Dr. Kimberly D. Schmidt is an Affiliate Professor of Gender History at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) and directed EMU’s DC program, the Washington Community Scholars’ Center, for over twenty years. She has a long and demonstrated engagement with women’s history, especially on topics relating to Anabaptist and Mennonite women and gender dynamics in Mennonite communities. Her current research focuses on the intersections between Mennonite and Cheyenne women’s history, 1880-1950. She has lived in German-speaking areas of Europe and has led Reformation History tours for EMU students, most recently in 2017, the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. “I never tired of witnessing student transformations in identity and thinking that resulted from deeply engaging and significant cross-cultural and history travel opportunities. I intend to foster transformative experiences for tour participants in 2025.”
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THIS IS A CUSTOM PROGRAM. Registration by invitation only.
Explore Anabaptist beginnings on a European tour with faculty, alumni, and friends of Eastern Mennonite University. Seize the unique opportunity to visit Anabaptist sites in Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and the Netherlands with a special emphasis on how women and peasants shaped the Anabaptist movement. See the house outside of Vienna where an Anabaptist woman was chained to her kitchen to keep her from preaching in the streets. Have coffee in an Anabaptist noblewoman’s castle in Kitzbühel. Visit the magisterial center of Tirol where Anabaptist women who were unable to escape Habsburg jailers were held and questioned. Tie these stories in with those of other significant Anabaptist figures and sites as you visit the Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof) where Jakob Hutter was burned, Conrad Grebel’s house, Felix Manz’s mother’s house, a cave where Anabaptists worshipped in secret, and much more. Along the way, take in some of Europe’s finest cultural landmarks like Vienna’s Ringstrasse or the towering Baroque-style Melk Abbey. The main portion of the tour ends in Zürich, where Anabaptists from all over the world will join together to celebrate 500 years of Anabaptism. On an optional tour extension, make your way up to the Netherlands to see Menno Simmons’ sites in Friesland, with stops in Strasbourg and Munster on the way. We end in Amsterdam and Haarlem where we will contrast radical, militant Anabaptists with their respectable bourgeois descendants. Historians Mary Sprunger and Kimberly Schmidt will lead with historical expertise and extensive personal travel experience.
