Dr. Mary S. Sprunger, Chair and Professor of History at EMU, has been teaching World, Women’s and European History since 1992. Her scholarship on Dutch Anabaptists and Mennonites in the 16th- and 17th-centuries has led to many extended stays in Amsterdam. She has also lived in England and Germany and travelled extensively in Europe as well as Turkey and Morocco. In 2018 she co-led an EMU intercultural semester in China.
“History comes alive on site, so I’m really looking forward to connecting story with place. The 500th anniversary gives us a unique opportunity for reflection on a tour like this. In my Mennonite History and Thought course, I love getting students to think about how the past informs the present and how the present informs what we look for in the past. What do we want to take away from the early Anabaptist movements, and what do we do with those things in our history that we would rather forget? Both are important as we confront present realities and look to the future.”
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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.
