This site presents a study of the Abbey of the Genesee in Piffard, New York. Through engagement with the abbey’s history, the site examines the community’s role in a constantly modernizing world. This Abbey of the Genesee Project site is a product of an interdepartmental college course examining the United States’s historic tradition of intentional communities.

This site explores how the monastery copes with changes occurring in the outside world and how these transformations may or may not impact both the abbey’s history and its members’ experiences. In the site’s various pages, you can access pertinent information relating to the types of outside forces which exert pressure on the modest community. Members get the chance to speak directly about some of the changes they have witnessed take place in the abbey since they first joined. Critical analysis is offered throughout the pages to offer outsiders’ perspectives on the community’s development, as well as to situate the Abbey of the Genesee among other various intentional communities around the country.