By Drew Hayden Taylor

A mil­lion years ago when I was a child, I was always fas­ci­nat­ed by what could be. I think this was pri­mar­i­ly because I was sur­round­ed by what was. As a Native per­son, I was con­stant­ly made aware of our her­itage, our cul­ture, every­thing from the past that made us unique and spe­cial. Also I was con­scious of the fact that – tech­no­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing – we were at a bit of a dis­ad­van­tage to those who showed up one day for din­ner and nev­er left. I remem­ber the first time I saw tele­vi­sion, played with a com­put­er, watched Star Trek, and got an elec­tric tooth­brush. Darn clever those White peo­ple. Native peo­ple con­stant­ly won­der at the clever inno­va­tions and devices the dom­i­nant cul­ture feels the need to cre­ate – every­thing from vibra­tors to nuclear bombs.  Read more »

By Sabrina Völz

If you missed the pre­vi­ous blog, then click here. Last week, we left off with Ira Wagler talk­ing about the dif­fi­cul­ty of writ­ing Grow­ing Up Amish. In the fol­low­ing video, he con­tin­ues in the same vein with the tricky top­ics of guilt, recep­tion of his book, and the chal­lenge of find­ing the right title, just to name a few. With­out fur­ther ado, the Amer­i­can Stud­ies Blog now brings you Part II.

Still have ques­tions? Then why not get a copy of Ira Wagler’s book, explore the lead­ing web­site on Amish stud­ies, or join the Amish schol­ars, pro­fes­sion­als, and edu­ca­tors at the inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence, “Con­ti­nu­ity and Change: 50 Years of Amish Soci­ety” host­ed by the Young Cen­ter for Anabap­tist and Pietist Stud­ies at Eliz­a­beth­town Col­lege in Penn­syl­va­nia from June 9–11, 2016?

By Sabrina Völz

Ques­tions. Ques­tions. There are always ques­tions, espe­cial­ly when deal­ing with the Old Order Amish. And ques­tions there were – plen­ty of ques­tions – fol­low­ing The New York Times best-sell­ing author Ira Wagler’s talk at the Plain Peo­ple Con­fer­ence at Leuphana Uni­ver­si­ty. In fact, the Q&A ran slight­ly longer than his intro­duc­to­ry remarks to Grow­ing Up Amish. Of course, this real­ly shouldn’t be sur­pris­ing since Wagler has a unique way of con­nect­ing with his audi­ence, an audi­ence on this par­tic­u­lar swel­ter­ing evening made up of schol­ars, stu­dents, upper-sec­ondary Eng­lish teach­ers, and res­i­dents of Lüneb­urg. Reflect­ing the diver­si­ty of that delight­ful audi­ence, the ques­tions dealt with every­thing from trau­ma to the Penn­syl­va­nia Dutch. So, if you are Ira Wagler’s fan, an avid Amer­i­can Stud­ies Blog read­er, or a stu­dent try­ing to pep up your pre­sen­ta­tion on the Amish, you can be sure to find ample food for thought.

Wish­ing for more? Then tune in next week for Part II.