I was in elementary school when I first learned about nouns. The teacher said that a noun was a person, place, or thing. Flipping this around, you can say that people are nouns. You might think this is obvious, even in an era in which grammar has been sidelined to some extent. But in my line of work, we frequently encounter authors who think that people are adjectives.
We have all seen this on television or read in the newspaper: law enforcement agents describe a “black male in his twenties” or a “white female in her fifties.” Another category in which this is prevalent is the scientist or doctor using an adjective to categorize a person, for example, “the subject was a depressive.” What these professions have in common is their emphasis on facts. There is the misconception, perhaps, that you are letting your emotions run away with you if you refer to a person as a noun. It lends an air of objectivity to what can really be subjective interpretation of facts.
A puzzling corollary to this is the recent phenomenon of using “woman” as an adjective but not “man.” We have “woman doctors” and many hope that Hillary Clinton will be the first “woman president.” But we wouldn’t call Jimmy Carter a “man president” and my father a “man professor.” I can only guess that this confusion of nouns and adjectives is because in days past being a female anything signified to some people inferiority, if not being downright laughable.
Who cares? Does it matter to anyone but editors and others who uphold the laws of grammar whether we use nouns or adjectives to describe people? I think it should.
In the first case of the misplaced adjective, calling a person an adjective—a diabetic, a schizophrenic—limits his or her humanity. It literally depersonalizes and also views someone through the lens of illness alone. The current trend in consumer health and psychology is to get away from this approach and say a person has schizophrenia or diabetes but is not equated to it.
In the second case, using a different turn of phrase for women and men doesn’t help grammar or equality. I shouldn’t need a different part of speech—woman editor—from that of a man in my profession. I am a woman (noun) and an editor (noun). When you combine these two elements, I am a female editor (noun and the adjective that modifies it) not a woman editor (noun noun).
I like the certitude and exactitude of adjectives and noun being in their rightful places. Years ago, a group formed to promote what it saw was the uplifting value of people was called simply Up with People. While I may not adhere to its beliefs on political matters, I share the idea that people should be celebrated. And so should places and things. In other words, up with nouns!
2012 was an exciting year for Project MUSE, and one that expanded our collection of scholarship dramatically. With the addition of books to our platform, the amount of content on MUSE more than doubled. Not to be outdone by its predecessor, 2013 is proving to be every bit as eventful!
In response to many requests from academic institutions, we’re offering a wider variety of book collections and purchase options this year to accommodate the often dramatically different research and budget needs of our library customers.
Building on our journal collection’s strength as a go-to resource for Area Studies content, MUSE now offers seven new Area Studies collections: African Studies, American Studies, Asian and Pacific Studies, Jewish Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and Russian and East European Studies. These interdisciplinary collections bring together books that facilitate an in-depth examination of the historical, cultural, political, and social forces shaping various world regions. We’ve also added Ecology and Evolution, which contains a range of natural history, environmental history, natural resource management, and human ecology titles.
Out of more than 23,000 books on MUSE, over 14,000 are now available for single title purchase through our partnership with YBP Library Services. More than three-quarters of our 83 participating UPCC publishers have signed on to this optional program. Announced in November 2012, the partnership between MUSE and YBP officially launched in March of this year.
Currently, 19 countries access books on MUSE, with the majority of usage coming from North America (60% in the United States and 12% in Canada). Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore round out the top five. Scholars in Norway, the United Kingdom, Korea, and Hong Kong are also accessing books, as well as a significant number in Bangladesh and El Salvador, as part of our developing country initiative.
Although much of the news coming out of MUSE in the past year has been about books, our journals program continues to thrive. Thirty-one new journals joined MUSE for 2013, from both new and current partners. The journal publishers themselves reflect the diversity of the platform’s content. Of the new journal publishers, three hail from the United Kingdom (Association for Scottish Literary Studies, Lawrence & Wishart, and the Society for Theatre Research) and two from Asia (the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies and the Chinese University Press in Hong Kong).
Our industry faces many economic challenges; and each year MUSE seemingly inevitably loses journals that move to a for-profit business model. Happily, we saw the reverse of this trend in several instances in 2013. Five of our new journals are part of a series previously published by a commercial outfit, including Steinbeck Review, which we’re welcoming back to the MUSE platform after a several-year absence.
