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EDITORS

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Cory Anderson
EDITOR IN CHIEF

Sociology/Demography | The Pennsylvania State University

Editor Cory Anderson is co-founder of JAPAS and NIH-NICHD postdoctoral fellow at Penn State’s Population Research Institute. Anderson is broadly knowledgeable about the plain populations and has particular interests in theory, demography, peoplehood, and the field of Amish studies. As a religious convert and insider-outsider to the plain Anabaptists, his perspectives are informed by sustained, daily interaction. He has published in numerous respected journals including Social Science & Medicine, Population Studies, Sociology, and The Sociological Quarterly. Publications are listed at Academia and ORCID.

 

Amish Population Health Review Series


Critical Analysis of the Field of Amish Studies

Reschly

Steven Reschly
ASSISTANT EDITOR

History | Truman State University

Steven Reschly is professor emeritus of history at Truman State University and studies the history of the Amish in America. He has been active on the editorial board since JAPAS's inception and stepped into the role of assistant editor in 2019.

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  • Reschly, Steven. 2000. The Amish on the Iowa Prairie: 1840-1910. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

  • Zimmerman Umble, Diane, Kimberly Schmidt, and Steven Reschly. 2002. Strangers at Home: Amish and Mennonite Women in History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

  • Reschly, Steven. 2017. "Paradigmatic Paradigm Problems: Theory Issues in Amish Studies." Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies 5(1):66-81.

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Rosanna Hess
COPY EDITOR

Health | Independent Scholar | Malone University

Rosanna Hess was a nursing instructor with a focus on research for many years, on faculty at Malone University. She takes a holistic, qualitative approach to understanding health practices among the Amish with a particular interest in burn care. She has published her findings in the Journal of Transcultural Nursing, Journal of Holistic Nursing, and JAPAS.

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Andrea Borella

Anthropology | Independent scholar | University of Turin

Andrea Borella is an independent scholar who received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Turin, Italy, where he currently works as administrative staff. He is the author of Gli Amish. In his native Italy and abroad, he has spoken on and written many articles about the Amish. â€‹

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Elizabeth Cooksey

Sociology and Demography | The Ohio State University

Elizabeth Cooksey is a professor of sociology and director of the CHRR at The Ohio State University. As a demographer, she is particularly interested in Amish demographic structure and change, and the influence that Amish population growth has on patterns of migration, the development of new Amish settlements, their effects on Amish life and the English communities they interact with. For the past 15 years, she has been working to create a large database of Amish communities.
 

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Berit Jany

German | University of Colorado-Boulder

Berit Jany is senior instructor and coordinator of the undergraduate German language program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research interests include early Anabaptism in (German) literature and German-Americana studies with a focus on historical and contemporary religious groups of German speakers in North America. Having a multi-linguistic, -cultural, and -denominational background, she brings a strongly rooted interdisciplinary perspective to her work.
 

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Katherine Jellison

History and Gender Studies | Ohio University

Katherine Jellison is professor of history and history department chairperson at Ohio University. She is co-chairperson of the Rural Women’s Studies Association and past president of the Agricultural History Society. Her research centers on gender issues in American consumer culture, and her publications include Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1913-1963 (1993), It’s Our Day: America’s Love Affair with the White Wedding, 1945-2005 (2008), and numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is currently working with Steven D. Reschly on a study of Old Order Amish women’s production and consumption activities during the Great Depression. 
 

  • Jellison, Katherine, and Steven Reschly. 2020. "Working Together: Women and Men on the Amish Family Farm in 1930s Lancaster County, Pennsylvania." Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies 8(2):113-24.

  • Jellison, Katherine. 2014. "Amish Women and the Household Economy during the Great Depression." Mennonite Quarterly Review 88(1):97-106.

  • Jellison, Katherine. 2002. "The Chosen Women: The Amish and the New Deal." Pp. 102-18 in Strangers at Home: Amish and Mennonite Women in History, edited by Kimberly Schmidt, Diane Zimmerman Umble, and Steven Reschly. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Natalie Jolly

Sociology | University of Washington

Natalie Jolly is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Washington Tacoma.  After spending several years apprenticing with a midwife in central Pennsylvania, she has an ongoing interest in Amish homebirth, midwifery, and women's health more generally. Natalie is interested in Amish women's social position and in gender norms; both of which can help us understand how women (and men) live in plain society.
 

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Jeffrey Longhofer

Social Work | Rutgers University

Jeffrey Longhofer is a Professor in the Rutgers University School of Social Work and has published several social work volumes with Oxford, Palgrave MacMillan, and Routledge. He has started important debates in plain Anabaptist research regarding agricultural sustainability, the link between genetics and mental illness, and structural systems of the Mennonites, Hutterites, and Amish.
 

