Imagining Your Perfect World

This guide is intended as a research tool to help you locate background information, books, articles, and internet/web links on the topic of utopias and alternative communities.

Background Information Sources

Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History (3 volumes) REF E169.1 E624 2001
Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century (3 vols.) REF E169.1 E626 2001
Dictionary of the History of Ideas (5 vols.) REF CB5.D52
Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion REF BL65. P7 E53 1998
Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience REF BL2525.E53 1988
Dictionary of American Communal and Utopian history REF HX653. F65 1980

Books

Search the library catalog for books on your subject using words or word combinations below, or visit the library’s 2nd floor and browse the following call number ranges: BL, E, HX.

  • utopias in history
  • utopias in literature
  • communes, communal living
  • collective settlements
  • names of individual communities (e.g., Shakers, Oneida, Brook farm)
  • kibbutz, kibbutzim

Newspaper, Magazine, and Academic Journal Articles

Internet Resources

Several internet resources have been selected below. Additional links are available from the Web Resources page.