Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- INTRODUCTION: Pennsylvania German Studies -- PART 1 HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY -- 1. The Old World Background -- 2. To the New World: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries -- 3. Communities and Identities: Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Centuries -- PART 2 CULTURE AND SOCIETY -- 4. The Pennsylvania German Language -- 5. Language Use among Anabaptist Groups -- 6. Religion -- 7. The Amish -- 8. Literature -- 9. Agriculture and Industries -- 10. Architecture and Cultural Landscapes -- 11. Furniture and Decorative Arts -- 12. Fraktur and Visual Culture -- 13. Textiles -- 14. Food and Cooking -- 15. Medicine -- 16. Folklore and Folklife -- 17. Education -- 18. Heritage and Tourism -- 19. Popular Culture and Media -- References -- Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z -- Color plates follow page

In Citizens in a Strange Land, Hermann Wellenreuther examines the broadsides—printed single sheets—produced by the Pennsylvania German community. These broadsides covered topics ranging from local controversies and politics to devotional poems and hymns. Each one is a product of and reaction to a particular historical setting. To understand them fully, Wellenreuther systematically reconstructs Pennsylvania’s print culture, the material conditions of life, the problems German settlers faced, the demands their communities made on the individual settlers, the complications to be overcome, and the needs to be satisfied. He shows how these broadsides provided advice, projections, and comment on phases of life from cradle to grave.

This cultural exploration offers an unparalleled presentation of Pennsylvania’s ritual healing traditions known as powwowing or Braucherei in Pennsylvania Dutch, through original primary source materials, including manuscripts, ritual objects, and books—most of which have never before been available to English-speaking readers. Although methods and procedures have varied considerably over three centuries of ritual practice within the Pennsylvania Dutch cultural region, the outcomes and experiences surrounding this tradition have woven a rich tapestry of cultural narratives that highlight the integration of ritual into all aspects of life, as well as provide insight into the challenges, conflicts, growth, and development of a distinct Pennsylvania Dutch folk culture. (343pp. color illus. index. PA German Cult. Heritage Center, 2018.) Volume IV of the Annual Publication Series of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University.

Winner, 2004 Dale W. Brown Book Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies Winner, 2005 Outstanding Publication, Communal Studies Association Co-published with the Pennsylvania German Society/Vandenhoeck && Ruprecht The Ephrata Cloister was a community of radical Pietists founded by Georg Conrad Beissel (1691&–1768), a charismatic mystic who had been a journeyman baker in Europe. In 1720 he and a few companions sought a new life in William Penn&’s land of religious freedom, eventually settling on the banks of the Cocalico Creek in what is now Lancaster County. They called their community &“Ephrata,&” after the Hebrew name for the area around Bethlehem. Voices of the Turtledoves is a fascinating look at the sacred world that flourished at Ephrata. In Voices of the Turtledoves, Jeff Bach is the first to draw extensively on Ephrata&’s manuscript resources and on recent archaeological investigations to present an overarching look at the community. He concludes that the key to understanding all the various aspects of life at Ephrata&—its architecture, manuscript art, and social organization&—is the religious thought of Beissel and his co-leaders.

This comprehensive anthology of original Pennsylvania German writings makes accessible a literature that is becoming increasingly rare. The Buffington/Barba system of German sound values has been applied to help the reader understand and appreciate the selections, which provide a view to virtually every facet of Pennsylvania German life.

