Sunday, October 23, 2005
How viable is communalism as a way of life?
 Susan Love Brown, professor of anthropology at Florida Atlantic University, will discuss what we can learn from the study of intentional communities as part of the Center for Communal Studies Lecture Series at 2 p.m. Thursday, November 3, in Mitchell Auditorium in the Health Professions Center.Her lecture is entitled “The Limits of Communalism: What We Can Learn from the Study of Intentional Communities.” Brown is conducting a research project on what factors allow some intentional communities to remain communalistic and others not. “I’ll be talking about the history of intentional communities in the U.S., with examples of some that were communalistic but became other types of communities, and what implication this has for communalism as an ideology in general,” she said. She will offer examples of historic communities such as the Amana Colonies, as well as contemporary ones such as Twin Oaks, The Farm, and the Jesus People USA. “I’m going to be talking generally about communalism and intentional community and what it can teach us,” she said. Brown is a political and psychological anthropologist with a specialization in intentional community and interest in gender, ethnicity, and the study of the origins of ideology. She has a special interest in American individualist anarchism and its founder, Josiah Warren, who was a communitarian who lived in Owenite New Harmony during the 1820s. Brown also will address a Communal Utopias in America class taught by Donald Pitzer, professor of history, at 10 a.m. Friday, November 4, in Room 1004 in the Liberal Arts Center. She will discuss Ananda Village, a New Age yogic community with colonies in northern California, Oregon, and Washington state. She has done fieldwork at Ananda and also in the Bahamas. Both lectures are free and open to the public. Brown received her bachelor’s degree in English literature from the Regents Degree Program of the University of the State of New York, her master’s degree in anthropology from San Diego State University, and her doctoral degree from the University of California at San Diego. She is the editor of Intentional Community: An Anthropological Perspective, a book that applies anthropological theory to the study of intentional communities. She is a member of the board of directors of the Communal Studies Association, served as program chair of the 2005 Communal Studies Association Conference in the historic Harmonist towns of Harmony and Old Economy, Pennsylvania. She is co-chair of the 2008 Communal Studies Association Conference in Estero, Florida. For more information, contact Pitzer in USI’s Center for Communal Studies at 812/464-1727 or 812/465-1656. |
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