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Martin Lutz

Economic History | Humboldt University of Berlin

Martin Lutz joined Humboldt University's Department of History in October 2012, where he is a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer of social and economic history. His research interests include the influence of religion in modern economic history, the history of globalization, business history and neo-institutional theory. Martin's current research looks at religion and ethnicity's influence on economic activity. In analyzing the history of Mennonite, Amish, and Hutterite communities, he tackles the question of how these Anabaptist groups adjusted to the modern market economy in the United States and Canada in the 19th and 20th centuries.
 

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Braxton Mitchell

Medicine and Epidemiology | University of Maryland

Braxton Mitchell is professor of medicine and epidemiology / public health at the University of Maryland. He has published extensively about the Amish, genetics, and health, and is a leader of UM's Amish Research Program.
 

Christopher Petrovich

Theology | Independent Scholar

Christopher Petrovich is an independent scholar who is a long-term convert to the Amish/Amish-Mennonite tradition. His primary interests include history of Christianity, systematic theology, and social change. As an “insider” now living abroad, his research benefits from living at the rough edge between sermonic discourses on mission work and the limitations of planting a new community on foreign soil.
 

Dan Raber

History | Ohio Amish Library

Dan Raber serves on the board of the Ohio Amish Library and is a member of the Old Order Amish.

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Carel Roessingh

Anthropology | VU University-Amsterdam

Carel Roessingh studied cultural anthropology and received his Ph.D. at the University of Utrecht. His Ph.D. research was on the Belizean Garifuna and ethnicity. In 2002, he started a research project with some of his students on the organizational activities of the Mennonites in Belize. One of the main issues is the question of how the different Mennonite communities navigate between their religious principles and their business activities with people or organizations in the Belizean Society. He worked as an Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Organization Sciences. Nowadays he is retired, but still works freelance at the department of Organization Sciences, supervising students while they are doing their research and writing their Masters Thesis.
 

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Byran Smucker

Statistics | Miami University (Ohio)

Byran Smucker is an associate professor of Statistics at Miami University. As a statistician, his primary research interests are in the design and analysis of experiments as well as applied predictive modeling. He has also been involved in a wide variety of statistical consulting projects. Dr. Smucker was born into a conservative Anabaptist family and continues to embrace this tradition. Additionally, he has served as a non-resident adjunct professor at Sattler College.

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Michael Sauder 

Health | Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health

Michael Sauder works as a hospital medicine doctor with Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, and holds an adjunct appointment at Temple University. He earned a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University and also in philosophy of medicine from King’s College, London.  He is a member of the Old Order River Brethren and is a monthly columnist for the widely read Amish periodical Family Life.

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Vlatka Škender

Anthropology | Independent Scholar

Vlatka Škender is a philosopher, social anthropologist, and religious studies scholar trained at the universities of Zagreb, Heidelberg and Münster. Aside from conservative Anabaptism and
social-cosmological reproduction of Amish society, her academic interests encompass
anthropological theories of religion, Louis Dumont’s system of thought, and qualitative social
research.
 

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Susan Trollinger

Rhetoric and Communication | University of Dayton

Susan Trollinger has published in the areas of classical rhetoric, feminist rhetoric, visual rhetoric, Protestant fundamentalism and evangelicalism, and young Earth creationism. Her book, Selling the Amish: The Tourism of Nostalgia (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) offers an analysis of the visual rhetoric of tourism in Amish Country in Ohio. Her book, co-authored with William Trollinger, Jr., Righting America at the Creation Museum (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016) provides a close reading as well as visual/rhetorical and theological analysis of the Creation Museum, which has attracted millions of visitors and is having a profound impact on what it means to be Christian in America.

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  • Trollinger, Susan and William Trollinger, Jr. 2017. "The Bible and Creationism.” The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America. Ed. Paul Gutjhar. New York: Oxford University Press. 216-228.

  • Trollinger, Susan and William Trollinger, Jr. 2016. Righting America at the Creation Museum. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

  • Trollinger, Susan. 2012. Selling the Amish: The Tourism of Nostalgia. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

  • Biesecker, Susan. 2008. "Heritage Versus History: Amish Tourism in Two Ohio Towns." Pp. 111-30 in The Amish and the Media, edited by Diane Zimmerman Umble and David Weaver-Zercher. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

  • Biesecker, Susan. 2000. "Tourism in Holmes County and the Ministry of Behalt." Mennonite Historical Bulletin 61(1):1-6.

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