Institutional Scholarship :: Browsing by Author "Krippner, James"

Browsing by Author "Krippner, James"

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A Comparative Perspective on the Decline of the Liberal in American Politics: Analysis and Recommendations
(1997) Volkman, Eric; Beltrán, Cristina; Krippner, James
A Historical Analysis of the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky in Relation to the Post-Thaw Soviet Moment
(2017) Helbock, Gus; Gerstein, Linda; Krippner, James
During the latter half of the twentieth century, Andrei Tarkovsky received arguably more critical admiration for his films than any Soviet director. During his filmmaking career, the Soviet Union experienced a tumultuous socio-cultural, as well as political, moment. After the death of Stalin, the Khrushchev Thaw of the late 1950s and early 1960s allowed for significantly more freedom of expression. It was at this time that Tarkovsky’s career began. However, through the 1960s and 1970s, a reactionary period in Soviet politics led to a return of stringent censorship, making Tarkovsky’s filmmaking process difficult. In the early 1980s, Tarkovsky emigrated to Western Europe, where he completed his final two films before his death in 1986. Due to his contentious relationship with the Soviet state, this thesis will attempt to analyze Tarkovsky and assess his relationship to the Russian intelligentsia and the dissident movements of the late twentieth century, as well as his relationship with spirituality and religion. In order to contextualize Tarkovsky’s place in Russian cultural history, this project will first examine the history of the Russian intelligentsia from the early nineteenth century. Next, it will examine Tarkovsky’s early life, film school career, and various influences on his approach to filmmaking. His filmography proper, consisting of seven completed feature films (five in the USSR, two in Western Europe), will then be analyzed for their relationship to the Russian intelligentsia. His theoretical writings, diaries, and interviews will be used as supplementary materials in order to gain further access to his personal opinions and artistic philosophy.
A Recipe for Cannibal Pâté: Indigenous Peoples and Representation in 20th Century Brazilian Modernist Art
(2023) Brinn, Juliana; Krippner, James; Rosas, Marlen
In 1922, a group of friends in São Paulo, Brazil, decided to organize the country’s first arts festival, which they called the Semana de Arte Moderna, celebrating modernism and lauding themselves as the creators of a new Brazilian art. This was an opportune moment for the elite artists of the festival, who hoped to construct a “true” and authentic Brazilianness, as the nation had recently been in the market for a new identity after experiencing a couple of major historical shifts, such as the abolition of slavery and the official declaration of the Brazilian republic. It was these artists of the Semana de Arte Moderna who proposed the idea of a diverse and heterogeneous Brazil, composed of European, Indigenous, and African racial and cultural influences. This construction of national identity would remain at the core of the art produced by elites for the duration of the decade. Among them was Tarsila do Amaral, the daughter of a wealthy coffee grower, whose journey led her toward developing the Anthropophagy movement. As the name would suggest, this movement was inspired by the image of the cannibal, more specifically, by Portuguese colonial descriptions of Indigenous people as consumers of human flesh. This thesis focuses on that concept of anthropophagy and its role in 20th century artistic representations of Indigenous people. It aims to fill the silences left by Brazilianist scholarship that has questioned essentialist modernist claims through a critical lens of Afro-Brazilian identity and representations of blackness in Brazil but has largely ignored analyzing the Indigenous question. The thesis begins with discussing various mediums of artistic representation in the 1920s, before addressing the Anthropophagy movement, explicating on the diverse forms of Indigenous representation during this period, and exploring their diverging and converging purposes. Next, the thesis delves deeper into Tarsila do Amaral’s anthropophagic phase, embodied by her three paintings: A Negra (1923), Abaporu (1928), and Antropofagia (1929). This section discusses the redefinition of cannibalism by the artist, and the appropriation of an Indigenous image as a form of resistance against the Europeanization of Brazil. The Anthropophagy movement believed it could find a true sense of “Brazilianness” by appropriating the Indigenous cannibal. Finally, the last two sections investigate the impact of the Anthropophagy movement on national identity for the rest of the century. A look into the art of Djanira reveals the legacy of Tarsila and how her anthropophagic phase changed art in Brazil. Then the Tropicalia movement acts as a more direct successor to the Anthropophagy movement, adopting its embrace of cultural mixing, and message of resistance, this time not directed at the European threat overseas, but the domestic threat of the military dictatorship. This thesis argues that modernist art in Brazil appropriated Indigeneity to redefine national identity in a way that did not include Indigenous people. It scrutinizes the contradictions of these visual representations, their subversion, and yet simultaneous reinscription of anti-Indigenous colonial ideology.
