
Concordia University
The “Hollow Earth” in Quebec’s Mystical Geography” Sectes, Schisms and Symbols
Abstract: This paper explores various beliefs in and concepts of the “hollow earth” found in Quebec’s NRMs and schismatic “heretical” Catholic sectes. The meaning of this sacred symbol of a subterranean civilization is explored within the context of Quebec’s profound social changes – religious, linguistic, familial, ecological - since the 1960s. It is argued that the sectarian stance adopted by these innovative spiritual groups, and their allegiance ties to the Sovereignty (Quebec nationalist) movement, was in response to social change, and secularization in the Quiet Revolution, post Vatican II era. This study is based on field research (and on previous studies by Québecois scholars) of the following groups: l’Ordre du Temple Solaire, La Mission de l’Esprit Sainte, the Vortex of the Star of David, la Cité Écologique, Les Apôtres de l’Amour infini.
Biography:
Susan J. Palmer, Ph.D. is Professor of Religious Studies at Dawson College, and is a Research Associate and Lecturer at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. She specializes in the sociological study of new religious movements, and has received five research grants from the Social Sciences and the Humanities Research Council of Canada, and from other granting bodies. Palmer has authored four books on NRMs, notably Aliens Adored: Rael’s UFO Religion (2004); AIDS as an Apocalyptic Metaphor (1997); Moon Sisters, Krishna Mothers, Rajneesh Lovers: Women’s Roles in New Religions (1994). She has co-edited three volumes: Children in New Religions (1999), Millennium,Messiahs and Mayhem (1998) and The Rajneesh Papers (1993). Her next book, Black Gnosis, is forthcoming in 2009. She is currently working on The New Heretics of France which is based on a three year research project in France.
Lynn Rainard
CSA
Koreshan Transformations
With the passing of a leader the generally an important change takes place. However, when the community survives a half-century beyond such a significant event we need to recognize there there are multiple transformations that occurr due to maturation, ageing, new members and financial interests. This paper will exam the long and convoluted trail of Koreshan transformations starting with the time of Dr. Teed's death in 1908 and offering some speculations about events that continue to this day.
Biography: Lynn Rainard has spent the past four decades associated with the Koreshan Unity. He had the honor of knowing the last Koreshan, Vesta Newcomb, the last president of the Unity, Hedwig Michel and has worked in close association with the wonderful staff of the Koreshan State Historic Site. His efforts at understanding the belief system of Cyrus Teed and the organization and way of life of his followers continue to this day. He has served on the CSA board and chaired one conference and now co-chairs the second at Estero. His term as president of the CSA ends at the conclusion of the Estero conference.
Robin Riley
Robin Riley Productions and Northwestern College
Screening of the documentary Shalam on the Rio Grande
Abstract: This documentary tells the story of an obscure 19th century utopian community and its founding prophet, John B. Newbrough. Under the guidance of its founder and his 800-page new bible, Oahspe, a community of faithists organized and planned a pilgrimage to southern New Mexico where they would settle on 14-hundred acres of land called Shalam Colony. Shalam on the Rio Grande© is a story about a grand and captivating vision of a better world and the community’s failed attempt to forge a new social arrangement.
The film follows a historical timeline from the events precipitating John B. Newbrough’s revelations, his automatic writing of the monumental 800-page document, Oahspe, and his spreading of the message to believers who accepted its unique message. Beyond this, the film documents efforts by the founder to develop an advanced community in the southwestern desert of Mesilla Valley, New Mexico. It follows the various stages of growth from early developments through the pilgrimage and hardships encountered along the way, to the hazards of the southwest and its inhabitants. The film culminates with the sudden death of its prophet and the eventual collapse of the community.
Biography:
Shalam on the Rio Grande marks a milestone in Robin Riley's career; it is his first documentary film project. A college teacher of media and media production for the last 20 years, he wanted to step out of his traditional role as a researcher and become a filmmaker with special interest in spiritual topics. He has a Bachelor's degree in Theology from Walla Walla College, a Masters of Divinity from the American Baptist Seminary of the West and a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Utah. He is ordained in the American Baptist tradition and has pastored two churches. Riley has traveled extensively and lived in a Kibbutz in Israel for nearly two years. His study of Shalam Colony and its founder, John B. Newbrough, have provided him with useful insights into the time-worn human struggle to make the world a better place and assisted him in his personal faith journey.
