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. ...

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....