Â鶹ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾

Sharing Pasts

Throughout their now four-centuries-long presence in America, Dutch Americans upheld a staunch commitment to education and inquiry that led to their establishing many grammar schools, academies, day schools, colleges, universities and seminaries. Such places of learning and their graduates, especially those at the post-secondary level, created fertile ground for Dutch Americans to also enquire after their own history in their new home and the part it played in the larger American story.

Beginning in the nineteenth century and finding its stride in the twentieth century, Dutch American history carved out its place and identity alongside other American ethnic histories. With only some one-and-a-half percent of the nation’s population, the volume and breadth of the body of work in Dutch American history and culture is quite remarkable.

These papers from the Twentieth Biennial Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies, a Joint Conference with the New Netherlands Institute, Albany, New York, held September 17–19, 2015, are grouped into five topics:

• Immigration, Wilderness and Cultural Persistence
• Dutch American Culture Moving West
• The Dutch and Indians under English Colonial Rule
• American Influence on Dutch Communities and Churches
• Rekindling Affection for the Netherlands