Models for Academic Communities of Dissertators, Part One

The early modern period had a range of useful ways to think about community, and (in my sitting-by-myself-at-a-desk-with-my-laptop mode) I'm wondering if any of them would help create a sustained/more official approach to community for grad students who are writing most of the time. So, in no particular order, here we go:

• Compulsory weekly attendance at an event? (For the Elizabethans, this was church: you heard a sanctioned, official sermon, saw a bunch of local people, and--if you were Shakespeare's dad--avoided the group entirely, so as not to get thrown in jail for debt.) This could work for dissertation writers: we could substitute mock job talks for sermons, and ban debt collectors while we're at it.
• Eating together? (This is also church-driven--in fact, by a process called communion. In the 1600s, whether you thought the bread and wine was metaphorical, literal, or (trans)figurative, you got together with like-minded folks to partake pretty frequently. While we do have "brown bag" events in my department, they're geared toward learning a specific skill or interacting with a guest speaker--we could have regular eating events with no agenda, just for the sake of communing with each other.
• The maypole? Okay: this is mostly aimed at my desire to see department members skipping around with ribbons. Still--there are some department intramural athletic teams. Maybe I could go into training, learn not to trip on myself, and join them.

Next time: Non-early modern models of community for dissertators (with possible Star Trek references...)