Get Your Own Toothbrush: Experiments in Communal Housing and their Discontents

Catalog description

Who do we become when we live with strangers? How does it transform us -- for good or for ill -- to share our living space, our kitchens, our bathrooms? Can communal living show us how to transform society for the better, or indeed for the worse? Why have so many political, social, and spiritual self-styled revolutionary movements, from 1870s Paris to 1920s Moscow to 1960s San Francisco, so strongly emphasized radical changes in domestic life and the importance of collective living? In this course, we will examine utopian experiments in collective housing, both as forms of resistance and as environments that have themselves been resisted. Drawing from urban and social history, as well as literature, film, and other art forms, we'll explore the significance of how people live together, as well as the hostile reactions that utopian housing projects have often provoked. We'll also investigate sites of communal dwelling that are close to us in California (beyond Stanford's frosh housing). All readings will be in English.