All News

Director and Curator of Special Collections and Archives Christian Goodwillie is a host of the recently-launched podcast, Communes USA.

The Communal Studies Association’s (CSA) 2021 Distinguished Scholar Award was recently presented to Director and Curator of Special Collections and Archives Christian Goodwillie.

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.

As part of its study of early American material culture, the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Museum graduate school class visited Burke Library on Saturday, Nov. 11, to view materials from the communal societies collection.

Students from the seminar on Religious Communal Societies in United States History recently visited the Oneida Community Mansion House, giving new depth to their study of the 19th century religious group.

“I’m hoping that I can give this document to an organization that will take good care of it and allow other people to study and appreciate it.” These words, spoken by Jean Waite on an episode of PBS’s History Detective in 2012, prompted Hamilton’s Director of Special Collections Christian Goodwillie to place a call that, three years later, led to a donation to the college’s Communal Societies collection.

Christian Goodwillie, director and curator of Special Collections and Archives in Burke Library, recently published “Baseball, Beards, Bands, and the Babes: Michigan’s House of David Religious Community” in Ephemera Journal, the quarterly publication of the Ephemera Society of America.

An interview with Shaker collector Stephen Miller in Antiques & the Arts Weekly included references to  Hamilton’s Director and Curator of Special Collections and Archives Christian Goodwillie and the Burke Library’s Communal Societies Special Collection. 

When Caroline Clarke ’14 was choosing a topic for her senior thesis, she intended to write about the Millerites. She never expected that she would research the Shakers as well.  However, with the help of Christian Goodwillie, Hamilton’s director of Special Collections and Archives, Clarke fused the two research topics into one paper, titled “The Advent of the Disappointed: Why the Millerites joined the Shakers and why they quickly left.” Clarke’s research paid off when she won the Donald Durnbaugh Starting Scholar Award from the Communal Studies Association.

For many people, the words “history class” conjure up images of dusty books, and it’s true that American Communal Religious Societies, co-taught by Professor of History Doug Ambrose and Director of Special Collections Christian Goodwillie, does have most of its weekly class meetings in Burke Library. Most, but not all.