While the trend of journals leaving not-for-profit publishers for commercial publishers is highly unlikely to cease completely, these journal acquisitions give us hope that more journals will follow in the steps of these titles.
And with our recently inked partnership with HighWire and plans to maximize the discoverability of content on our platform, the rest of 2013 at MUSE is shaping up to be as busy as its first few months!
Throughout the year, JHU Press authors, editors, and staff members are on the road, in the air, and on the air, getting the word out about our latest publications. As a new monthly feature of the blog, we’ll offer a round-up of the coming month’s events, interviews, and book signings at bookstores, libraries, museums, conferences, and other venues. We’ll aim to not be too Baltimore-centric (but they don’t call this Charm City for nothing!).
Come on out and enjoy these opportunities to connect with our authors, editors, and audiences. And, of course, we love it when you help spread the word. Here’s what’s happening in May:
8 May 2013, 6:30 p.m.
Book Talk & Signing - Kurt C. Schlichting Grand Central’s Engineer
New York Public Library, Mid-Manhattan Branch
New York, NY
Admission: Free; details
Hopkins Club Lunch & Book Talk – Mark Osteen Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream
Johns Hopkins Club, Homewood Campus
Baltimore, MD
Admission: $20; reservations required. Members contact the Club; friends of the Press contact Jack Holmes at 410-516-6928 or jmh@jhu.edu.
As the wife, research assistant, and sometimes coauthor of an ancient historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, I had expected to spend many hours in libraries, wandering through foreign museums, and climbing around ancient sites. However, I had not foreseen large groups of weapon-wielding students in our yard, or my husband, Gregory Aldrete, shooting arrows at them.
When one of Greg’s students—our coauthor, Scott Bartell—decided to make himself a replica of the armor that Alexander the Great is shown wearing on the famous “Alexander Mosaic” from Pompeii, none of us realized that the next six years of our lives would be dominated by the quest to understand and evaluate that armor. Known as the linothorax, it was a popular form of armor from at least the time of Homer through the Hellenistic period. Apparently made primarily out of linen, the armor had been afforded little attention by scholars because no extant specimens have survived. In order to appreciate how the linothorax might have been constructed and its effectiveness on the battlefield, we worked on reverse engineering it after extensive study of ancient images of linothorax-wearing warriors depicted in vase paintings, reliefs, sculptures, and tomb paintings. I spent countless hours in libraries examining every page of the hundreds of oversized volumes of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, which catalogs the Greek vases in museums around the world; I’m sure that the students assigned to reshelving duties during those weeks dreaded my arrival every morning. Every time we visited a museum, we kept our eyes peeled for possible linothorakes; and while one expects to find plenty represented in the museums of Greece and Italy, we were pleased to find them in Kansas City and Odessa (in the Ukraine) as well. Suddenly, as so often happens during research, the linothorax was everywhere.
We encountered some special challenges when constructing our linothorakes. At first, like fashion designers, we made numerous patterns out of paper and then cardboard, until we achieved our optimal design. Then came the tricky part. Because we wanted to employ only materials that would have been available in the ancient Mediterranean, we had to get a hold of handspun, handwoven linen. Since most linen these days is machine-made, we couldn’t just go to the local fabric store. However, we soon discovered that even linen purporting to be handwoven was still typically machine-harvested and processed using modern methods, such as treatment with chemicals. To achieve as much historical authenticity as possible, we needed linen made from flax that had been grown, harvested, and processed by hand as well, using only traditional methods. As we discovered, not many people have the dedication to do this. After much searching, we managed to find a woman who actually grew and harvested her own flax and then spun and wove it into linen, practically in our own back yard—in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Rabbit glue, which sounds more challenging, was actually easier to acquire, since artists who paint using traditional methods still prime canvases with it; we ordered it from an art supplies catalog, and merely needed to rehydrate and heat the rabbit powder in a double boiler.
Three versions of reconstructed linothorakes. The one on the left is modeled after the linothorax worn by Alexander the Great in the “Alexander Mosaic” from Pompeii.