Marc Rhorer
Florida Atlantic University
Region, Politics, and Customs in Shaker Foodways
Abstract: Social aspects of food, and the symbolic rituals connected to eating are representative indicators of cultural practices of everyday life. Besides the food itself, foodways encompass a wide variety including distribution, cooking methods, cooking tools, patterns of consumption, symbolism, and ideology. Since large communal Shaker families required extensive gastronomic operations, foodways provide very important insights into an everyday cultural discourse that is often overlooked. This analysis highlights significant regional variations in 19th century American foodways, and how those differences impacted Shakerism. In particular, dissimilarities between the gastronomic ways of the South and New England will be emphasized. Additionally, the Shaker politics of food are examined, along with tension and disagreement created from Shaker food policies. Dining rituals and customs of 19th century Shakers will also be illustrated.
Biography:
Marc Rhorer earned his Master of Arts from the University of Kentucky and his Ph.D. from Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, FL. Marc has a variety of research interests. Though quite interdisciplinary, his two major areas of scholarly inquiry are mass media and cultural studies (emphasizing film) and the study of religious and communal groups (especially the Shakers). He is currently the Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at the Florida Atlantic University College of Business, where he also teaches courses in cultural studies, sociology, and the motion picture industry.
Donald K. Routh
Professor Emeritus, University of Miami
“Dr. Cyrus R. Teed: New Thought Physician and Mental Cure Healer”
Abstract: Prior to the emergence of psychoanalysis and other modern varieties of psychotherapy there appeared an approach to healing known as the “mental science,” or “mind-cure” movement. That approach was more religious than secular as it attempted to alleviate many health problems, not just mental disorders. Religious figures in the Christian tradition from Jesus to Mary Baker Eddy have often related spiritual issues to physical healing. Dr. Cyrus R. Teed, a late-19 th century physician, self-styled “Messiah of the New Age,” and leader of the Koreshan Unity communitarians helped pioneer and popularize this national movement during his eventful years in Chicago. As one who styled himself a physician and prophet, Teed promoted a spiritual approach grounded in the belief that God reposed within each human’s mind, producing healing forces greater than the mind’s own “interposing veil.” By the turn of the century, the mind cure movement had become a major tenet of a larger movement generally termed “New Thought,” which incorporated a host of ideas professing healing and self-improvement through positive thought.
Biography:
Donald K. Routh is Professor Emeritus of psychology, University of Miami. He is the past editor of four prominent national journals and the author of numerous books and scholarly articles. He is highly regarded in his field and a name of national recognition. Dr. Routh is currently pursuing graduate work in history.
Denise Seachrist
Kent State University
Abstract: The Last Baptism at Snow Hill
Snow Hill was a nineteenth-century attempt to continue the mysticism of the communal lifestyle practiced at Conrad Beissel’s Ephrata Cloister. This paper compares and contrasts a baptismal account by Elder Samuel Davison, a member of the Seventh Day Baptists of New Jersey, who witnessed the baptism at Snow Hill in 1847, with that of the last baptism there witnessed by the author of this paper almost 150 years later. On July 27, 1996, some sixty members representing the country’s then two remaining German Seventh-Day Baptist congregations (Snow Hill in Quincy, Pennsylvania and Salemville, Pennsylvania) assembled at Snow Hill to witness three men, with family connections to Ephrata and Snow Hill, attest to their religious convictions through the ritual of baptism. What marked the occasion was the perception that instead of representing a new beginning, typically associated with the baptismal rite, this event was more a tribute to the past, a memory of what once had been.
Biography:
Denise A. Seachrist is Associate Professor and Interim Director of the Hugh A. Glauser School of Music at Kent State University. Her interest is in the musics of both historical and living German religious communities in Pennsylvania, and her dissertation, “Snow Hill and the German Seventh-Day Baptists: Heirs to the Musical Traditions of Conrad Beissel’s Ephrata Cloister” has created much interest among scholars in the areas of communal studies and utopian communities. She is the author of The Musical World of Halim El-Dabh.
