Kim Schmidt

Kimberly D. Schmidt is associate professor of history and director of the Washington Community Scholars’ Center. She received her Ph.D. in American history from Binghamton University in 1995. Publications include the volume, “Strangers at Home: Amish and Mennonite Women in History,” from The Johns Hopkins University Press. Kimberly divides her scholarly interests between the history of social movements in the U.S. and Amish and Mennonite women’s social and religious history. She is particularly interested in accessing the histories of social movements and poor people’s experiences through various visual and performing arts media. She has lived in the Washington area since 1989 and has two children.

B.A., Bethel (Kan.) College
M.A., Ph.D., Binghamton University

• Book Review of Gender and Communal Longevity among Hutterites: How Hutterite Women Establish, Maintain, and Change Colony Life. By Hanna Keinzler. (Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2005). Hutterite Journal.
  
• “The Selected Ones: Uncovering the Peaceful Women’s History of the Southern Cheyenne.” Mennonite Life 61:3 (Sept. 2006).
  
• Book Review of Plain Women: Gender and Ritual in the Old Order River Brethren. By Margaret Reynolds. (December 2003) Journal of American History, pp. 1141-2.
  
• Book Review of Book Review of Hidden Worlds: Revisiting the Mennonite Migrants of the 1870s. By Royden Loewen. (Winter 2003). Great Plains Quarterly. pp. 56-7.
  
• “You’ve Come A Long Way Baby or Was the Anger Worth It: Women in Leadership in the Mennonite Church.” (Summer 2003) MCC Women’s Concerns Report.
  
• “Schism: Where Outside Women’s Work and Insider Dress Collided in an Amish Mennonite Church, “in Strangers at Home: Amish and Mennonite Women in History, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
  
• “Sacred Farming” versus “Working Out”: The Negotiated Lives of Conservative Mennonite Farm Women” in Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, 2002.
  
• With Steven D. Reschly, “A Women’s History for Anabaptist Traditions: A Framework of Possibilities, Possibly Changing the Framework.” vol. 18 Journal of Mennonite Studies, 2002, pp. 29-46.
  
• Editor, with Diane Zimmerman Umble and Steven D. Reschley, Strangers at Home: Amish and Mennonite Women in History, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
  
• “The Diverse Histories of Mennonite Women” Mennonite Yearbook (Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House, 1995).
  
• With Marc A. Olshan, “Amish Women and the Feminist Conundrum” in War Against Progress: The Amish Struggle with Modernity, Donald B. Kraybill and Marc A. Olshan, eds. (University Press of New England, 1994).
  
• “The North Newton Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom: Educating for Peace,” Mennonite Life, vol. 40, December, 1985.

• Invited Paper, A Women’s History of the Cheyenne Mennonite Mission. Cheyenne, Arapaho, Mennonite: Journey from Darlington. Clinton, OK. April, 2006.
  
• Invited paper, Center Women: A Theory of Mennonite Women’s Leadership. Philadelphia Stories: Kingdom Building in the City, Philadelphia, PA. April 2003
  
• With Steven D. Reschly, The Production and Consumption of Discourse Systems: Amish Women’s History in Dialogue with American Women’s Historians. Crossroads Conference, Finland, June 28, 1998.
  
• The Church’s One Foundation’: History, Identity and Faith Formation Among Mennonite Historians. Invited paper presented at Mennonites and Jews: Religious Minorities and the Search for Identity in America. April 1997, University of Maryland at College Park.
  
• Invited comment, Community, Identity, and State Building: Mennonite and Amish Examples, Social Science History Association Annual Convention, New Orleans, October 12, 1996.
  
• Keynote address with Steven D. Reschly, A Women’s History for Anabaptist Traditions: A Framework of Possibilities, Possibly Changing the Framework at The Quiet in the Land? Women of Anabaptist Traditions in Historical Perspective.” Millersville University, Millersville, PA, June 8-11, 1995.
  
• The Cape Dress Controversy: Amish Mennonite Women during the Depression presented at Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, March 30-April 2, 1995.
  
• “Led by the Lord”: Reconstructing Mennonite Women’s Work Experiences During the Farm Crisis. The Fifth Conference on Rural/Farm Women in Historical Perspective, Washington, DC, December 1-4, 1994.
  
• Keynote address, Gender Theory and Mennonite Congregational History . The Experience of Mennonite Women, Harleysville, PA, October 20-22, 1994.
  
• Invited response to New Directions for Anabaptist Feminism Women Doing Theology, Bluffton College, Bluffton, OH, June 23-25, 1994.
  
• Substantial Subsistence: Religious Ideology and Economic Circumstance in the Work Lives of Amish Mennonite Women presented at Works in Progress, Washington/Chesapeake Area Women’s Historians, American University, Washington, DC, March 12, 1994.
  
• Feminist Theory and Amish Women’s History presented at Amish Society, 1693-1993, Celebrating Three Hundred Years of Persistence and Change, The Young Center for the Study of Anabaptist and Pietist Groups, Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, PA, July 22-25, 1993.
  
• Challenging Separate Spheres Ideology: A Mennonite Case Study presented at Re-weaving Women’s Colors: Scholarship, Curriculum, and our Lives, National Women’s Studies Conference, Washington, DC, June 16-20, 1993.
  
• Transforming Tradition: Some Changes in Mennonite Women’s Work, 1930-1990 . Presented at Celebrating Feminist Research Across the Disciplines, Women’s Studies Program Annual Research Forum, University of Maryland at College Park, February 5, 1993.

Consultant, The Faith & Politics Institute, Congressional Pilgrimage to Commemorate the 140th Anniversary of the Washita Massacre.
Board Member, Anabaptist Peace Center, Washington, DC.
Peer Reviewer for Herald Press.
Nativity Art from the Italian Renaissance, Adult Education, Hyattsville Mennonite Church.

• EMU, Summer Research Grant, 2007
• EMU, Summer Research Grant, 2005
• EMU, Faculty Mini-Grant, 2002
• Rosenberger Family Foundation Grant, 1995 & 1997
• Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant, 1994
• American Association of University Women, Educational Foundation Fellowship, 1993-94
• George and Catherine Peacock Grant, 1993
• Dissertation Year Fellowship, Binghamton University 1988-89
• Tuition Scholarships, Binghamton University, 1985-89
• Teaching Assistantships, Binghamton University, 1986-88

• Bridging Divides: United the Church for Peacemaking, Anabaptist Peace Center of Washington, DC, April 11-12, 2008.

• Chair, Washington Community Scholars’ Center
  
• Radical Europe: Reformation Switzerland and Renaissance Italy. EMU Cross-Cultural, 2004 & 2006.