CONFERENCE
dan's blog

Going to New Harmony!

05/21/2010 07:35
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The Communal Studies Association is having their 2010 Conference at the site of Robert Owen's New Harmony community in Indiana. I’ve been invited to give a paper there, about utopian communities at home. I’ll have to double-check the exact wording of my proposal, to see what the scope of this will be; but as I remember it I said I wanted to talk about Charles Knowlton and his friends, who started a Free Enquirers’ Society in Greenfield. My interest was in people who felt themselves to be outside of the mainstream, who had assimilated some of the ideas people like Owens implemented at places like New Harmony, but who stayed home.

Knowlton was a friend of Robert Dale Owen, and probably knew Frances Wright (Nashoba). As a freethinker and a doctor, he had a strange status in Franklin County society. He and his Free Enquirer Society friends (men and women, because the Society considered women full members with all the rights of their male counterparts) were clearly interested in utopian ideas well outside the mainstream of their Western Massachusetts communities. But what did they do about it? Did the fact that they stayed home give them any influence on their home communities? Politics? Culture? I’m looking forward to talking about this, and to hearing what other people have been thinking about intentional communities this fall.

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No England trip this year

04/10/2010 17:18
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It turns out I won’t be going to England for the first European Rural History conference in September.

They ran out of space, and had to uninvite one or more of the people whose papers they’d previously accepted. Really.

So I won’t have a chance to go to the Bishopsgate Institute and look at the Bradlaugh files this fall. Well, maybe the following fall, after I’ve sold that project. I can write a proposal without the Bishopsgate material, after all.

As far as Rural History 2010 goes, it looks like there won’t be much North American representation there. I was hoping to get a better idea about how Europeans and members of the British Commonwealth do rural history. But based on the conference schedule, it looks like they do a lot of stuff that isn’t really that good a fit with what I’m interested in doing. So I can see why they thought my paper might be one they could afford to lose.

Life goes on. The change of plans will give me a chance to get to the Pacific Northwest and finish my research for this Dissertation/book project. Probably a better idea at this point, anyway.

The good news is that the family will be represented in England anyway this fall. Steph's hat has been selected to be in a fashion show and on display at the British hat museum! Story here.

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NEWS FLASH!

02/24/2010 00:01
dan
Well, the news is my paper proposal was accepted for the first annual Rural History conference in Brighton, England this fall! This is huge. Like becoming a charter member of a really cool new club. Rural History on the ground floor.

And while I’m there, I’ll have a chance to get to London and see the Bishopsgate archives of the Bradlaugh Papers. And run around East London; see how long it takes to walk to the City from Warner Place. Maybe I’ll make a sidetrip to Northampton and have a pint with my facebook buddy Norman.

Lots to do, lots to plan. Bottom line, Rural History is on, and so is the Bradlaugh bio. The details of getting a PhD while I’m doing all this will just have to work themselves out...

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