“Ames breaks new ground in the study of Pennsylvania German manuscript art by synthesizing the significance of the religious context with the artistic achievements of creating the pieces. This is also the first book to integrate research based on several collections of Pennsylvania German Fraktur across many regions. The Word in the Wilderness is a remarkable achievement reflecting years of study and an amazing breadth of research.”
—Jeff Bach, author of Voices of the Turtledoves: The Sacred World of Ephrata
“Book and website testify to Ames’ focus on detail and ambition to establish himself as a scholar of devotional-calligraphic art. … He presents a novel approach to manuscript studies and provides a thoughtful analysis. With his discussion of the manuscripts’ cultural origins, spiritual purpose, and historical significance, he initiates a debate on early American spirituality that invites more comparative research on literacy instruction and penmanship of religious communities in New England and Pennsylvania. His study of Pennsylvania German calligraphic art should be particularly welcomed by historians and researchers of early American religious history who are interested in new and creative ways of engaging with historical devotional texts.”
—Berit Jany, University of Colorado-Boulder, in Yearbook of German-American Studies 55 (2020)
“Throughout The Word in the Wilderness, Ames evinces the academic immersion in the scholarly debates and historiographical issues that linger in these fields. But he also demonstrates the practical, tactile knowledge of someone who has firsthand experience with collections material. The collections he consults are major regional and national repositories (such as the Winterthur Library and Museum, the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and the American Antiquarian Society), as well as more sectarian special collections (such as the Moravian Archives and the Mennonite History Center). That sensibility is evident in his treatment of the images he illustrates, which are as much a part of the argument as the text. He engages them formally, through visual analysis, but also historically, in terms of situating the objects in time, space, and culture. Ames urges scholars in the abovementioned fields to think outside formal analytical categories of fraktur, which shape the interpretations we often encounter in major museums (such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, to name a few) and walk into the spiritual and lived religious engagement with the Word. …
Ames has set up a framework for early manuscript studies that bridges the German-speaking Atlantic. I look forward to a sequel. I will be adding Ames’s book to my syllabi going forward because I think he does an excellent job helping his readers to stand in his historical subjects’ proverbial shoes and understand the legibility of committing religious belief to paper.”
Image: Johannes Bard, fraktur (writing sample), Adams County, Pennsylvania, 1819-1821. 2011.0028.010, Gift of Nick and Jo Wilson, Courtesy of Winterthur Museum.