Mary Sprunger

Mary Susan Sprunger currently serves as chair of the department and has taught at EMU for fifteen years. She earned a B.A. in history and German at Bethel College (Kansas) and an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Her teaching interests include European history, world history, historical movies, women’s history and Mennonite history. In 2003-04 she spent a sabbatical year in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, conducting research in her specialty, the intersection of social, economic and religious history as it pertains to the Dutch Mennonites of the seventeenth century. She is married and is the mother of two children.

B.A., Bethel College
M.A., Ph.D., University of Illinois

• “Iemand burgemeester maken. Doopsgezinden en regenten geslachten in de Gouden Eeuw te Amsterdam.” Doopsgezind Bijdragen 32 (2006): 75-121. (“In Bed With the Burgomaster: Mennonites and Regent Family Ties in Golden Age Amsterdam”).
  
• “Mennonites and Sectarian Poor Relief in Golden-Age Amsterdam.” In The Reformation of Charity: The Secular and the Religious in Early Modern Poor Relief, pp. 137-53. Edited by Thomas Max Safley. Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2003.
  
• “Mutual Aid Among Dutch Waterlander Mennonites, 1605-1668.” In Building Communities of
  Compassion, 144-67. Edited by Willard Swartley and Donald B. Graybill. Scottdale. PA: Herald Press, 1998.
  
• Co-author with Piet Visser. Menno Simons: Places, Portraits and Progeny. Masthof Press, 1996.
  
• “Entrepreneurs and Ethics: Mennonite Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam.” In Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Times: Merchants and Industrialists within the Orbit of the Dutch Staple Market, 213-21. Edited by C. Lesger and L. Noordegraaf. Hollandse Historische Reeks 24, 1996.

• Invited Participant in Liberty Fund Conference “Religious Dissent and Liberty,” Charleston, SC, 11-14 October 2007.
• “Deaconesses, Fishwives, Crooks and Prophetesses: Women and the Burden of Mennonite Respectability in a Seventeenth-Century Congregation,” International Conference: Myth and Reality of Anabaptist/Mennonite Women, ca 1525-1900, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, 31 August 2008.
  
• “Why the Rich Got Mennonite: New Findings on Membership, Status and Wealth among Early Dutch Mennonites,” Anabaptist Colloquium, Harrisonburg, VA, 8 April 2006.
  
• “In Bed With the Burgomaster: Mennonites and Political Influence in Golden-Age Amsterdam,” Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference, Atlanta, GA, 21 October 2005.

“The German Church and the Nazi State,” A Voice in the Whirlwind: A Centennial Celebration of the Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Massanutten Presbyterian Church, Penn Laird, VA, 25 March 2006.

Selected as one of 30 scholars nationally to attend the seminar “Homer Across the Curriculum: The Iliad” at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington D.C. (July 10-14, 2006).

American Historical Association
Sixteenth Century Studies Conference
Mennonite Historical Society
Doopsgezinde Historische Kring

Chair, History Department
Undergraduate Council
Dean’s Committee
Faculty Senate
Committee on Teacher Education
Teacher Education Admissions Committee
Historical Library Committee
New Faculty Mentor and Seminar Participant