Upcoming Events
All events are open to the public, and all are free of charge except the Anabaptism conference (July 22–24).
For events in the Bucher Meetinghouse, use “450 Campus Road, Elizabethtown, PA” in your navigation app. Although not an actual physical address, it will place you close to the entrance of the Young Center parking lot. Then use the building’s main entrance—beside the Young Center sign—to access the meetinghouse.
Thursday, January 16, through Friday, May 16, 2025 • IDEA Lab, High Library
Available to view during library hours
EXHIBIT
Preserving the Stories of Etown Students and Alumni of Color
Since the summer of 2024, the Hess Archives has been conducting oral history interviews with alumni of color and researching student experiences represented in Elizabethtown college's yearbooks, newspapers, and archival collections. Visit this new exhibition to view the oral history interviews and learn more about early BIPOC alumni, influential faculty and staff, student clubs, activism, and much more. The exhibition also features the work of the Elizabethtown Church of the Brethren Racial Justice Working Group, including research on Elizabethtown’s history as a “sundown town” that used various methods, including racial covenants, to keep Blacks from living in the borough in the first half of the twentieth century.
The exhibition includes a display of books available for checkout including titles suggested by the College’s Coalition for Anti-racist Education (CARE) as well as information on Elizabethtown’s Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Campus Center.
This project was made possible with support from the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies; the Office of Civil Rights, Opportunity, and Access; as well as the Office of Alumni Relations.
Thursday, April 3, 2025 • 7:00 pm • Bucher Meetinghouse
BROWN BOOK AWARD LECTURE
Debating Sustainability: Mennonite Settlers, NGO Agronomists, and Agribusinessmen
How do farmers think about the sustainability practices they pursue, and where do those ideas come from? In this talk drawing on Mennonite Farmers: A Global History of Place and Sustainability and on subsequent research that extends beyond the seven communities examined in that book, Royden Loewen will consider transnational flows of agricultural knowledge, as agronomists, agribusinessmen, and ordinary Mennonite farmers debate the merits and methods of sustainability in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Canada, and southern Africa.
Royden Loewen is professor emeritus of history at the University of Winnipeg and the author of ten books, including most recently, Mennonite Farmers: A Global History of Place and Sustainability (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021). His current research focuses on transnational flows of agricultural knowledge and Canadian farmers in global context.
Copies of Mennonite Farmers will be available for sale and signing after the lecture.
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 • 7:00 pm • Bucher Meetinghouse
KREIDER LECTURE
Negotiating the Kingdoms: Pluralism, Plain Communities, and State Power in the Twenty-First Century
Ongoing clashes between state authorities and Plain communities reveal fundamental tensions between religious liberty and civil obligations. Such encounters—including ongoing disputes over slow-moving vehicle emblems and highly publicized conflicts over wastewater treatment technologies—demonstrate how citizens of pluralistic societies negotiate competing imperatives (those rooted in sacred authority against those anchored to the state’s sovereign mandates). These conflicts illuminate profound differences among Anabaptist communities. Drawing on his research at the Young Center, Colyer’s lecture will explore how different Anabaptist affiliations approach these challenges, suggesting broader insights about religious freedom and state power in modern America.
Corey Colyer is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University. His research examines how individuals and communities negotiate institutional power in modern pluralistic societies. His work explores the dynamic interplay between structural constraint and human freedom, revealing the possibilities and limits of personal agency in institutional settings.
July 22–24, 2025
CONFERENCE
Early Anabaptism in Global Perspective
This conference marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Anabaptism, giving special attention to the global context in which Anabaptism emerged and spread. Presentations will also consider the global reception of Anabaptist history today, particularly in light of the diffusion of Anabaptist traditions around the world. Early Anabaptist history has figured prominently as a resource for global churchly identity through scholarship, teaching, and preaching.
Videos of Past Events