The fourth in a series of workshops on ocialism and Sexuality organized by the AMSAB Institute for Social History (Ghent), the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam), the Institute for Contemporary History-UMR 5605 (Dijon), and the Center for Millennial Studies (Boston University)
Location: Boston University (Kenmore Classrooms #104, 565 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston).
From the Brethren of the Free Spirit in the 12th century to the various counter-cultures that emerged in the last half of the 20th, socialists, anarchists, and secular and religious communitarians in Europe and the United States have supported the idea that the liberation of the body and its desires would lead to spiritual redemption and the regeneration of society. This workshop will examine the sexual politics of these movements-i.e., their ideas on the connection between sexual liberation, spiritual transformation, and the creation of the perfect society-and compare the ways in which they have changed over time and have varied from place to place.
Presentations:
Richard Landes, Department of History, Boston University
"Equality, Intimacy, and Sexual Liberation: A Climactic Theory of Millennial Enthusiasm"
Robert Fogarty, Department of History, Antioch College (Ohio)
"Sexuality at the Oneida Community: A Binocular View"
Cathy Gutierrez, Department of Religion, Sweet Briar College
"Sex in the City of God: Free Love and the American Millennium"
Dan Stephen, Department of History, University of Colorado, Boulder
"The Love of Comrades: the Abbotsholme School, Uranianism, and the Construction of an Ethical Socialism"
Jesse Battan, Department of American Studies, California State University, Fullerton
'The Good Time Coming: Parallel Revolutions in the Body and the Body Politic in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century America'
Brigitte Koenig, Department of History, Seton Hall University
"Sexual Revolution: The Politics of Sexuality in the American Anarchist Imagination."
Mari Trine, Department of History, College of Saint Scholastica
"'Perpetual Orgasm' as a 'State of Grace': Young American Radicals' Construction of Utopian Society through the Spiritual Transformations of Liberated Sex in the Sixties"