A Turf of Their Own: The Experiments and Contradictions of 1960s Utopianism
(2011) Ivy-Taylor, David; Krippner, James
After WWII, the world had to adjust to new technologies, new scientific concepts, new political realities, and new social standards. While America was economically wealthy after the war, it still had to deal with extremely difficult social and cultural challenges. Due to these new aspects of life, there were increasing differences in both the interests and values of children and their parents, what we have learned to call the "generation gap". The "generational gap" between the youth culture and their parents meant a polarizing society, each hating and completely misunderstanding the other. This eventually resulted in a highly political youth culture that was laterally opposed to the government. Through isolation, the counterculture began to develop new philosophies and new ways of thinking, and a huge part of that philosophy was the pursuit of a "Good Society", a utopian dream for world peace. This element of counterculture society can be seen in the real world in events like the Woodstock Music Festival, in which over half a million people gathered together in common pursuit of this utopian dream. However, through the construction of this utopia, the counterculture set their expectations too high, and were dramatically shocked when the concert at Altamont only four months later ended in total disaster. In this way, we can see how 1960s utopianism-—which defined the decade--ultimately doomed itself to failure.
“All the Singular Phenomena to which Man is Subject to”: The Wistar Museum, 1818-1905
(2024) Schefer, Theo; Hayton, Darin; Krippner, James
On May 31, 1888, the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical Hall caught fire. Over the course of a single morning, irreparable damage was sustained by the pathological laboratory, Stillé Medical Library, and most devastating of all: the Wistar and Horner Museum. Between 1818 and 1893, the museum’s anatomical teaching collection served as a key component of undergraduate medical education at the University of Pennsylvania. At a time where didactic lectures and classification guided the dissemination of scientific knowledge, the Wistar and Horner Museum illustrated concepts of human anatomy and disease through its eclectic array of skulls, children’s livers, genitals, and more. Over time, the collection grew well beyond the specimens prepared by Caspar Wistar and William Edmonds Horner. With a directive to expand the museum in perpetuity, succeeding Professors of Anatomy sourced specimens from their own personal research alongside physicians across America and Europe. When the collection began to fall into disrepair after decades of use, Isaac Jones Wistar, great nephew of the physician who started the collection, provided a large endowment to preserve the collection in its own dedicated building: the Wistar Institute. His vision dictated that the collection would not just be open to the public, but also serve as the foundation for original anatomical and biological research. By the end of the 19th century, microscopic biology was rising to prominence in America. For a brief period of time, however, classification and laboratory experimentation coexisted as legitimate methods for the production of scientific knowledge. The balance between the facility’s responsibilities as a research institution and public museum offers insight into how old-school anatomists asserted themselves as the foundation for new advances in medicine and biology. Contrary to modern conceptions of the museum as an anonymous encyclopedic building, 19th century collections interpreted and reinterpreted themselves within the context of their local audience, history, and ever-changing views on pedagogy.
Art, Revolution, and Social Reform: The Relationship between Artistic Vision and Reality in the work of Diego Rivera
(2018) Villines, John-Francis; Krippner, James; Gerstein, Linda
Diego Rivera’s murals explicitly called for political action on the part of the spectator, and his vision accelerated the formulation of a class conscious proletariat in Mexico which wished to advocate for its own interests over and above those of the bourgeoisie. Rivera’s understanding of muralism began in Italy with his appreciation of frescoes, but it grew when he was tasked by José Vasconcelos to create a new revolutionary art. He and other artists were inspired by the Mexican Revolution, and they wished to capture the spirit of a new mexicanidad, a spirit of the people of Mexico. Porfirio Díaz, who was an avowed positivist and President of Mexico in the latter nineteenth century, had reshaped Mexico by transforming the economy from a quasi-feudal system to a more centralized market economy. Just as the project of modernization had begun before the Revolution, so had the efforts of artists to capture modernity on canvas. After the Revolution, however, Rivera’s and other artists’ conceptions of modernity became infused, as the decade went on, with an overtly political character. Rivera’s in particular built his own ‘epic modernist’ aesthetic which, like the epic theater of Bertolt Brecht, challenged viewers to question how they might play a role in the political change going on all around them. Rivera’s message of class-consciousness and action took root in Mexico in ways that it did not in the United States. In the 1930s Leon Trotsky found himself in Mexico, reeling from the Terror, and the ways that the U.S.S.R. had compromised the values of the October, compromised art, and created a leader cult; in contrast, Mexico’s artistic freedom, made manifest in reality the dynamic, democratic political action that Rivera called for in his murals and, in combination with the political advocacy of Lazaro Cárdenas, allowed for the enactment of broad, sweeping reforms.
