Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Value In Imperfect Endeavors: Exploring Postcapitalist And Prefigurative Practices At East Wind Intentional Community, Olivia Chandler 23

Student Scholarship

From the emergence of modern capitalism, people have searched for alternatives through building communal societies. The 1960s hippie movement in the United States inspired a surge of communal living, centered around non-violence and living in balance with the environment. The East Wind Intentional Community, an income-sharing egalitarian commune in Missouri, was born of this movement and still exists today, as people continuously look for ways to escape the “rat race” of mainstream society, 9-5 jobs, and economic insecurity arising from a globalized and neoliberal economic system. My research, grounded in interviews and participant observation, focuses on East Wind’s relationship with …

“Cocaine, Girls, And Bebidas:” A View Of Colombia Through The Lens Of American Foreign Policy And Popular Media, Nicole Ramirez '23, Katelyn Perruc '23

Student Scholarship

From the big screen to one’s living room, popular media has the power to influence how people in the 21st century perceive history, politics, and culture. With Colombia as one of the US’s closest allies in Latin America, this project examines the representation of Colombia and its people by American-made media through a two-step process. The first step analyzes four US presidential administrations and their corresponding foreign policy. The second step dissects a sample group of 16 films and television series on Colombia to correlate foreign policy with the evolving US-Colombian relationship and unveil further themes and methods that give …

Unpacking The Imposed: The Colonial Binary, Hijras, And The Queering Of India, Eric Cortes-Kopp '22

Student Scholarship

Most scholarship concerning hijras and other queer groups in India are limited to the late 1990s and early 2000s. Originally, my project sought to rely on primary source materials mainly from the National Archive located in New Delhi. I requested that some key documents be digitized prior to the second Indian lockdown early in the summer. Therefore, my project became more of an historiographical project, relying on two main monographs, several scholarly articles, and interviews with leading scholars of hijras. Three main sections comprise this work: précis of the two main monographs that have been published to date on hijras, …

Shaking The Faith At Twenty-Five: Reflections On Shaker Research In The Digital Age, Elizabeth Dewolfe

American Communal Societies Quarterly

Starting my dissertation research today with the abundance of online resources would no doubt save time and money, and there are few humanities grad students out there who couldn’t use more of both. I could have so much at my fingertips that I could more quickly determine if I had a project worth doing and could see the scholarly gaps into which my work could fit. With digitization, we can research more deeply, recover more voices, and tell more stories.

But the bounty of the digital age comes with cautions. An online search does not eliminate the necessity to look …

Elwin E. Damkohler’S Account Of The Koreshan Unity

American Communal Societies Quarterly

Lyn Millner’s excellent history of the Koreshan Unity, The Allure of Immortality: An American Cult, a Florida Swamp, and a Renegade Prophet, made use of many heretofore inaccessible primary sources about the Koreshans. One of these was Elwin E. Damkohler’s scarce pamphlet Estero, Fla., 1882: Memoirs of the First Settler (Fort Myers Beach, Florida: Island Press, 1967). As Millner recounts, Elwin and his father Gustave were convinced by Teed and the Koreshans to legally sign the title to their lands over to the community. This reprint is Elwin’s bitter memories of the Koreshans, excerpted here from his extremely rare …

The Harvard Shakers’ Mill On Bennett’S Brook, Ned Quist

American Communal Societies Quarterly

Built in by the Church Family in 1806 as a grist mill, the mill on Bennett’s Brook and its associated buildings supported the Harvard Shaker community’s industrial efforts for over one hundred years, almost until the community’s closing in 1918. The mill buildings no longer stand, and all that remains are the foundation structures, a reconstructed dam, and a magnificent granite tailrace. Fortunately, the mill buildings were photographed by a number of amateur and professional photographers and over a dozen images survive from the 1890s through 1925. Surviving documentary evidence about the mill and what went on inside it comes …

The Commonwealth Of Massachusetts Vs. The Harvard Shakers, Cynthia Barton

American Communal Societies Quarterly

In the spring of April, 1826, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts concluded court proceedings against Elder John Warner and others of Harvard’s Shakers. The trial took place in Worcester and had been continued from the previous fall. According to a local newspaper, the head men of the Society were indicted and charged with "having falsely imprisoned one Seth Babbit, from the year 1823 to the finding of the indictment, and with having, at sundry times during that period, violently assaulted and beaten him."