Another challenge was perfecting the construction process. By trial and error, we discovered the ideal tools: a turkey baster to squirt the rabbit glue onto a piece of linen and a putty knife to spread it evenly. We also figured out—the hard way—that the ancients probably cut each layer of linen to the proper shape before gluing them together. For our first linothorax, we glued together 15 layers of linen to form a one centimeter-thick slab, and then tried to cut out the required shape. Large shears were defeated; bolt cutters failed. The only way we were ultimately able to cut the laminated linen slab was with an electric saw equipped with a blade for cutting metal. At least this confirmed our suspicion that linen armor would have been extremely tough. We also found out that linen stiffened with rabbit glue strikes dogs as in irresistibly tasty rabbit-flavored chew toy, and that our Labrador retriever should not be left alone with our research project.
While we subjected our laminated linen patches to hundreds of carefully measured arrow tests, we also engaged in some less scientific testing of their durability. Greg’s students enthusiastically stabbed, hacked, slashed, and pounded them with various maces, axes, spears, and swords, helping us to demonstrate what kind of protection laminated linen armor would have provided. While all of this mayhem (both scientifically controlled and free-form) convinced us that our linothorax was ancient-battlefield-ready, we still felt compelled to try a real-life scenario, so Scott donned the armor and Greg shot him. And while we had confidence in our armor, our relief was still considerable when the arrowhead stuck and lodged in the armor’s outer layers, a safe distance away from flesh.
The aim of our research had been to go back in time, reconstruct something over a millennium old, and experience what it would have been like to use it. The process of doing so certainly led to some memorable and unexpected experiences for all of us.
In case you missed it somehow, today is Earth Day. Begun in 1970 in reaction to the growing awareness that the pollutants associated with the industrialized world—from oil spills to lead gasoline to factory discharges into the soil and water—were poisoning the environment for humans, animals, and plants alike, April 22 has become a day of action for environmentalists and a day for those of us more casually concerned with life as we know it to pay attention to and appreciate the natural world. Part of that appreciation, in our view, certainly includes the bounty of wild edible plants one can find just about anywhere.
It just so happens that advance copies of The Quick Guide to Wild Edible Plants hit our offices at the end of last week. Featuring over 200 color illustrations, this handy book, coauthored by botanists Lytton John Musselman and Harold J. Wiggins, explains how to safely identify, gather, and prepare delicious dishes from readily available wild plants—and clearly indicates which ones to avoid. The plants discussed are common, easy to identify, and do not have any poisonous look-alikes. And the recipes themselves—field-tested by the authors and their students—are easy to prepare, call for just a few ingredients (three to five components for most), and require no special equipment, though the book notes when food dehydrators, food processors, and similar modern-day appliances would greatly speed the process. Try these on for size:
Field Garlic Powder
Ingredients: 20 Field Garlic bulbs
Directions: Carefully cut away the outer brown, fibrous layers from each bulb. Then cut each bulb into small pieces and put them into a food dessicator to dry for a day or more. It is essential to keep the garlic dry because the preparation will easily absorb water and then be difficult to grind. Alternatively, place the small pieces of Field Garlic bulbs onto a baking sheet and dry in an oven at 200°F until hard and dry. Then grind in a mortar and pestle. This may take some time, as the dried pieces are usually hard and difficult to grind. The effort is worth it, since you now have one of nature’s tastiest condiments.
Manna Grass with ripe grains in midsummer.
Red Sorrel Pilaf Ingredients: 1 cup fresh Red Sorrel leaves
1 cup cleaned, roasted Manna Grass grains
2 cups water
salt to taste
Directions: Bring the Red Sorrel leaves to a boil. Reduce heat and add roasted Manna Grass grains. Boil until tender (about 15 minutes)
Salt and Vinegar Strips
The young, tender leaves of Curly Dock are best in winter and earlt spring.
Ingredients: 30 Glasswort stems with tough lower portions removed
5 large, tender Curly Dock leaves
Directions: Wrap the Glasswort stems in the Curly Dock leavs. Steam for 10 minutes. Serve cold. If the Curly Dock leaves (which add the vinegar flavor) are not young and tender, steam or blanch them before using.
Fungus Chicken Fingers
Ingredients: Chicken of the Woods mushrooms, trimmed into strips approximately three inches long and 1/2 inch wide.
Directions: Simply sauté in vegetable oil until tender and serve. It is difficult to overcook Chicken of the Woods mushrooms
There you have it, a complete meal of foraged food, with plenty of leftover Field Garlic Powder to use however you like! And since The Quick Guide to Wild Edible Plants is by no means a resource for survivalists, we do want to pass along this bit of wisdom from the book: “What should you do if you are lost and without food? The best thing to do is climb a tree and look for a fast food outlet because survival food is neither fast nor tasty.”
