Anabaptists and Mennonites have often been the subject of media scrutiny: sometimes admired, at other times maligned. Luther called them schwarmar, a German word meaning "fanatics" that alludes to a swarm of bees. In contrast, American independent film producer John Sayles drew inspiration from Mennonite conscientious objectors for his 1987 award-winning film, Matewan. Voltaire's Candide features a virtuous Anabaptist. Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest contains an Anabaptist reference. An Anabaptist chaplain is central to Joseph Heller's antiwar classic, Catch-22. President Lincoln and General Stonewall Jackson both had something to say about Mennonites. Garrison Keillor tells Mennonite jokes. These are just a few of the dozens of fascinating media references, dating from the early 1500s through the present, which are chronicled and analyzed here. Mennonites, although often considered media-shy, have in fact used media to great advantage in shaping their faith and identity. Beginning with the Martyrs Mirror, this book examines the writings of Mennonite authors John Howard Yoder, Donald Kraybill, Rudy Wiebe, Rhoda Janzen, and Malcolm Gladwell. Citing books, film, art, theater, and Ngram, the online culturomic tool developed by Harvard University and Google, the author demonstrates that Mennonites "punch above their weight class" in the media, and especially in print.

Anabaptists and Mennonites have often been the subject of media scrutiny: sometimes admired, at other times maligned. Luther called them schwarmar, a German word meaning "fanatics" that alludes to a swarm of bees. In contrast, American independent film producer John Sayles drew inspiration from Mennonite conscientious objectors for his 1987 award-winning film, Matewan. Voltaire's Candide features a virtuous Anabaptist. Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest contains an Anabaptist reference. An Anabaptist chaplain is central to Joseph Heller's antiwar classic, Catch-22. President Lincoln and General Stonewall Jackson both had something to say about Mennonites. Garrison Keillor tells Mennonite jokes. These are just a few of the dozens of fascinating media references, dating from the early 1500s through the present, which are chronicled and analyzed here. Mennonites, although often considered media-shy, have in fact used media to great advantage in shaping their faith and identity. Beginning with the Martyrs Mirror, this book examines the writings of Mennonite authors John Howard Yoder, Donald Kraybill, Rudy Wiebe, Rhoda Janzen, and Malcolm Gladwell. Citing books, film, art, theater, and Ngram, the online culturomic tool developed by Harvard University and Google, the author demonstrates that Mennonites "punch above their weight class" in the media, and especially in print.

This stimulating volume explores how the memory of the Reformation has been remembered, forgotten, contested, and reinvented between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries. Remembering the Reformation traces how a complex, protracted, and unpredictable process came to be perceived, recorded, and commemorated as a transformative event. Exploring both local and global patterns of memory, the contributors examine the ways in which the Reformation embedded itself in the historical imagination and analyse the enduring, unstable, and divided legacies that it engendered. The book also underlines how modern scholarship is indebted to processes of memory-making initiated in the early modern period and challenges the conventional models of periodisation that the Reformation itself helped to create. This collection of essays offers an expansive examination and theoretically engaged discussion of concepts and practices of memory and Reformation. This volume is ideal for upper level undergraduates and postgraduates studying the Reformation, Early Modern Religious History, Early Modern European History, and Early Modern Literature.

Winner of the 2020 Chicago Folklore Prize CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2020 Despite predictions that commercial mass culture would displace customs of the past, traditions firmly abound, often characterized as folklore. In The Practice of Folklore: Essays toward a Theory of Tradition, author Simon J. Bronner works with theories of cultural practice to explain the social and psychological need for tradition in everyday life. Bronner proposes a distinctive “praxic” perspective that will answer the pressing philosophical as well as psychological question of why people enjoy repeating themselves. The significance of the keyword practice, he asserts, is the embodiment of a tension between repetition and variation in human behavior. Thinking with practice, particularly in a digital world, forces redefinitions of folklore and a reorientation toward interpreting everyday life. More than performance or enactment in social theory, practice connects localized culture with the vernacular idea that “this is the way we do things around here.” Practice refers to the way those things are analyzed as part of, rather than apart from, theory, thus inviting the study of studying. “The way we do things” invokes the social basis of “doing” in practice as cultural and instrumental. Building on previous studies of tradition in relation to creativity, Bronner presents an overview of practice theory and the ways it might be used in folklore and folklife studies. Demonstrating the application of this theory in folkloristic studies, Bronner offers four provocative case studies of psychocultural meanings that arise from traditional frames of action and address issues of our times: referring to the boogieman; connecting “wild child” beliefs to school shootings; deciphering the offensive chants of sports fans; and explicating male bravado in bawdy singing. Turning his analysis to the analysts of tradition, Bronner uses practice theory to evaluate the agenda of folklorists in shaping perceptions of tradition-centered “folk societies” such as the Amish. He further unpacks the culturally based rationale of public folklore programming. He interprets the evolving idea of folk museums in a digital world and assesses how the folklorists' terms and actions affect how people think about tradition.

This comprehensive encyclopedia—the first of its kind—maps out three hundred years of German history and culture in Pennsylvania and beyond. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Destined to become the standard reference on Pennsylvania Germans (also known as the “Pennsylvania Dutch”), this book is the first survey of this extensive American group in nearly seventy-five years. Nineteen broad interpretive essays written by a distinguished group of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, linguists, and folklorists tell the rich and nuanced story of Pennsylvania German history and culture. United by a distinct (and distinctly American) language, the Pennsylvania Germans have been slower to assimilate than other ethnic groups. This sweeping volume reveals, though, that the group is much less homogenous and isolated than was previously thought. From architecture, media, and farming techniques to food, folklore, and medicine, the Pennsylvania Germans and their descendants display a wide range of cultural variation. In Pennsylvania Germans, editors Simon J. Bronner and Joshua R. Brown broaden the geographical and social coverage of the group, touching both on Pennsylvanian communities and the Pennsylvania German diaspora, including settlements in Canada and Mexico. They also expand historical coverage of the Pennsylvania Germans to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Beautifully illustrated, this volume—while paying tribute to the historical and cultural legacy of the Pennsylvania Germans—is the most comprehensive book on the subject to date. Contributors: R. Troy Boyer, Simon J. Bronner, Joshua R. Brown, Edsel Burdge Jr., William W. Donner, John B. Frantz, Mark Häberlein, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner, Donald B. Kraybill, David W. Kriebel, Gabrielle Lanier, Mark L. Louden, Yvonne J. Milspaw, Lisa Minardi, Steven M. Nolt, Candace Perry, Sheila Rohrer, and Diane Wenger