Michelle Smith
Pennsylvania State University
Abstract: Negotiating Space and Difference: Gertrude Rapp’s Silk Letters
Grand-daughter of George Rapp, founder of the Harmony Society, Gertrude Rapp became famous for initiating and directing the Harmony Society’s silk manufacturing business from 1827 to the 1850’s. Those few scholars who have unearthed the story of Gertrude Rapp have yet to examine what enabled her to take on this unique role of amateur scientist/businesswoman, much less what might have contributed to the American public’s acceptance of this unlikely entrepreneur. My larger project attempts an initial response to these questions, drawing from “The Silk Letter Book,” the collection of outgoing correspondence on the topic housed in the Harmony Society archives at Old Economy, Pennsylvania. In this particular presentation, I focus on the spatial element of Miss Rapp’s story: how her inability to travel to silk fairs and exhibitions and communication with other silk growers by mail both facilitated and limited her participation in the “silk cause.”
Biography:
Michelle Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department at Penn State University. She is working on her dissertation on the subject of women’s representations of utopian spaces in 19 th century America. Her concentration is in Rhetoric and Composition, and her other main academic interests are feminist and women’s rhetorics, spatial theory, writing center scholarship, rhetorical theory, and publics theory.
Stephen Taysom
Franklin College, IN
Abstract: “We are glad the time is come to go; we have looked for it for years”: The 1845 Fall of Nauvoo, Illinois, and the Recasting of Mormon Collective Memory
When the Mormons settled Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1839 under the leadership of Joseph Smith, they sought to create a permanent stronghold where they would be safe from the persecutions that had driven them from one Missouri county to another from 1833-1839. For several years, the Mormons found great success in Nauvoo. In 1844, Smith was murdered and the next year the Mormons were forced to agree to leave their city by 1846. One intriguing response to the traumatic loss of their city involved the “re-remembering” in Mormon rhetoric of earlier expectations. Beginning in October 1845, the Mormons were forced to make sense of the new reality that in order to survive as a church, Nauvoo would have to be abandoned. This paper focuses particular attention on the LDS Church’s general conference of October 1845, in which this rhetoric of re-remembering took shape. In the pre-1845 Mormon consciousness, even after Smith’s death, Nauvoo was understood to be a permanent settlement that God would never allow to be taken from his chosen saints. When the Mormons realized that Nauvoo would be lost, they recast their collective memory of the earlier period and argued that they, following the lead of Joseph Smith, had always viewed Nauvoo as a temporary resting place. The fall 1845 conference represents a watershed moment in Mormon history, although it has received very little attention from scholars. During the conference the leadership of the LDS church engaged in a performance that would modify the group’s collective memory regarding the entire purpose of the Nauvoo experiment and of long-held notions about the nature of physical boundaries in general. In a powerful set of discourses lasting three days, Mormon apostles offered a new narrative in the guise of long-held beliefs. A comparison of the rhetoric before and after October 1845 illustrates the ways in which Mormon collective memory evolved to absorb the trauma of failed expectations.
Biography:
Stephen C. Taysom earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Indiana University, Bloomington, in Religious Studies. His dissertation, written under Stephen J. Stein, is a comparative study of nineteenth-century Mormon and Shaker boundary maintenance strategies and is currently being considered for publication by Indiana University Press. He has published and presented research on Shaker and Mormon topics in a variety of venues. Taysom currently teaches comparative religion at Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana.
Barbara Walden
Kirtland Temple
Abstract: RLDS Reunions at Kirkland Temple: 20 th Century Attempts to Recapture Early Mormon Communal Living
As early as 1911, members of the RLDS Church (today known as Community of Christ) began gathering to Kirtland, Ohio for summer reunions. These annual gatherings typically lasted one week in length and included church members from Ohio and the surrounding states of Pennsylvania, New York, and West Virginia. Known as “tent city” by the locals, hundreds of people decorated the temple grounds with canvas tents in a contemporary attempt to live all things in common. Daily activities included classes, worship services, community meals, recreational activities, and evening revivals as campers gathered around the campfire. In 1959, the annual communal gatherings were moved to “Temple Grove” campground in western Pennsylvania. These family camps continue to provide Community of Christ members a taste of life in gathered community. The presentation will include a number of photographs from the early reunions presented in a power point format.
Biography:
Barbara Walden received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Graceland University and a Master of Arts in History Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program, State University of New York at Oneonta. Her museum experience includes work at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Women’s Rights National Historical Park, and Liberty Hall Historic Site. Barbara currently holds the position of Historic Site Director at the Kirtland Temple.
