Communal Studies Association, 2010 New Harmony, Indiana ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Stephen C. Taysom earned a PhD in Religious Studies from Indiana University in 2006. He is currently anAssistant Professor of Religious Studies at Cleveland State University. His first book, Shakers, Mormons, andReligious Worlds: Conflicting Visions, Contested Boundaries will be published by Indiana University Press thisfall. Also due this fall, is a collection edited by Taysom entitled Dimensions of Faith: A Mormon Studies Reader.He lives with his wife and three children, appropriately enough, in Shaker Heights, Ohio.“The Architecture of Family Among the Whitewater Shakers”Lindy Cummings, Miami UniversityIn building their communities throughout the east and Midwest, the Shakers relied upon the language of familyto cement the bonds between the Believers. While becoming a Shaker was constituted upon the premise ofrejecting one‘s biological kin, the Shakers continued to rely upon natural kinship connections for leadership andmembership among the various communities. The role of the family in Shaker villages remains one of thehidden aspects of establishing what Jonathan Andelson calls an ―intentional community.‖ This presentation,which is part of a larger study on the role of biological family among the Whitewater Shakers, traces thetransformation of natural kinship ties into a religious community designed to replace the biological family with aspiritual family. While the Shakers were successful in using the language of family to build their communities,Whitewater believers enhanced rather than diminished the relationship between and reliance upon naturalkinship. The architecture of family opens new avenues of exploration into the process of Shaker communityformation and persistence.Lindy Cummings is a graduate of Indiana University and holds a MA in Gender and Comparative Women‘sHistory from Miami University. Her thesis, ―‘A promising little society‘: Kinship and Community Among theWhitewater Shakers, 1820-1850,‖ examines the role of biological kinship ties in the development of theWhitewater Shaker Community in southwest Ohio.“Women to the Fore: Utopian and Dystopian Novels of the Nineteenth Century Woman‟s RightsMovement”Wendy E. Chmielewski, Swarthmore CollegeFrom the middle of the nineteenth century (and the birth of the woman‘s rights movement) through the first twodecades of the twentieth century, many fictional works were published about anticipated social changes ifwomen were to gain full political rights. These plays and novels reflected the fears and hopes of a new world inwhich women would have a larger role in public affairs. From Lucy Boston or Woman‟s Rights and Spiritualismby Fred Folio (1855) to The Co-Citizens by Cora Harris (1915), some of these works were satires predicting adystopian world if woman‘s rights were enacted; while other novels and plays promised a utopia when womengained the power to ―clean up‖ government and society. Some of these works have been examined byhistorians of the woman‘s rights movement, but have been largely ignored by scholars of utopian thought andintentional communities.Better known utopian fictional works such as Edward Bellamy‘s Looking Backward, while portraying women withgreater social and political roles, only briefly mention or portray the exact nature of what such gender changeswould mean in the larger society. Works on all-female or egalitarian societies such as Charlotte PerkinsGilman‘s Herland, Mary Bradley Lane‘s Mizora, and Alice Ilgenfritz Jones‘ and Ella Merchant‘s Unveiling aParallel; A Romance, have been more fully treated by scholars. However, there is a significant literature oflesser known works still to be considered. This paper will examine the historical and political contextualchanges in nineteenth and early twentieth century gender roles, with the dystopian and utopian societiescreated in the following literary works: Lucy Boston or Woman‟s Rights and Spiritualism by Fred Folio (1855);The Spirit of ‟76; or the Coming Woman, A Prophetic Drama, by Ariana and Daniel Curtis (1868); A Woman ForMayor by Helen M. Winslow (1909); A Suffragette Town Meeting by Lilian Clisby Bridgham (1912); Ruled BySuffragettes, by E. Fruend (1914); and The Co-Citizens, by Corra Harris (1915).Wendy E. Chmielewski is George Cooley Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. She is the coeditorof Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (University of Illinois Press, 2009) and Women inSpiritual and Communitarian Societies in the United States (Syracuse University Press, 1993). She is former26