I suppose that every historian approaches a research subject, even a new one about which he or she might know very little, with certain expectations. Some of us do much more: several years ago, a young historian shocked me with his very ambitious itinerary for research, writing, and publication. When I asked him how he expected to conduct his research so quickly, he replied that he knew what he wanted to find; not worried about finding contrary evidence that would contradict his preconceptions, he would simply record what he needed to confirm his thesis and move on to the next collection, the next library. Few historians, one hopes, are so mercenary (or, as my students like to put on their resumes, “goal-oriented”), but certainly it is the rare researcher who approaches a new project with no preconceptions.
I had some of my own assumptions when I began work on Being American in Europe. I feared that I might be very bored. More than one person has asked me if reading the letters, diaries, and travelogues of early Americans isn’t unlike watching the interminable slide show of your niece’s Disney vacation. Thematically, I knew that the spread-eagled nationalism of the pre-Civil War era makes our era’s sometimes cringe-worthy patriotism seem mild by comparison. I thought the paradoxical combination of excessive self-regard and sense of inferiority vis-à-vis the Old World would produce among Americans abroad a positively belligerent attitude toward Europe. Sometimes I was right on both counts. In my worst moments with the sources, I pined for something as banal as an album of photos with Mickey, Minnie, and the Princesses. There is nothing that makes an afternoon seem quite so endless as a folder full of dull travel letters. I also came across quite a few figures that in a later era would be described as “ugly Americans.” Being American in Europe opens and closes with such a figure, Philadelphian Harry McCall, who sat in cafés across Britain and the Continent, writing letters that shot venom at the men and women who passed by his table.
More often, though, I was wrong (and was delighted to find myself mistaken). Many of my sources were not only vividly descriptive of European scenes, but marvelously opinionated—and opinions are a cultural historian’s bread and butter. Additionally, apropos of my second fear, these opinions were also surprisingly self-critical. Travelers, it turned out, did not solely venture abroad on a mission to vindicate the United States against the corrupt Old World. They were certainly anxious to justify their young republic, but they were eager to do so on Europe’s terms: they wanted not to separate themselves from western civilization, but to situate themselves within it. The central theme of Being American in Europe is how travelers navigated the tension between the nationalist impulse to define a distinctive American identity against the secular and religious despotisms of the Old World and the post-colonial wish to orient the United States within western civilization.
This brings me back to the question of expectation. The discovery that Americans were not implacably hostile to Europe set me free. It forced me to abandon the hypothesis that had governed my early research. It compelled me to allow the sources to determine my thesis—a commonsensical orientation, I know, but one (see the anecdote above) that historians oftentimes resist, to their peril. Admittedly, I should have known better. I came to the topic of travel by way of my first book, An American Aristocracy, in which I studied southern travelers to Philadelphia in the era of the sectional conflict. Then, following the scholarship, I expected to find planter women and men interpreting Philadelphia through a haze of prejudices culled from proslavery literature. Instead, I found cosmopolitan people who thrived amidst the energy of America’s second-largest city. I suppose that experience should have cautioned me against putting too much stock in preconceptions. But, when preconceptions fall, they fall hard—and the result can force a writer to let the sources speak candidly to him or her. As a result, I was able to see that the task of being American in Europe was a lot more complicated than I had imagined it to be.
The JHU Press has been publishing books on Amish and Anabaptist culture for over 45 years. With this in mind, Donald B. Kraybill, senior fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College and the driving force behind our groundbreaking series in Anabaptist and Pietist studies, invited editor Greg Nicholl and head publicist Kathy Alexander to spend a few days immersed in Amish life in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They were joined by Karen Johnson-Weiner and Steven Nolt, both prominent scholars of Anabaptist culture and coauthors, with Dr. Kraybill, of the Press’s forthcoming book, The Amish. This week, we’re happy to share the impressions Greg and Kathy took away from their “Amish immersion” this past January, as well as Professor Johnson-Weiner’s take on the whole experience, which kicked-off this three-part blog series on Wednesday.