Batting for Power: 1960s Latino Baseball Players and their Challenge To the Cold War American Ethos
(2012) Fater, Max; Krippner, James; Kitroeff, Alexander
Baseball in its history and tradition has become ingrained within the identity of the United States. Dubbed the 'National Pastime,' the game of baseball is emblematic of the traditional American values of democracy and capitalism through the value on indiyidual accomplishment in a team-oriented competition. Currently, Major League Baseball-features an enormous Latino population excelling in the sport synonymous with the American Dream. These foreign players partake in this a summer tradition that inherently values the past and creates myths out of the all-American players such as Bob Feller, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams. In this thesis I examine the early stages of Latino integration into a game that was enveloped within traditional American rhetoric prior to their entrance. I found that the inclusion of Latino players into Major League Baseball and the American cultural dialogue coincided with one of the most politically uncertain eras in United States history—the 1960s. The defining feature of this era was the Cold War, a conflict that pervaded the American politics and culture within American borders and internationally as well. In response to the growing Soviet threat, white Americans subscribed to an American ethos of exceptionalism as an integral facet of the Cold War. Furthermore, the Civil Rights movement overshadowed the first half of the decade, while the responses to the Vietnam War featured prominently in the second half. In both the Civil Rights movement and the political unrest of the latter half of the decade the validity of the new American ethos of exceptionalism was constantly up to debate; thus, baseball, as the 'American' sport, was a key arena in which this discourse took place. Throughout the conflict-ridden decade, baseball and politics would create a tacit yet powerful dialogue, each influencing the other in recondite manners in an environment rife with cultural and political uncertainly. When Latinos brought their home-grown passion for the game to the North American public sphere, the white American media attempted to exclude the Latinos by attempting to disassociate their character with that of the Cold War American ethos. At the start of the 60s the media's portrayal of Latinos garnered public support, but as the decade progressed and sociopolitical frustrations grew within the American public, the Latino players eventually forged a place for themselves within the American cultural narrative. A clear transformation took place within both the players and their reception on the American stage by the end of the decade. This transformation of the players and their public representation was framed by an era of immense cultural changes throughout the United States. These players were certainly products of the era in which they played; yet, they also contributed to the changing attitudes as well. Though these players lacked American citizenship, it became increasingly clear that they embodied the values of the Cold War American ethos. Thus, their persistent skill paved the way for Latinos to express their heritage within the American public sphere.
Celebrated Artists and Political Nightmares: Carl Zigrosser and a Reconsideration of the Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican, 1920-1975
(2011) Applegate, James W.; Krippner, James
Following the Mexican Revolution's end in 1920, the United States became increasingly fascinated with Mexican culture and its exotic revolutionary artists. The enormous vogue of things Mexican lasted until 1945 and the end of World War II. This vogue, however, describes only one of the many sides of the intricate relationship between the United States and Mexico. The political relationship between the two countries was very complicated during the decades following the Mexican Revolution. Mexico sought redefinition and assertion on the international stage. The United States was trying to determine its role in relation to Mexico. Both countries were in a constant state of flux in relation to the other; there were moments of great closeness and others of great tension. The political atmosphere of the time possessed an incredible amount of influence on the cultural vogue. Mexico and the United States' internal politics and their political practices with regard to each other both allowed the vogue to exist and dictated the manner in which the vogue progressed. Carl Zigrosser founded and directed the Weyhe Gallery, a small art gallery that became grew to prominence in the vogue, from 1919- 1940, and then became Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Through Carl Zigrosser, the enormous vogue of things Mexican can be seen in a much more intimate manner. This thesis will use Carl Zigrosser and his correspondence with many individuals who were associated with the enormous vogue of things Mexican to illustrate that, whether intentional or not, political actions during this time had significant cultural implications.