Glendyne Wergland
Independent Scholar
Abstract: The Use and Abuse of Spirit Messages during the Shaker Era of Manifestations: “A hard time of it in this hurrycane of gifts, to know what is revelation and what is not”
During the Era of Manifestations, several New Lebanon, New York visionists used spirit communications to expel their peers. Mother Ann Lee had set the precedent for such expulsions during her leadership of the society from 1780 to 1784, but later leaders used more mundane means of enforcing discipline until 1841, when an outbreak of spirit manifestations enabled visionists to use spirit messages to pursue personal agendas. This talk focuses on the cases of Olive Gates and Sally Dean, exiled in 1840 and 1841, and the group dynamics of exclusion.
Biography:
Glendyne Wergland grew up in the Southwest and spent her twenties as a trailing spouse who moved nine times in eight years. After they settled in Massachusetts, she “met” the Shakers at Hancock Shaker Village. Returning to school at age forty, she pursued that interest at Mount Holyoke College, before pursuing her PhD. Her first book, One Shaker Life: Isaac Newton Youngs, 1793-1865, won the Communal Studies Association’s Outstanding Publication Award in 2006. In 2007, Hamilton College’s Couper Press published her second book, Visiting the Shakers. She is currently trying to finish a book about Shaker sisters. Now an independent scholar, she and her recently-retired husband Gerry (and their dogs) live in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts.
Joe White
University of Pittsburgh
England Learns of the Harmonists, 1812-1820
Abstract: Even ill-informed students of communal societies in l9th century America know that Robert Owen purchased the entire town of Harmony, Indiana, from George Rapp and his associates in l825. But how and when did news of the Harmonists first reach Britain? How did the Harmonists come to the attention of Owen, Lord Byron and many others? How full and accurate the information they were receiving?
To what use (or misuse) was news of the Harmonists put during what has been called the "heroic age of English radicalism?" Oddly, these questions have been pursued neither in the context of the history of American communal societies nor in the context of the history of English radicalism. In this paper some first steps to make good this deficiency will be attempted.
Biography:
Joe White teaches history the University of Pittsburgh. He has presented papers at several CSA conferences, one of which, "Harmony in History and Memory, 1805-2005," was published in Communal Societies (2006).
Brad Whitsel
Pennsylvania State University-Fayette Campus
Marie Ogden and Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Perspectives on Two Leaders of Disaster-Focused Communities
Abstract: Attention is devoted in this paper to the ideas of both Marie Ogden, leader of the Depression-era Home of Truth communal settlement in southeastern Utah and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, past leader of the Church Universal and Triumphant. Both Ogden and Prophet created separatist communities consistent with their own views about the outside world. Particular focus is given to the perspectives and beliefs of Ogden and Prophet on impending crisis, as well as to their ideas for group renewal.
Biography:
Brad Whitsel is an associate professor at the Pennsylvania State University-Fayette Campus. His research interests include millenarianism and religion and politics. In addition to his journal articles in these areas, he is author of The Church Universal and Triumphant: Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Apocalyptic Movement (2003).
Irvin D. S. Winsboro
Florida Gulf Coast University
“The Origins of Dr. Cyrus R. Teed’s National Following: Chicago and the Mental Science National Association”
Abstract: Teed had initially traveled to Chicago in September 1886 to address the Mental Science National Association Convention. By later reports, Teed so impressed the attendees of the week-long convention (held at the Church of the Redeemer on Washington Boulevard) that he thereafter decided that Chicago would provide the most fertile proselytizing ground for his wide-ranging beliefs in mental science and utopianism. The Koreshans have maintained that Teed conducted mental healing on a number of prominent Chicago residents participating in the meeting—for example, Mrs. Evelyn Bubbett and Mrs. Belle Orme—with “astonishing results” but there is little evidence to substantiate this. Even so, these events marked the origin of Teed’s national following in both mental science and Koreshan utopianism.
Biography: Dr. Irvin D. S. Winsboro is full professor of history at Florida Gulf Coast University and former professor of history at the University of South Florida, Fort Myers. He has published six books, seven book chapters, and over fifty scholarly articles. His area of focus is social/cultural history.