By Greg Nicholl, acquisitions editor
A few colleagues and I joined the authors of The Amish for a three day trip to Lancaster County, which the group affectionately dubbed our “Amish Immersion.” In the days prior, I wondered what I would need to do to prepare for the excursion. I have been working on Anabaptist books for some time now, but this was new territory. This was physically placing the reader face-to-face with the subject of our books without the distance afforded by the printed page. I was worried that I would speak or act in a way that would offend our Amish hosts. I also certainly didn’t want to be seen as just another tourist who had come to ogle. But in a sense, wasn’t that what we were doing? The phrase “Don’t tap on the glass” ran through my head again and again.
As the editor of Amish books, it is important for me to see and experience Amish culture firsthand in order to better understand the books that we publish. This insight also allows me to be a better editor for our authors. But this trip offered me even more: it provided me with knowledge of a community not often experienced on such a personal level. The three days I spent in Lancaster County—during which I visited Amish stores, such as a quilt shop and a flower shop; thriving businesses, including a stove factory and wood shop; and the dining tables of everyday families who opened up their homes to us—will forever rank among the top five experiences of my life.
The excursion was coordinated by Donald B. Kraybill, Distinguished Professor and Senior Fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. I continue to be in awe of the respect this man has garnered within both the scholarly community and the Amish community. This trip was no different. Every person we met in every house and business invited us in, offered us coffee, and opened up their personal lives to us. One Amish gentleman even mentioned that he turns to Don’s books to learn why he and his family do the things that they do. (He may not know the reason behind a particular tradition, but Don and all the authors in the series certainly do.) This is how knowledgeable our authors are about the Amish.
Coauthors Karen M. Johnson-Weiner (read her take on the immersion trip here) and Steven M. Nolt were invaluable in providing information as well. When we asked our three experts questions, we always received a well-rounded answer. Karen informed us about the ways of the more conservative Swartzentruber Amish, who live in upstate New York. While the Lancaster Amish may use battery-powered lamps above their dining room tables, for instance, the Swartzentruber communities rely solely on kerosene lamps or candles. Steve, who grew up next to these Lancaster farms, was also able to give us insight into the local traditions as opposed to the traditions of Amish communities in Indiana, where he is a professor at Goshen College.
While the things I experienced in those three days could fill multiple blog entries, I will distill it down to this: Yes, we ate lots of pie. Yes, we rode in a buggy. And, yes, we were tourists looking in on a community most of us had only ever heard about. But ask any one of us what happened on October 2, 2006, at the West Nickel Mines School, or tell us to locate the town of Nickel Mines on a map, and we will tell you about the five pear trees planted alongside the road and what they stand for, and about how a community turned to forgiveness in the wake of the shooting. We can also tell you that there is much more to the Amish than what is portrayed on television: they are a community that embraces family and friends and holds tight to their traditions and beliefs as they continue to move forward.
Interested in knowing more about the Amish now? Check out our two digital shorts taken from The Amish, From Rumspringa to Marriage and The Amish and Technology, for only $2.99 each.And read Kathy Alexander’s take on the trip here.
The JHU Press has been publishing books on Amish and Anabaptist culture for over 45 years. With this in mind, Donald B. Kraybill, senior fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College and the driving force behind our groundbreaking series in Anabaptist and Pietist studies, invited editor Greg Nicholl and head publicist Kathy Alexander to spend a few days immersed in Amish life in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They were joined by Karen Johnson-Weiner and Steven Nolt, both prominent scholars of Anabaptist culture and coauthors, with Dr. Kraybill, of the Press’s forthcoming book, The Amish. This week, we’re happy to share the impressions Greg and Kathy took away from their “Amish immersion” this past January, as well as Professor Johnson-Weiner’s take on the whole experience, which kicked-off this three-part blog series on Wednesday.
By Kathy Alexander, head publicist
As I prepared for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I peppered our authors, all leading experts in the field, with questions. What should we wear? When we have dinner in Amish homes, will we sit at the same table? Any major no-no’s we should avoid? I certainly didn’t want to unknowingly offend our hosts! Their instructions were: wear dark colors; avoid makeup or flashy jewelry. Beyond that, we should be ourselves—but don’t use the word “publicity.” (Note to self: Leave my business cards at home.)
