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A Woman’s Work is Never Done: Class, Gender, and Race in the Western Co-Operative Wave of Communes, 1887-1920s
Dissertation

A Woman’s Work is Never Done: Class, Gender, and Race in the Western Co-Operative Wave of Communes, 1887-1920s

Cassandra Dawn Crisman
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
2026
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Open Access CC BY-ND V4.0

Abstract

American West commune gender nineteenth century socialist working class American studies
Communal movements have occurred throughout US history during times of social, economic, and political change. Dating back to colonial ideas in Thomas Moore’s sixteenth century novel “Utopia,” groups of likeminded individuals have been inspired to rebuild society in their own vision by establishing communes. In the 1890s, during the height of Westward Expansion, socialists, anarchists, and other radical progressives migrated west to form utopian colonies based on their ideas of how the United States could be. This wave of communes are characterized by their emphasis on co-operative living and strong belief in equality. This project seeks to better understand how the Western Co-Operative Wave of Communes understood ideas like equality by analyzing the lived experiences of members through an intersectional lens. By assessing the paradoxes consistent in their views of class, race, and gender, this project argues that the co-operative communes replicated much of the same hierarchies they were attempting to leave behind.

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