American Studies
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2209
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Item "To Remind Us of Who We Are" : An Ethnographic Exploration of Women's Dress and Gender Roles in a Conservative Mennonite Community(1995) Graybill, Beth E.; Caughey, John L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Combining ethnographic methodology and feminist theory, this interdisciplinary study explores women's dress and gender roles in the religious culture of Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonites, a conservative Mennonite group concentrated in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, that has never been researched before. My study is based on participant observation and qualitative analysis of interviews with 11 women and two men in three church districts. I argue that conservative women's domestic roles in the private sphere and their adherence to strict dress codes create the denomination's primary cultural boundary marker. Although Eastern Pa. Mennonites accept modern technology and most no longer farm, members adhere to a church-wide discipline that forbids "immodest" and "fashionable" clothing, jewelry, and cut hair for women, while prescribing a particular style of women's dress and head covering. (Men's clothing is less regulated.) Religious understandings around women's dress reinforce a gender ideology that is firmly rooted in women's subordination to men. My study explores the multiple meanings that conservative women attach to their clothing. Much like a uniform, women's dress expresses group affiliation, suppresses individual expression, and mutes economic and social distinctions. Moreover, their dress affords them a feeling of protection from harm, offers them an opportunity to witness, and serves as an internal motivation toward religiosity. In sum, their dress both produces and reflects particular gender roles. Finally, I discuss the interpretative challenges of my partial membership status and my use of feminist analysis to frame a discussion about women who would not describe themselves as feminists.Item Amish Women, Business Sense: Old Order Women Entrepreneurs in the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Tourist Marketplace(2008) Graybill, Beth E.; Caughey, John L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is an examination of Amish businesswomen and gender roles in the tourist marketplace of Lancaster County, PA. Tourism in Lancaster is a $1.5 billion business; most tourists come because of the Amish and values associated with them. Recently, tourism has come to provide an important source of income for many Old Order Mennonite and Amish women, whose business enterprises cater primarily to a tourist market. Among the Amish, known for their separation from wider society, tourism now puts many women on the front lines in dealing with outsiders, a monumental shift historically. Thus, this ethnography of Amish businesswomen serves as a useful lens for examining Amish women's changing gender roles in Lancaster County today. Moreover, it fills a significant gap in the literature, as little has been written about Amish women, to date. Mine is a micro-study that examines tourism, entrepreneurship, and gender through the words of Amish women themselve, and my analysis of them. Using ethnography and life history I examine the lives of Old Order Amish and Mennonite women whose businesses range from quilt shops to greenhouses to serving meals in their homes. As I show, the ways in which these women handle their business, family, and community roles sometimes involves extensions of traditional roles and sometimes departures from them.