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By Tanner Simon '20
Collection Overview
Title: Karen Johnson-Weiner Amish Doll Collection, 1991-2011
ID: RG01/Art-0002
Extent: 19.0 Items
Arrangement: 19 dolls in 5 boxes.
Date Acquired: 08/25/2015
Scope and Contents of the Materials
Collection of cloth dolls primarily made by Swartzentruber Amish women. Item descriptions include notes from interview with Johnson-Weiner.
Collection Historical Note
As of 2018, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner is a Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology Emerita at SUNY Potsdam in Potsdam, NY, where she taught courses in linguistic anthropology. She received a B.A. in 1975 from Hope College (Holland, MI) and an M.A. from Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI) in 1976. She earned her Ph.D. in linguistics from McGill University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) in 1984 and has been studying patterns of language use and cultural maintenance in Amish and Mennonite communities for over 30 years. Her first book, Train up a Child: Old Order Amish and Mennonite Schools, was published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 2007, and her second, New York Amish: Life in the Plain Communities of the Empire State, in 2010 by Cornell University Press, with a second edition appearing in 2017. With Donald B. Kraybill and Steven M. Nolt, she is the author of The Amish (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). Johnson-Weiner has also authored a number of articles on Old Order language, culture, and education, including most recently articles on the importance of the 1972 Supreme Court decision in Wisconsin v. Yoder et al. for Amish education in the 21st century (JAPAS 2015) and on Amish women and entrepreneurship (American Studies Journal 2017).
Administrative Information
Repository:
Earl H. and Anita F. Hess Archives and Special Collections
Acquisition Source:
Karen Johnson-Weiner
Acquisition Method:
Young Center gift
Box and Folder Listing
Browse by Box:
[Box 1],
[
Box 2],
[
Box 3],
[
Box 4],
[
Box 5],
[
All]
- Box 1
- Item 1: Schwartzentruber female doll, 2000
- Schwartzentruber female doll, plum dress with plum pinafore, cream colored tube body, 11” long. Made for Karen by Mrs. Jacob Weaver (Delilah). Karen has known her since she is 5 years old (1958). More complex than typical Schwartzentruber doll, because sewn tube body as opposed to rolled up piece of cloth. Delilah has eleven children. Her husband, Jacob Weaver, is a builder. Her mother was first Schwartzentruber Amish woman Karen met. Jacob and Fanny Swartzentruber were her parents, and the whole family lives in Rensselaer Falls, New York. Doll made around 2000.
- Item 2: Schwartzentruber female doll
- Schwartzentruber female doll, green dress with green pinafore, white and black tube body, 11” long. Karen recalls that this doll was made by Mrs. Roy Keim (Lizzie).
- Item 3: Schwartzentruber male doll
- see description of item 4
Browse by Box:
[Box 1],
[
Box 2],
[
Box 3],
[
Box 4],
[
Box 5],
[
All]