Finally, the day arrived. I couldn’t believe how excited I was. I’d visited Lancaster County numerous times in my life, but it had always been as a tourist or as a shopper (there are great outlets in the area). Our authors had arranged for us to tour a couple of farms, a wood shop, a stove factory, a quilt shop, a bookstore, a school, and an Amish restaurant; we’d also have dinner with a couple of Amish families. They’d even obtained permission for me to go for a buggy ride and to help with the chores: feeding and brushing the horses, sweeping out the barn. Normally, this is not what I would consider fun, but, in this instance, it was all part of the immersion experience.
I went to Lancaster looking for the differences between the Amish and the non-Amish world, and there were many: the presence of gas lamps, horses and buggies, and homemade clothes in muted colors that all looked alike; the absence of family pictures, street lights, TVs, and radios. What I didn’t expect was the openness! Our hosts welcomed us into their homes and workplaces as friends. When we entered a house, they brought out a stack of folding chairs and put them in a circle so that we could talk. They explained how they converted 120v electricity from 12v batteries, how they purchased material for quilts, how far they shipped their products, how they taught their children, and on and on. Nothing seemed to be off limits.
They had only one question for us: “Have you seen the show about the Amish mafia?” They were very concerned with the way the media was portraying the Amish, and had no way to counter the perception. Our authors, Donald B. Kraybill, Steve M. Nolt, and Karen M. Johnson-Weiner (read her take on our immersion trip here), have studied the Amish for over twenty-five years. They have assured me that the Amish mafia is a fabrication of the media.
Now, as I look back on the experience, my lasting impression is not of the differences that I found but of the similarities. The Amish belong to a close-knit community. They love their family and friends, and cherish their children. They are also very happy to help others. In shop after shop, I saw mimeographed flyers asking for volunteers to help rebuild houses destroyed by Hurricane Sandy (the Amish had hired buses to take them to New Jersey and New York). They also have an annual fundraising event to help the people of Haiti (and no, they have no mission in Haiti to recruit new members). They do these things because someone needs help, and they are happy to provide it.
What an absolutely eye-opening experience. I can’t wait for our new book to come out. There is so much more I want to learn about this loving people.
The JHU Press has been publishing books on Amish and Anabaptist culture for over 45 years. With this in mind, Donald B. Kraybill, senior fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College and the driving force behind our groundbreaking series in Anabaptist and Pietist studies, invited editor Greg Nicholl and head publicist Kathy Alexander to spend a few days immersed in Amish life in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They were joined by Karen M. Johnson-Weiner and Steven M. Nolt, both prominent scholars of Anabaptist culture and coauthors, with Dr. Kraybill, of the Press’s forthcoming book, The Amish. This week, we’re happy to share the impressions Greg and Kathy took away from their “Amish immersion” this past January, as well as Professor Johnson-Weiner’s take on the whole experience, which kicks off this three-part blog series.
Guest post by Karen Johnson-Weiner
In preparing for the “Amish immersion” in Lancaster County, I wondered a lot about what my JHU Press colleagues would think. I had stayed in different Amish homes in the course of doing fieldwork, and only one of these experiences seemed like something one could do with folks who’d never experienced Amish life. I’d spent time with Amish friends in Southwestern Michigan, and their home had indoor plumbing. It was the most upscale Amish home I was ever in. Most of my Amish stays have been far more primitive. There was the home in Ohio, for example, where the outhouse was about 20 yards away and could be reached only by using the little plank bridge to cross a little stream. Not user friendly at 3 a.m.! And there was a stay in Missouri with folks so plain they used no machines. In the Mohawk Valley, New York, I took my bath in a galvanized steel tub in the wash house—not something one could do every day. In fact, in the past when traveling for fieldwork, I routinely brought a scarf to cover my hair and planned a hotel visit at the end of my stay so that I could stand under a shower for a long time. (I thought that would be only fair to anyone I sat next to on a plane!) Somehow, I didn’t think the Lancaster County visit would be like this.
To be honest, I had no idea what to expect from our immersion. I’d spent a lot of time doing work in Lancaster County, but mostly with Mennonites in the Groffdale Conference—the so-called Wenger Mennonites. Like the Old Order Amish, Wenger Mennonites use horses and buggies (all black, in contrast to the Lancaster Amish gray), but their homes have electricity and telephones. The Lancaster Amish were new to me—and much different from those with whom I work.
Harvested ice blocks being pulled by a horses at a Swartzentruber community. Photo by Karen Johnson-Weiner.
