Donald B. Kraybill Collection | Earl H. and Anita F. Hess Archives and Special Collections

Kraybill, Donald B.

Donald B. Kraybill, PhD was born in Mount Joy, PA in 1945, where he lived until the age of 8, when he moved to a dairy farm two miles southeast of Lancaster city. When he was sixteen, he moved to another dairy farm near the border of Berks and Chester Counties. Kraybill was raised Mennonite, although later in life he joined the Elizabethtown Church of the Brethren congregation in 1980. He graduated from Lancaster Mennonite High School in 1963. He attended Millersville University for two years and then received his BA from Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA in 1967. After serving with Mennonite Voluntary Service as a conscientious objector, he then received his MA and PhD in sociology from Temple University in 1971 and 1976 respectively. While still in graduate school, Kraybill accepted a full-time position teaching sociology at Elizabethtown College in 1971. Kraybill worked at Elizabethtown College until 1996 eventually becoming sociology department chair until 1989, and then director of the newly opened Young Center.  In 1996, Kraybill became the provost at Messiah College, but returned to Elizabethtown College in 2002, where he served as senior fellow in the Young Center until his retirement in 2016. Throughout his career, Kraybill has written dozens of professional articles, and as of 2017, he has written, co-written, or edited 29 books, 15 of which concentrate on Plain sect communities. His works have been translated into at least eight languages. Kraybill was the academic advisor to a two-hour documentary The Amish produced by the American Experience, which aired on PBS. He also served as the expert witness for the prosecution in the 2012 Federal Hate Crimes Trial involving beard-cutting attacks in Bergholtz, OH. He is the founding series editor of Young Center books in Anabaptist and Pietist studies (2006-2016) with thirty scholarly books published by Johns Hopkins University press. He has received several grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.