Changing Faces: The Evolution of How Arabs and Muslims are Portrayed in Western Cinema
(2006) Munshi, Rahul; Krippner, James
Converging Identities: The Creation of Argentine Sephardim in the Early Twentieth Century
(2019) Gold, Micaela Leah; Krippner, James; Gerstein, Linda
This thesis discusses the formation of Sephardic Jewish identity in Argentina in the first decades of the twentieth century. Jews began migrating to Argentina in large waves beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, and between these initial years and the early 1930s the Jewish population grew exponentially. Although only 13% of Argentine Jews, the Sephardic Jews who left Morocco and the (former) Ottoman Empire in search of economic opportunity and refuge from growing tensions in their home communities emerged as a visible migrant community. The Argentine Sephardic newspaper Israel and the memoirs of Sephardic migrants to Argentina demonstrate the process of adjustment to life in Argentina and the daily experiences that led to the formation of identity. They settled in Argentina, established new communities, yet also retained affinities to the places from which they migrated. As a result, this Sephardic community represented a heterogeneous mix of cultural and linguistic practices. They all referred to themselves as Sephardim, but had lived in distinct communities for centuries. Upon their convergence in Argentina, Sephardim needed to redefine their community identity to fit with their new surroundings, including other Sephardim, Ashkenazim, and non-Jewish Argentines. While not homogenous, the community formed by the Sephardim in Argentina developed out of common experiences of diaspora and migration, and a desire to ensure the survival of Sephardic traditions. They negotiated a balance between their Sephardic and Argentine identities, resisted impositions of unity by external organizations, and formed their own transnational relationships between their homelands and Argentina. In doing so they formed an Argentine Sephardic identity specific to their surroundings. Therefore, the Sephardic community that emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century in Argentina fulfilled both the necessity of survival and the desire to unify around common experiences of migration and settlement in new surroundings. The formation of an Argentine Sephardic community demonstrates that new identities develop out of migration and the specific conditions of the sending and receiving communities.
Creating Meaningful Lives: The Transition from Girlhood to Womanhood in Mid-Nineteenth Century Philadelphia Quaker Communities
(2017) Corcoran, Abigail T.; Krippner, James
Sarah Wistar, Emma Jane Fussell, and Jane Gibbons Rhoads faced difficult transitions from girlhood to womanhood. As middle and upper-class girls in the mid-nineteenth century United States, their childhoods had been marked by considerable freedom to play. And as Quaker girls, they lived in communities which valued their spiritual autonomy and their education. However, once they left school, given the values of their communities, they had relatively few opportunities to create lives which felt meaningful to them. Although girls spent relatively little time on housework as children, that changed when they became women. It was expected that women’s lives would be much taken up with housework, either as unmarried daughters or siblings, caring for family members, or as wives and mothers, creating new families. However, nineteenth-century ideology ignored housework’s economic value, and celebrated housework as something to which women were uniquely suited. This ideology made women doubt the value of the housework they did, despite the immense amount of labor they put into it. Therefore, girls like Wistar, Fussell, and Rhoads worried about making their lives meaningful if all they did was housework. There was also an expectation that women and girls, especially Quaker ones, try to make the world a better place through reform work, which was tied to a belief that women were more naturally kinder and more pious than men. This work often provided women with a sense of accomplishment and purpose unmet by housework, but the expectation that women engage in reform work also caused intense worry and guilt for women who did not or could not participate in it. This can be seen clearly through the contrast between Wistar’s agonized guilt over her lack of social reform activities, and Fussell’s relatively calm diary entries, written when she was engaged in abolition work. Ill girls, like Rhoads, could not live up to the expectations of reform work, and instead struggled to be virtuous invalids. Wistar, Fussell, and Rhoads’ attempts to live out their Quaker desire to do good in the world map onto the sects of Quakerism to which they belonged. Wistar and Rhoads, the Orthodox Friends, turned inwards, while the Progressive Friend Fussell also turned outwards, towards reform work. These young women’s writings illustrate how their transition from girlhood to womanhood was both typical of girls of their place and class, but also inflected by their Quaker upbringing and communities. Their struggles to create meaningful lives demonstrate that it was almost impossible for women to live up to the contradictory and confusing standards of mid-nineteenth-century American womanhood. In addition, Wistar, Fussell, and Rhoads’ writings show how people both shape themselves with and push back against the expectations of their communities.
