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Features

Kauffman Museum

The Kauffman Museum on the Bethel campus offers opportunities for learning about the natural history and social history of the people of the plains. History classes visit the museum for special projects. Museum internships are available.

Mennonite Library and Archives

The Mennonite Library and Archives (MLA) on the Bethel campus is an exceptionally rich source of primary historical information on a great variety of topics.

Research

Students are encouraged to engage in research with documents from eyewitnesses to historical events, and to learn to write clear and effective historical narrative and analysis. The senior honors paper, in Social Science Seminar, is the culmination of an undergraduate writing career.

Study Abroad

A travel study course, The History of East Central Europe, is offered during the January interterm.

Oral History Institute

The history department, working through its Oral History Institute, a joint faculty-student group, has an ongoing oral history program. This began in 1967. Each year students and faculty do taped interviews, prepare summaries and indexes, and add them to the collection. Some, but not all, are fully transcribed. Director of the Oral History Institute is Mark Jantzen. The Mennonite Library and Archives at Bethel maintains the collection and its catalogue (over 800 taped interviews).

Principal areas of oral history at Bethel College are:

• War, peace, and conscientious objection
• The World War I collection (over 300 interviews)
• The World War II collection (over 300 interviews)
• Vietnam War and Gulf War collections
• Mennonite history
• The Santa Fe Railroad Chair Car Attendants project
• Classroom use of oral history

Publications:

• James C. Juhnke, "Moderates, Mennonites, and the Religious Right: A Hot Contest in the Seventy-Fourth House District, 1994," Kansas History 2004 27(3): 180-193.
• James C. Juhnke, "Clashing Symbols in a Quiet Town: Hesston in the Vietnam War Era," Kansas History 2000 23(3): 142-153.
• Keith Sprunger and John D. Thiesen, "Mennonite Military Service in World War II: An Oral History Approach," Mennonite Quarterly Review (Oct. 1992), 481-491
• Mary Sprunger, Sourcebook: Oral History Interviews with World War Conscientious Objectors (MCC, 1986)
• James Juhnke and Keith Sprunger, "Mennonite Oral History," Mennonite Quarterly Review (July 1980), 244-247
• Voices against War, ed. Keith Sprunger, James Juhnke, and John Waltner (1973, rev. 1982). An index of the World War I collection

Vistula Mennonite Studies Project

The Vistula Mennonite Studies Project focuses on the collection of archival material and the translation and publication of historical texts about the Mennonites in the Vistula Delta and river valley (what is now northern Poland). Read more about the Vistula Mennonite Studies Project.