New Books Network Michelle Christine Smith, "Utopian Genderscapes: Rhetorics of Women's Work in the Early Industrial Age" (Southern Illinois UP, 2021)
Nov 9, 2025
Michelle Christine Smith, an author specializing in rhetoric and gender, explores women’s roles in 19th-century intentional communities. She discusses the archival research behind Brook Farm, Harmony Society, and Oneida Community, revealing how they reshaped women's work amid industrialization. Smith argues that these utopian attempts weren't failures but rather setups for modern labor practices, including the birth control movement and the transformation of household roles. Her insights offer a fresh perspective on the intersection of gender, class, and race in historical labor dynamics.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Summer At A Co-housing Community
- Michelle Smith visited a co-housing community called Blueberry Hill during college and lived there for a summer, which deeply influenced her interest in intentional communities.
- She saw shared meals, common maintenance, and designed parking that created safer communal spaces for children, sparking lifelong curiosity.
Space And Gender Lead To Labor
- Smith realized discussions of gender and space inevitably center on labor because spaces are defined by the activities bodies perform there.
- She reframed her project to focus on women's work to better capture how space and gender interacted in utopian communities.
What Counts As Work?
- Smith questions what makes an activity count as 'work' and seeks rhetorical criteria for credibility of labor, not just paid employment.
- At Brook Farm, women tested claiming housework as ennobling labor while seeking marketable crafts to gain value and recognition.