From the beginning, there were surprises. I found it hard at first to recognize Amish homes. The presence of multiple homes on the same site—dawdy houses indicating multiple generations—was a giveaway, but there were fewer obvious indications of Amish ownership than I am used to. I have done much of my work in ultra-conservative Swartzentruber communities, where all homes are built to the same pattern. In fact, when someone buys an “English” or non-Amish home, they quickly begin making renovations so that it will look like a Swartzentruber home: white, two-floors, a front porch that runs the width of the house. The Lancaster homes were all different! And landscaped! And many had solar panels. Businesses, too, were different—larger, powered by large generators, some with a sizable work force, all with telephones, some with computers. These are a sharp contrast to the small family businesses of the most conservative communities, in which the size of a generator—if one were even permitted—would be strictly controlled. I remember that once, in a conservative Swiss community, a young furniture maker installed a larger generator. (In contrast to Lancaster builders, who use pneumatically-driven machines, his powered belts that ran machines.) This brought a visit from the ministers, who basically told him that his generator was too big and violated the Ordnung, or discipline, of the church. The young man ended up leaving his community. Yet his big generator would have been swamped by some we saw.
In the guest house there were propane lights, which were new to me. These aren’t permitted in many more conservative communities, and I appreciate their brightness. From minute one of our immersion, I was confronting the diversity that is the Amish world!
The Johns Hopkins University Press has reached an agreement with Stanford University’s HighWire Press to transition to the HighWire Open Platform as the new digital hosting and delivery platform for Project MUSE.
Over the past year, JHU Press and its digital publishing unit Project MUSE have conducted an extensive search for a technology partner to assist in expanding the capacity of Project MUSE to support its current content offering and allow MUSE to pursue opportunities in developing new products, business models and service offerings for its growing community of more than 200 publishers and 2700 libraries.
“HighWire brings a wealth of experience in hosting content for publishers and MUSE will leverage that experience in developing a similar hosting model for the humanities and social sciences,” said Dean Smith, Director of Project MUSE. “Our vision is to deliver the definitive state-of-the art research environment in servicing our communities of publishers, libraries, and researchers.”
“HighWire is committed to the widespread dissemination of scholarly research and to the latest advancements in information technology. They have developed a sophisticated platform and protocol for constant improvement that has served the needs of academic publishers large and small,” said Kathleen Keane, Director of JHU Press. “The Johns Hopkins University Press shares the objective of making scholarly research content available and usable.”
HighWire’s history tracks very closely with that of Project MUSE, with similar missions and both having launched in 1995. Several of HighWire’s publishing partners (Duke University Press, The Oxford University Press, and the University of Wisconsin Press) also have content on the MUSE platform. “We are proud to welcome such a prestigious leader in the humanities and social sciences to the HighWire community,” said Tom Rump, Managing Director of HighWire. “We are excited to provide our innovative hosting platform to Project MUSE to ensure the highest levels of content integration, discoverability, and end-user engagement. Given the deep understanding of their customers’ needs and their vision for the future of ebooks and publishing, MUSE will be an inspired digital partner.”
The successful expansion of the Project MUSE publishing program is highly dependent on an advanced delivery infrastructure that combines rich functionality, customizability and a collaborative relationship with an innovative vendor of proven track record such as HighWire. This dynamic relationship will enable Project MUSE to create new products, incorporate new content types such as online references, foster personalization and collaboration, and continue to provide a sustainable model for libraries, publishers and researchers.
A division of the JHU Press, Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social science content for the scholarly community. Since 1995 the MUSE journal collections have supported a wide array of research needs at academic, public, and school libraries worldwide. MUSE is a trusted source of complete, full-text versions of 580 scholarly journals and more than 20,000 books from the University Press Content Consortium (UPCC). Over 200 of the world’s leading university presses and scholarly societies currently contribute content to MUSE.
At the forefront of strategic scholarly publishing, HighWire Press provides the latest in digital content development and hosting solutions to the scholarly community through its ground-breaking HighWire Open Platform. A division of the Stanford University Libraries, HighWire partners with influential societies, university presses, and other independent publishers, sharing ideas and innovations in publishing, and producing definitive online versions of high-impact, peer-reviewed journals, books, reference works, and other scholarly content. Since its inception in 1995, HighWire has embodied a commitment to helping publishers disseminate their content to the widest possible audience, facilitating the research communication process to meet the ever-changing needs of today’s online and mobile readers.
