October 23-24, 2020.
In 1920 Mennonites from different ethnic and church backgrounds formed the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) to collaboratively respond to the famine ravaging Mennonite communities in the Soviet Union (Ukraine). Over the ensuing century, MCC has grown to embrace disaster relief, development, and peacebuilding in over 60 countries around the world. MCC has been one of the most influential Mennonite organizations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It has operated as a mechanism for cooperation among a wide variety of Mennonite groups, including Brethren in Christ and Amish, constructing a broad inter-Mennonite, Anabaptist identity. Yet it has also brought Mennonites into global ecumenical and interfaith partnerships.
This centennial conference invites proposals for papers that examine the past, present, and future of MCC. More broadly it invites papers on the Mennonites’ response to the biblical call to love one’s neighbor through practical acts of service. Proposals from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives are welcomed, including but not limited to anthropology, conflict transformation and peacebuilding, cultural studies, development studies, economics, history, political science, sociology, and theology.
The conference will be hosted by the Chair of Mennonite Studies, University of Winnipeg, in collaboration with Canadian Mennonite University.
Proposal submission: December 1, 2019. Send proposals or questions to Royden Loewen, Chair in Mennonite Studies, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3B 2E9, Canada. Email: r.loewen@uwinnipeg.ca.
Limited research grants are available to help defray costs related to research in MCC’s archives in Akron, Pennsylvania or at other MCC sites. Queries, with a brief two paragraph description of the proposed research, should be sent to Alain Epp Weaver (aew@mcc.org). Requests for research grants will be assessed on an ongoing, rolling basis.
