Karen Johnson-Weiner

Karen M. Johnson-Weiner is Professor of Anthropology SUNY Potsdam, where she teaches courses in linguistic anthropology. She holds the Ph.D. in linguistics from McGill University. For over nearly 30 years she has been engaged in the study of Old Order culture, and her work has been supported by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and grants from the NEH, the Spencer Foundation, and the SUNY Potsdam Research and Creative Endeavors Program. Johnson-Weiner is the author of Train Up a Child: Old Order Amish and Mennonite Schools (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), which offers an in-depth exploration of schools in diverse Amish communities. She is also the author of New York Amish. Life in the Plain Communities of the Empire State (Cornell University Press, 2010), which explores Amish settlement in New York, a state, which, in recent years, has seen its Amish population skyrocket. Most recently, Johnson-Weiner collaborated with Donald B. Kraybill and Steven M. Nolt in research focused on "Amish Diversity and Identity: Transformations in 20th Century America," which was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The resulting work The Amish (Johns Hopkins 2013) is a comprehensive look at the growing diversity in the Amish world and evolving Amish identities. Johnson-Weiner’s current research focuses on the Swartzentruber Amish, among the most conservative of all Amish groups.