Utopian, Intentional Communities
Timothy Miller on Communes in America, 1975-2000
For anyone interested in alternative communities in the US, Tim Miller's book on the last quarter of the 20th century is a thorough and accessible...
Traveling to Trappist Monasteries: An Interview with Paul Green
Tina Moore, at one of many campfires she and Paul Green shared during their journey What if your partner or spouse...
Silence is Spoken Here: Spiritual Journeys & Later Vocations
Last week I talked with friends Paul Green and Tina Moore about their experiences traveling to 17 Trappist Monasteries scattered across the US. Through this...
Alternative Spiritual Formation in the Italian Piedmont & Tuscany
Soon after I announced this summer 2018 spiritual formation trip, a full slate of travelers had signed up. (A "full slate" means small--a half-dozen or...
Mark Sundeen, The Unsettlers & The Good Life
Mark Sundeen's book, The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today's America Mark Sundeen's The Unsettlers: In Search of the...
Constance Fenimore Woolson and Zoar
Constance Fenimore Woolson Linking “utopian” communal groups and American women writers in Italy, I spoke last weekend on Constance Fenimore Woolson...
An American Woman in 19th-Century Palestine
Occasionally I read a not-recently-published book that moves me so that I wonder how I missed it when it first appeared. ...
Vida Dutton Scudder, Christian Socialist for Several Generations
Yesterday my son, just returned from grad school, told me he's writing an essay on Vida Dutton Scudder. Before stating her name, he hesitated. Why...
Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias
Drawing from our interests in utopian communities and religious history, my co-editor Martha Finch and I highlight in Eating in Eden (U Nebraska 2006) American food...
Bodies of Life: Shaker Literature and Literacies
In Bodies of Life: Shaker Literature and Literacies, I examine the roles of reading and writing in the celibate, religious communities known popularly as Shaker villages....