In spring of 1973, the Southeastern Iowa city of Fairfield lost its beloved Parsons College to bankruptcy. What followed in the coming months was unforeseen: an Indian meditation guru decided to relocate his name-sake Maharishi International University to Fairfield to replace the Parsons campus. Over the 1970s, thousands of followers descended on Fairfield, leaving many self-proclaimed "townies" reeling over the perceived social and religious corruption of their insular, Christian community. Despite this resentment, the meditators cultivated a national reputation for entrepreneurship, and as saviors of a town “ready to blow away.” Yet a deeper look into local history reveals that the meditators did not fundamentally change or save Fairfield. Rather, popular claims to the contrary are part of a narrative perpetuated by meditator and non-meditator alike, tied up in myths of what rural America is and is not. Fairfield, Iowa from the early-1970s onward is at once a story about occluded history and the clash of identity in the rural Midwest.
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Citation
Lipsey, Adam Z.,
"Transcendental Development: A Meditation on the Socioeconomic History of Fairfield, Iowa"
(2020).
History Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/q8dn-bw35