president of the Peace History Society and a former board member of the Communal Studies Association.Chmielewski's current research project is "Her Hat Was In the Ring: U. S. Women Who Ran For Public OfficeBefore 1920."Session 5-DTeaching Utopianism and Communalism(Working Men‟s Institute)“Strategies and Resources for Teaching Utopianism and Communalism”Michael William Doyle, Ball State UniversityIn this presentation Michael will address strategies for resolving dual tensions in structuring an upper-levelcollege course on American communal utopias. These include 1) emphasizing literary representations vs.historical communitarian experiments; 2) balancing coverage of eutopias vs. dystopias; and 3) assigningsecondary vs. primary sources. He will also discuss how to create writing assignments that culminate in firstperson,living history debates using the examples of the role of religion and morality in George Rapp‘s HarmonySociety vs. Robert Owen‘s New Harmony, and sexuality and family in John Humphrey Noyes‘s OneidaCommunity; as well as which imaginary utopias are more ―successful‖ (assessed by means of categoricalcriteria): Bellamy‘s Looking Backward vs. Perkins Gilman‘s Herland, and Skinner‘s Walden Two vs.Callenbach‘s Ecotopia. Finally, Michael will examine the efficacy of pre- and post-course in-class exercises bywhich students design their own utopia.Michael Wm. Doyle is associate professor at Ball State University, where he teaches courses in U.S. history andAmerican Studies. In addition, he serves as director of the department‘s Public History Program. Doyle earnedhis B.A. in history with honors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his Master‘s and Doctoral degreesfrom Cornell University. He is co-editor and contributor to Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the1960s and „70s and has produced or served as a consultant to several documentary films and oral historyprojects. He is currently working to establish a Digital History Education Laboratory at Ball State.“Shyamalan‟s The Village as a Paradigm for Teaching Utopian and Fundamentalist Boundaries”Steve Watkins, University of LouisvilleThis paper proposes a useful tool in teaching the social dynamics employed by utopian and fundamentalistsubcultures. One of the central features in both utopian and religious fundamentalist culture, is the maintenanceof boundaries in order to demarcate the ―ideal‖ community from the tainted ―world of corruption.‖ There arenumerous ways in which utopian and fundamentalist communities seek to keep corruption at bay while alsopromoting purity within. This paper documents the helpful role that media can play in helping students to graspthe complexities of how utopian and fundamentalist religious communities function. M. Night Shyamalan‘s TheVillage provides a visual frame-of-reference that aligns scholarly contours of idyllic communities with the harsherrealities faced by any group of people living in close proximity with one another. Also included in my research isan appraisal of the commonalties in ideological and religious utopian communities. The paper concludes withpedagogical suggestions that help students grasp some of the more complicated aspects of scholarly study.Steve Watkins is Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at Northern Kentucky University (since September,2008). He is in his third year of study as a Ph.D. student at the University of Louisville (Humanities). In summer2010, Steve taught two courses in Athens, Greece through the Kentucky Institute of International Studies. Hehas presented papers at the Kentucky Philological Association, Phi Alpha Theta National Biennial HistoryConference, Northern Kentucky University Military History Lecture, and the American Academy of ReligionSoutheast Conference for the Study of Religion.27
Page 3: Lucy Jayne Kamau is Professor Emeri
Page 6 and 7: Conflicting Worlds: Political and T
Page 9 and 10: “Drop City and Buckminster Fuller
Page 11 and 12: Film screening, “Utopia on the Ri
Page 13 and 14: “Enter Like A Lover - thoughts on
Page 15 and 16: Historical Association/Communal Stu
Page 17 and 18: connection, it is not generally kno
Page 19 and 20: An Insider‟s Look. She is a regul
Page 21 and 22: to Congress in 1825 set him apart f
Page 23 and 24: “The Local Food Movement and Comm
Page 25: sought to promote his own phalanx a
Page 29 and 30: appropriated themes, concepts, and
Page 31 and 32: This panel will provide a scholarly
Page 33 and 34: Session 6-DShaker and Harmonist Tec
Page 35 and 36: interested in the ethics of reconst

Communal Studies Association, 2010 New Harmony, Indiana ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?