American Communal Societies Series
America's Utopian Moment: Essays on the Fourierist Movement and Its Contexts
By Carl J. Guarneri
March 1, 2025
Tags American Communal Societies Series
ISBN: 978-1-937370-42-8 $40
The utopian socialism of Charles Fourier inspired the most popular and influential communal movement during America’s pivotal “utopian moment” in the pre-Civil War era. Far from a colorful curiosity, the Fourierists were serious participants in the debate over the future of the young republic. This collection of essays supplements Carl Guarneri’s award-winning earlier volume on the Fourierists by examining such topics as Emerson’s private fascination with Fourierism, the experience of women in Fourierist communities, and the utopian socialists’ relation to slavery and the Civil War. Pursuing unexplored affinities and connections, Guarneri demonstrates the Fourierists’ influence on the free-love Oneida Community, documents exchanges between American and European social reformers, and situates the Fourierist movement in the larger context of American, transatlantic, and communal history.
Carl Guarneri is Brother James Ash Professor of History, Emeritus at Saint Mary’s College of California and Affiliated Scholar in History at Colgate University. He has published a dozen books on utopian socialism, the Civil War, and American history in global context, as well as numerous articles and reviews. His earlier volume on the utopian socialists, The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America (1991), was awarded the annual book prize of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. Guarneri received the Communal Studies Association’s Distinguished Scholar Award in 2006.