Defining "Deviance": Otherness, Sexuality, and Witchcraft in the Spanish and Mexican Inquisitions
(2010) Curry, Catherine; Krippner, James; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
This thesis analyzes the role of witchcraft trials in the Spanish and Mexican Inquisitions. The Inquisition fought to enforce religious orthodoxy and also served as a tool for controlling the impact of "other" cultures considered dangerous by Spanish leaders. The histories of the individuals examined in this thesis complicate the story of the Inquisition. A close reading of trial transcripts, inquisitorial reports, and the subsequent instructional document reveals the cultural history of the Inquisition and the regions in which it took place. These sources reveal the changing role held by the Inquisition, as it became a tool used by disgruntled neighbors, political leaders and inquisitors alike not only to limit the power of "deviant" cultures on Spanish society but also to settle a myriad of local conflicts. In the Basque Country of northern Spain the unique culture of the native inhabitants failed to conform to the dominant Spanish society. Similarly, the indigenous people of Mexico represented a new set of religions and cultures not understood or experienced by the Spanish people. The existence of these distinctive cultural practices threatened the success of the Spanish national project.. Furthermore, unsuccessful attempts at conversions in both populations provided the groundwork for the consistent practice of pre-Christian religions and rituals. The Inquisition offered a means for controlling both the religious and cultural practices of these people and preventing them from influencing Spanish society. The trial transcripts from both northern Spain and Mexico point to individual sexual behaviors and cultural practices among the people tried by the Inquisition that threatened or challenged accepted Spanish norms. In the case of the Indian Don Diego his sexual practices represented not only sins but also customs condemned by the greater Spanish culture. The Spanish women of the Basque Country prayed to and worshipped the devil, and significantly often claimed to have sexual relations with demons and their demonic lord. Neither the Church nor society recognized the Mexican slave girl Juana Maria's lover. In all three cases, and in the case of all of the trials examined by this thesis, the accused stood trial for reasons greater than their religious practices. Each of them confronted the accepted Spanish society in some way. Therefore the Inquisition sought to limit the influence of these perceived abhorrent cultural practices on the Spanish people. In this way the Inquisition became a tool used to control interactions between the cultures of the native peoples of both the Basque Country and Mexico and their Spanish counterparts.
Defining “El Pecado Nefando Contra Natura”: The Construction of the Deviant Sodomite In Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Spain
(2008) Meagher, James; Zadeh, Travis E.; Krippner, James
This thesis examines the language used by the accusers and inquisitors in the “Proceso contra Cristoval [...] 1560-1561,” a sodomy trial, to demonstrate that through the construction of certain discourses, the ecclesiastical and civil tribunals functioned as instruments of religious and political control for the Spanish Catholic monarchs of the late fifteenth- and sixteenth-centuries. To contextualize the discourses of sexuality explored in this thesis, I also examine major religious and political documents that speak directly about sodomites and the state’s relationship to them. These include the Siete Partidas of Alfonso X (r. 1252-1284) and Fernando and Isabel’s Pragmática of 1497, among others. I explore how Isabel, Fernando, their royal heirs, and ecclesiastical and civil jurists defined natural and unnatural behaviors and activities through discourses of the body, sin, crime, and masculinity. I draw upon the case of Gaspar and Cristóbal, in particular, for while it is not a “typical” trial of the Inquisition, it reveals how the language of the Catholic Inquisition of Spain was taken up by political and social leaders in their dealings with subjects and inferiors. Using the case of Cristóbal Gutiérrez and Gaspar Hernández, I explain how the state targeted particular “dangers” to societal norms to purify society and solidify the power of the Church and the monarchy. The leaders of these institutions challenged certain “unorthodox” sexual practices to empower the images and behaviors they envisioned as necessary for a strong Catholic and Spanish Empire. These trial records also provide evidence of the ways in which the monarchy and jurists sought to preserve order in the social body by cracking down on individual bodies with religious language as a tool. Through various discourses (i.e., the discourses of the body, nature, sin, crime, and masculinity), the Catholic kings, their inquisitors, and their moralist allies in the Catholic Church established what it meant to be a good Catholic and a good Spaniard. Their control over these discourses further asserted their authority as heads of the Spanish Catholic state. Through the ecclesiastical and civil tribunals, the Spanish monarchs sought to create a unified Spanish nation through shared behaviors and ideals. The men and women who diverged from these practices and Christian beliefs threatened the power of these leaders of the Church and of the state. Sodomites menaced society by challenging “orthodoxy;” the Catholic Kings and the inquisitors of the Inquisition of Aragon and the secular courts of Castile, therefore, targeted these men as deviants of their created “ideal” Spanish character.
