No Place on Earth: America and the Utopian Dream

January 6, 2010

A 2006 web exhibition and introduction to American utopias through literary works and manuscript collections in the Beinecke Library.

From the introduction:

Utopias in America, from the first Puritan settlements to the communes of the 1960s, share the goal of removal from the heart of civilization to the wilderness in order to establish

a new social order. Communities with European roots embraced the equalizing demands and freedoms of the New World’s open frontier, even as the new country claimed the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right. Though their inspirations varied—theocracy, millenialism, socialism, theosophism, behaviorism—they all reflected the American dream of a better world, now.

Visit No Place on Earth: America and the Utopian Dream.