WWU’s Holly Folk to Discuss Communes and Their Effects on Education and Society Feb. 29 at City Hall

February 16, 2016

Holly Folk, associate professor of Liberal Studies at Western Washington University, will give a talk titled “Nesting Boxes: American Communes and the Liberal Arts” from 7-8 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 29 in the Bellingham City Council Chambers, 210 Lottie St. in Bellingham. 

The talk is free and open to the public and is an installment of the WWU College of Humanities and Social Sciences Dean’s Lecture Series and is co-sponsored by the City of Bellingham.

Folk will discuss the inter-disciplinarity of communal studies, and the practical lessons communes offer for the humanities and general education. Feb. 29 is the historic birthday of Mother Ann Lee, founder of the United Society of Believer’s in Christ’s Second Appearing, more commonly known as The Shakers. In the mid-19th century, more than 4,000 people lived in 19 Shaker settlements. Today that number has fallen to three living members, who are sustained in worship by a community of supporters. Though commonly remembered for their contributions to American music, architecture, and furniture design, the Shakers proposed radical alternatives for how to be human. Developed over time, the Shaker “Order” became a system for regimenting the physical body, personal conduct, and social interaction.

Holly Folk is a historian who studies 19th and 20th century American religion and culture. Her research addresses a variety of social movements that fall outside the ‘mainstream,’ including new religions, communes and utopias, anarchism, and alternative medicine. At WWU she teaches courses in theory and methods, American religious history, and modern world religion. Folk recently finished the volume on New Religious Movements that is part of the World Religions database to be published by Infobase / Facts on File. A monograph based on her dissertation, Vertebral Vitalism: The Birth of Chiropractic, is under contract with UNC Press, with anticipated publication in 2017. She has served on the board of the Communal Studies Association since 2010.

Audience questions for the Feb. 29 talk will be welcomed.  The lecture will be recorded and shown on Bellingham TV Channel 10.

For more information please contact Holly Folk, professor of Liberal Studies at Western at (360) 650-6875.