MENNONITE GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP AWARD WINNERS, FALL 2011
NEW RESEARCH IN MENNONITE STUDIES
Susie Fisher and Sean Patterson meet in the office of the Chair in Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg on October 3 to receive news of their fellowship awards.
The recipients of two graduate Mennonite Studies fellowships at the University of Winnipeg have been announced. The recipients are Susie Fisher Stoesz, a Doctoral student and recipient of the D.F. Plett Graduate Fellowship valued at $15,000, and Sean Patterson, a Masters of Arts student, and winner of the C.P. Loewen Graduate Fellowship valued at $12,500. Both students are planning exciting new research at the University of Winnipeg and promising to shed new light on old stories.
Fisher Stoesz, an incoming Doctoral student, plans to focus on an inter-generational history of southern Manitoba families. She will describe their moves from farm village in southern Manitoba, to the nearby towns of Altona and Winkler, and then onto Winnipeg. Especially new is her focus on “emotional history,” a subject matter Mennonite historians usually shy from addressing. Fisher Stoesz will consider such feelings as fear, joy, love, nostalgia, embarrassment and anger and see how they were expressed during trying times of relocation. She will also investigate which emotions Mennonites valued and which ones they disparaged, and how these emotions affected social relations . She will base her research on German and English language newspapers, memoirs and letter collections, and oral history.
Patterson, an MA student nearing the end of his program is raising the old question of Nestor Machno, the Ukrainian militant leader who terrorized the Mennonites during the Russian Revolution. Unlike earlier studies on Machno, Patterson will compare and contrast the Mennonite and Ukrainians perspectives on Machno. Where Mennonites have seen an unruly and rag tag team of terrorists, the Ukrainians have come to venerate Machno as a leader of a nationalist army. Patterson will examine how times or war and unrest result in very different historical narratives, depending on which side of the battle one finds oneself. He will base his research on letters written by Mennonites to German language newspapers and on memoirs by Ukrainian nationalists, including Machno himself.