Testimony at the trial made it clear that the Shakers were taking care of one of their own …

The South Family Of The Hancock Shakers, Circa 1818–1849, Stephen J. Paterwic

American Communal Societies Quarterly

On July 17, 2021, Hancock Shaker Village will open the site of the former South Family to visitors for the first time in the museum’s history. Historian of Shakerism Stephen J. Paterwic, a member of the museum’s Collections Committee, was asked to research this little studied Shaker family. The results of his efforts will be used by Hancock Shaker Village staff to interpret the site, they are published in full below.

Hyperpop: How Streaming Services Create And Control Genre Through Curation, Anthony Christiana '22

Student Scholarship

In the past two years, the “microgenre” hyperpop has garnered a cult internet following as well as the attention of journalists and skeptics who seek to contextualize the genre in a variety of ways. Hyperpop is an offshoot of pop; it is best understood as an exaggeration of mainstream pop tropes. But, beyond just defining what hyperpop is through song analysis and genre theory, this paper seeks to center hyperpop in the study of how genre exists in contemporary culture. Specifically, I draw on recent research to argue that music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music are more than …

Boring Myself To Death, Henry Curcio '21

Student Scholarship

Henry Curcio attempted to bore himself as much as possible. This included watching paint dry, listening to a thirteen-hour long musical composition, viewing an eleven-hour long film, and much more. This much is recorded recorded below with special attention to the overlapping discussions of boredom between philosophy, psychology, and literature.

Virginia's Criminal Justice System's Current Treatment For People With Mental Illnesses: Some Recommendations Based On What Has Worked (And What Has Not), Anokhi Manchanda '22, Tomas Alvarez-Perez '22

Student Scholarship

In this research we critically review information on Virginia’s criminal justice system’s response to people with mental illness. We first investigate issues that persons with mental illnesses experience as they navigate three stages of Virginia’s criminal justice system. The stages are: first, when people with mental illness are apprehended by the police, second, when they must stand trial, and third, when they are incarcerated. At the apprehension stage, the main issues we identify are that most officers do not have proper crisis intervention training, and that there are not sufficient options for diversion from jail for people with mental illnesses. …

The Asian And Asian American Experience Through Film & Personal Narrative, Jason Le 23, Nyaari Kothiya 23, Anna Sakamoto 23

Student Scholarship

The primary focus of this report was to investigate trends of Asian and Asian American representation in media and pop culture, with a heavy emphasis through a Western lens. We explore the subjective and relatively objective definitions of the terms “Asian” and “Asian American” as it pertains to identity in the United States in the 21st Century. Beginning with historical context, we examined the documented records of anti-Asian legislation, influences of Asian media in mainstream pop culture, and contemporary accounts of Asians in the United States. We analyzed films that emphasized the Asian and Asian American experience through common themes …

“A Great Blessing To Mankind”: The Medicated Vapour Bath At The Shaker Community Of New Lebanon, Kerry Hackett

American Communal Societies Quarterly

Shaker diaries and journals show that over the years brethren and sisters experimented with numerous treatment forms such as humoural medicine, Thomsonianism, hydrotherapy, Grahamism, medical electricity, sea air cure, and taking the waters at various medicinal springs. Yet despite the informal and often inconsistent use of these therapies, one invention appears to have inspired an official commitment between the Society and the “world” (non- Shakers): the “medicated vapour bath.”

This commitment was recorded in an 1826 letter between Union Village (O.) and South Union (Ky.). Like many Shaker Ministry communications, it opened with a report from New Lebanon that detailed …

Mothers And Daughters At White Water Shaker Village, Thomas Sakmyster

American Communal Societies Quarterly

One of the core beliefs of the Shakers was that only by making a firm commitment to a life of purity and piety as a member of a community of Believers could an individual escape the sinfulness of the world and properly prepare for salvation. This required that individuals sever ties with their natural, biological families and become a member of a new spiritual family, which would offer the love and emotional support that natural family members had formerly provided.

It must also have been difficult for some to abide fully and faithfully by the rules designed to break down …

Six Scenes From The Sixties, Tom Fels

American Communal Societies Quarterly

As a veteran of the 1960s, I have been interested, over the years, to investigate the significance of those times, to look at the background from which they emerged, and to assess—to the extent possible after such a relatively short time—the effects of the political and social turmoil with which we associate them. In the essay that follows, I explore six experiences of my own, looking at how a time of activism and change affected the post-World War II generation, and might influence the world of today.

My experiences are drawn from the trajectory created, over the course of some …