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Director and Curator of Special Collections and Archives Christian Goodwillie was recently featured in the original documentary Defining Expertise: The Design of 19th-Century Shaker Communities (Heaven on Earth).

Imagining the Shakers, written by Robert P. Emlen and by published Hamilton’s Richard W. Couper Press, was recently awarded the Ewell W. Newman Book Award.

It’s the 19th century. The suffrage movement is sweeping the streets, abolitionism is becoming increasingly pervasive, and labor reform is in full swing. People are pushing for social change, and many of them are asking the spirits for help.

The Richard W. Couper Press recently announced that the first nine volumes of American Communal Societies Quarterly (ACSQ) are now available through Hamilton’s Digital Commons.

Symbols in the Wilderness: Early Masonic Survivals in Upstate New York, co-authored by Director of Special Collections Christian Goodwillie, began with a chance glance at a building as he drove to Cooperstown, N.Y. Intrigued by the structure, Western Star Lodge and now the Bridgewater Masonic Lodge, he became even more interested in the art work it once housed. Thus Goodwillie’s exploration of Masonic symbols – expressed in paintings, murals, textiles and graphics – began.  

New titles from the Richard W. Couper Press present groundbreaking research on the Shakers, House of David, and Mary's City of David. Materials from these intentional religious communities form an integral part of the Special Collections at Burke Library.

In publishing circles, “essential” isn’t a word to be tossed around lightly. Although every academic book advances our understanding of its subject in some way, there are not many books that are so vital to a field that scholars can’t work without them. 

A group of students traveled to Hancock Shaker Village in Hancock, Mass., and to Mount Lebanon, N.Y., on Sept. 29 as members of the Religious Communal Societies in America, 1620-1950, course.

Several Hamilton faculty members contributed to a new book, Pathways to Excellence in Teaching, edited by Ernest H. Williams, the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Biology, and published by The Couper Press.

The Richard W. Couper Press has issued a new publication, Visiting the Shakers, 1850-1899: Watervliet, Hancock, Tyringham, New Lebanon, edited by Glendyne R. Wergland. This is a companion to her earlier volume published by the Couper Press in 2007, which covered 1788-1849. Visitors to Shaker communities recorded impressions of Shaker life, material culture, and worship. These 85 accounts provide a valuable window into Shaker life.