Using a framework which draws from landscape, social memory, and diasporic studies, this dissertation examines the formation of the Anabaptist community located in northern Indiana. By exploring the competing histories found in the relevant archives and the built landscape, I consider the discursive processes of place-making which shaped this Anabaptist community. Since they shared pacifist ideologies and a collective memory involving displacement and oppression, how did Anabaptists understand and interact with the people and places where they settled? How did Anabaptists incorporate the changes they encountered into previous understandings of how the world should be? How do competing histories provide a fuller understanding of the formation of Anabaptist communities? How did the Anabaptist place-making practices contribute to transforming the environment from an Indigenous landscape to a landscape dominated by European technology and agriculture? -- Abstract.
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