Please note that there has been a slight schedule change related to the due date for your next benchmark assignment, the outline of your paper.

There is no change in the assigned reading for this Wednesday, however. You should read the assigned primary sources about Oneida, and then leave a comment on this post. I’d like for you either to reflect on how these sources might be used as evidence for or against one of the arguments we’ve considered about utopias this semester, or to discuss some new question that the sources generated for you.

This Wednesday we will be discussing Tracy K’Meyer’s book on Koinonia Farm. If you want to see some images of the central players, check out this brief trailer on YouTube:

There is also an audio talk by Clarence Jordan from 1956 on YouTube.

As with our September 24 questions, you can comment on the book as you’d like, so long as you comment as an historian would, connecting the reading to our previous readings and discussions. For example, was the community successful, on its own terms and/or on the terms of other scholars we’ve read? In what ways was Koinonia similar to the society it critiqued? How did its relationships with the outside world, or disagreements within, impact Koinonia?

Looking forward to hearing what you think!

Be sure that you scroll down and read the post on the Two Topics Memo, and don’t forget to submit that by email and bring a copy with you to class on Wednesday.

In addition to discussing these memos, we will also be talking about the assigned readings from Kanter. Please write a comment on this post about these readings. You may choose to discuss ways the readings might relate to the topics you are considering for your paper, or you can respond to one of the following questions:

1. Do you agree with the way that Kanter defines a "successful" community? What counts, for her, as success? Why select this criterion or these criteria?
2. Are "commitment mechanisms" a good way to measure success even on Kanter’s own terms?
3. Underlying Kanter’s work is the assumption that internal dynamics affect a community more than external ones: do our past readings on other communities confirm that assumption or challenge it?
4. Do we get a clearer view from these pages of what makes Kanter’s a "sociological perspective" on communes rather than an exclusively historical one? Point specifically to the things that you think distinguish her work from, say, Brundage’s, Foster’s, or Turner’s.

See you on Wednesday!

This week’s readings take slightly opposing positions on the gender ideals of two utopian communities: Oneida and The Farm. Now that you’ve spent several weeks talking and responding to my questions, I’d like to give you the opportunity to comment broadly on these readings, but I do want you to make a concerted effort to evaluate the articles and evidence as an historian would. That means, for example, judging the gendered organization of work in these communities in relation to the societies of which they were a part, rather than in relation to your own beliefs (shaped by our contemporary moment) about what is "normal" and what is "weird." When possible, I’d also like you to take a clear position on the issues at stake in these articles; which author(s) more closely represent(s) your own view of the evidence, and why?

You can also make sure your comment is historical by thinking about these readings in terms of some of the overarching questions we’ve discussed this semester, such as whether there is a continuous tradition of utopian communalism in American history, and whether and why utopian radicals are worth studying.

So, in short, this is an open comment thread, but it’s an open comment thread for working historians: engage with the readings as historians and then let us know what’s on your mind.

Next week, we’ll be discussing Fitzhugh Brundage’s book, A Socialist Utopia in the New South. I’ve posted some reading tips that may be useful to you.

By noon before class, you should also write a comment on this post that answers one of the following questions:

1. Like other communes we’ve considered, the Ruskin colony was a small group that represented a "marginal" group of radicals. How would Brundage answer a reader who asks, "So what? Why should we study this group?" Does his answer hinge on their influence, or on some other reason?
2. In our last class, Becca raised the question of whether communalists still betrayed parts of the "American dream." A slightly different version of that question is often raised in discussions of the history of socialism; cholars were once impressed by the fact that there seemed to be less socialism in the United States than in other countries. Does Brundage’s account of Ruskin offer some explanation for "why there is no (or little) socialism in America?"
3. You might also consider a related question of why socialism has come to be seen by so many people today as un-American. Does the Ruskin colony complicate that notion? Does its experience explain why the notion retains power?
4. Last week’s readings from Kanter distinguished between communes that had "weak" boundaries and communes that had "strong" ones. Which kind was Ruskin, and why? Do the attributes that Kanter attributes to communities in the weak/strong category apply to Ruskin?
5. What did "socialism" mean for the Ruskinites?

While your comment should focus on one of these questions, please work to consider all of them as you read. You are responsible for being able to comment specifically and in an informed way on the entire book, not just the part you choose to write about.

Before next class, remember that you should do some exploring online and in the library catalog about communities or topics that may interest you for your research topic.

You should also complete the readings for September 10 and then write a comment on this post that responds to ONE of the following questions:

1. Based on the pages you read from Kanter, how much influence did nineteenth-century communes have on twentieth-century communes? If there influence was slight, why was this the case?
2. Kanter writes that "American communes have not done much to change the society at large" (p. 225). What are her reasons for making this claim, and do you agree with her based on the other readings you’ve done so far?
3. In contrast to Kanter’s claim above, Fred Turner and Donald Pitzer believe that utopian communities have been influential, yet their arguments for the kind of influence communes had are different. Is one of these articles more persuasive than the other, and if so, why?

Remember the tips shared in class yesterday about how to ensure that WordPress recognizes paragraph breaks in your comments: be sure to put a blank line between each paragraph.

See you next week!

Before coming to the next seminar, please complete the readings for September 3, and then add a comment to this post that responds to ONE of the following questions:

1. The people introduced in these readings are strikingly different in many ways and lived in diverse places and time periods. Is there any thing that their communal experiments seem to have in common?
2. In our last class, we considered what a future historian might learn about American life in 2014 by studying our plan for a utopian university. Select two of the communities you read about for this week and write a comment that reflects on the same question: what can we learn about the broader culture that produced these communities by noticing what they did (or did not do) in their utopias?
3. A perennial question for historians of American radicals and reformers is whether a tradition of American radicalism exists across time. One of the Drop City interviewees spoke for many communalists when he said, "Whatever we were doing, we thought we were inventing it for the first time ever." But other historians have claimed that twentieth- and twenty-first-century utopian communities often recapitulate earlier themes. Do these readings provide any evidence to support one of these two positions?
4. Rosabeth Moss Kanter draws a distinction in her book between "religious" communities, "politico-economic" utopias, and "psychosocial" utopias. What characteristics does she ascribe to each, and do these distinctions hold up when applied to specific communities introduced to you in the other readings?

Whenever possible, try to point to specific examples and passages from the readings to support your points. As mentioned in class and on the syllabus, the comments only need to be about 300 to 500 words long. This post itself is about 300 words, so that should help give you an idea about length.

Your comments are due by noon on September 3. Remember that you can use your first name only or a pseudonym if you don’t wish to identify yourself, as long as I know your identity.