Janneken Smucker, a 5th generation Mennonite quiltmaker, is author of Amish Quilts: Crafting an American Icon (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). As Assistant Professor of History at West Chester University, she specializes in digital history and American material culture. She has served as a board member for the national non-profit, Quilt Alliance since 2005. Other publications include contributions to Unconventional and Unexpected: American Quilts Below the Radar, 1950-2000 (by Roderick Kiracofe, forthcoming from Abrams, 2014), “Workt by Hand”: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts (Brooklyn Museum, 2013), Amish Abstractions: Quilts from the Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2009) and Midwestern Amish Crib Quilts: The Sara Miller Collection (Good Books, 2003). Janneken earned her MA in Textile History from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her PhD in the History of American Civilization from the University of Delaware.
Marin F. Hanson is Curator of Exhibitions at the International Quilt SMuseum. She holds undergraduate degrees from Grinnell College and Northern Illinois University and earned her MA in museum studies and textile history with a quilt studies emphasis from UNL. She has curated a wide range of IQM exhibitions, including Expanding the Collection, Posing with Patchwork, and South Asian Seams. She is the co-editor of American Quilts in the Modern Age, 1870-1940, the first publication in the IQM’s comprehensive series of collections catalogs (University of Nebraska Press, 2009). Her other publications include articles in the American Quilt Study Group’s monograph Uncoverings and Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture. Ms. Hanson is currently pursuing doctoral research on cross-cultural quiltmaking practices, with particular emphasis on China and the United States.
Jonathan Gregory is Assistant Curator of Exhibitions at the International Quilt Museum. He holds a BS in human resources management from Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. After completing a career in human resources and business management, he earned an MA in textile history/quilt studies from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln where he is also pursuing a doctorate with an emphasis in quilt studies. Jonathan's research topics include Kansas quiltmaker Rose Kretsinger and quiltmaking for the families of American military personnel killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. He also has researched and contributed content to American Quilts in the Modern Age, 1870-1940 and recently curated the exhibition The Engineer Who Could.