This collection of new essays enters one of the most topical and energetic debates of our time--the subject of ethnicity. The recent vigorous debates being waged over questions raised by the phenomenon of multiculturalism in America highlight the fact that American culture has arisen out of an unusually rich and interactive ethnic mix. The essays in A Mixed Race suggest that American society was inescapably multicultural from its very beginnings and that this representation of cultural differences fundamentally defined American culture. While recent scholarship has looked extensively at the ethnic formation of modern American culture, this study focuses on the eighteenth century and colonial American values that have been previously overlooked in the debate, arguing that a culture shaped by responses to ethnic and racial difference is not merely a modern circumstance but one at the base of American history. Written by a group of first-class contributors, the essays in this collection discuss the representation of cultural differences between European immigrants and Native Americans, the circumstances of the first African-American autobiographical narratives, rhetorical negotiations among different European-American cultural groups, ethnic representation in the genre literature of jest books and execution narratives, and the ethnic conceptions of Michel de Crevecoeur, Phillis Wheatley, and Thomas Jefferson. A Mixed Race offers agile and original yet scholarly readings of ethnicity and ethnic formation from some of our best critics of early American culture. Moving from questions of race and ethnicity to varieties of ethnic representation, and finally to individual confrontations, this volume sheds light on the confrontations of ethnically diverse peoples, and launches a timely, full-scale investigation of the construction of American culture.

In his widely acclaimed The Pennsylvania Barn, Robert Ensminger provided the first comprehensive study of an important piece of American vernacular architecture—the forebay bank barn, better known as the Pennsylvania barn or the Pennsylvania German barn. Now, in this revised edition, Ensminger has continued his diligent fieldwork and archival research into the origins, evolution, and distribution in North America of this significant agricultural structure. Including an entire chapter of new material, 85 new illustrations, and updates to previous chapters, this edition of Ensminger's classic work will appeal to students and scholars in cultural and historical geography, folklore and vernacular architectural history, and American studies, as well as to general readers.

Sheds light on the process of cultural change that occurred over the course of a century or more in the majority of Pennsylvania German communities and churches. The Pennsylvania Dutch comprised the largest single ethnic group in the early American Republic of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet like other ethnic minorities in early America, they struggled to maintain their own distinct ethnic identity in everything that they did. Eventually their German Lutheran and Reformed customs and folkways gave way to Anglo-American pressure. The tune and chorale books printed for use in Pennsylvania Dutch churches document this gradual process of Americanization, including notable moments of resistance to change. Daniel Grimminger's Sacred Song and the Pennsylvania Dutch is the only in-depth study of the shifting identity of the Pennsylvania Dutch as manifested in their music. Through a closer examination of music sources, folk art, and historical contexts, this interdisciplinary study sheds light on the process of cultural change that occurred over the course of a century or more in the majority of Pennsylvania German communities and churches. Grimminger's book also provides a model with which to view all ethnic enclaves, in America and elsewhere, andthe ways in which loyalties can shift as a group becomes part of a larger cultural fabric. Daniel Grimminger holds a doctorate in sacred music and choral conducting, as well as a PhD in musicology. He also holds a masterof theological studies degree and is a clergyman in the North American Lutheran Church. Grimminger teaches at Kent State University and is the pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Millersburg, Holmes County, Ohio.

The fascinating story of America's oldest thriving heritage language. Winner of the Dale W. Brown Book Award by the Young Center for Anabaptists and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College While most world languages spoken by minority populations are in serious danger of becoming extinct, Pennsylvania Dutch is thriving. In fact, the number of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers is growing exponentially, although it is spoken by less than one-tenth of one percent of the United States population and has remained for the most part an oral vernacular without official recognition or support. A true sociolinguistic wonder, Pennsylvania Dutch has been spoken continuously since the late eighteenth century despite having never been "refreshed" by later waves of immigration from abroad. In this probing study, Mark L. Louden, himself a fluent speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch, provides readers with a close look at the place of the language in the life and culture of two major subgroups of speakers: the "Fancy Dutch," whose ancestors were affiliated mainly with Lutheran and German Reformed churches, and traditional Anabaptist sectarians known as the "Plain people"—the Old Order Amish and Mennonites. Drawing on scholarly literature, three decades of fieldwork, and ample historical documents—most of which have never before been made accessible to English-speaking readers—this is the first book to offer a comprehensive look at this unlikely linguistic success story.