Desirable Difference: Representations and Realities of Japanese and Other Asians In Colonial New Spain
(2014) Monahan, Kate; Krippner, James; Smith, Paul J., 1947-
As Hispanic empires expanded in the early modern era, cultural intermixing took place on many different levels. The galleon trade between Manila and Acapulco, beginning in the 1560s, opened flows of goods, ideas, silver, and most importantly, people between Asia and New Spain. Conceptions of the East in New Spain were informed by representations that had come before. With the influx of people and products into New Spain, however, uniquely New Spanish representations of Asian-ness gained popularity even as pre-existing markers of identity were called upon. Although on the surface Asians in New Spain were seen as a homogenous group, Japanese Christians accessed elite positions in society due to their visibility as internationally important political, economic, and religious actors. The public presence of weighty Japanese in New Spain via diplomatic envoys, travelers' stories of desirable opulence and Japanese Christians' potential for piety, and the use of Japanese artistic techniques and visual references in New Spanish art all reinforced the elite positions of Japanese Christians in New Spanish society. Similarly, the New Spanish elite accessed Japanese society, finding a mirror image to connect with which provided both historical legitimacy (as kingdoms with storied yet non-European histories) and an affirmation of their economic power and place within a global hierarchy. Depictions of the Japanese contrasted with those of other New Spanish Asians, whose varied countries of origin did not have the same cultural cachet and whose opportunities were thus more limited by the caste system. As the flow of Asians into New Spain slowed in the eighteenth century, however, the presence of Asians was lost from the historical and national narrative.
Differential Disease Experience in the Atlantic Slave Trade: Malaria, Yellow Fever, and the Atlantic Plantation Complex
(1999) Papay, John; Krippner, James
Historically, discussions of race and racism have shied away from science for fear that a biological acknowledgment of racial difference would engender scientific racism. These political and intellectual impediments to communication are only recently beginning to fade away, thereby enabling more integrated and complete discussions of these topics. Any analysis ofthe Atlantic slave trade necessarily addresses the issue of race through examining the racism exhibited by the system or the racial dynamic inherent at all stages of the trade; perhaps, recent trends in historical analysis may enable an interdisciplinary focus that provides a more thorough discussion of both. This study seeks to do just that: to unite the history of the Atlantic slave trade with studies of epidemiology and demography affecting the region. It analyzes the convergent histories of the Atlantic slave trade and disease, focusing on the two most significant cases, malaria and yellow fever. The differential incidences with which these diseases struck various human populations helped not only to influence nineteenth century racial discourse, but also to define European and African experiences in the slave trade; in very different ways, both groups succumbed to the ravages of these diseases: Europeans faced tremendous mortality in the Atlantic tropics and thus turned to Africans as a source of slave labor for their Atlantic plantations. This study contains several self-imposed limitations. Although it examines racial differences in terms of disease and effects of disease resistance, it does not address gendered differences in disease experience. The available records exhibit a strong male bias: women did not serve in the military during the Atlantic slave trade, and military records provide the best source of comparative records for European and African disease experiences. Women, European as well as African, had an important role in the Atlantic slave trade and disease impacted their lives greatly; European women often accompanied their husbands to live in Africa or the New World while African women traversed the Atlantic as slaves. Although simple numbers do nothing to diminish their experience, consistently twice as many men as women were brought to the New World as slaves. This study excludes analysis ofthe different ways women experienced disease only because women's disease history is not accessible given source limitations. This analysis also concentrates on the slave trade between West Africa and the Caribbean; it does not focus on the trade to North America. Although many Africans and their descendants served as slaves in the United States, their relatively high reproductive rates limited the scope ofNorth America's role in the Atlantic slave trade; no more than five percent of the slaves imported to the New World arrived in the North American colonies. Furthermore, although they both surfaced frequently, malaria and yellow fever did not play the same pivotal roles in North America as they did in the Caribbean. Finally, with minor exceptions, the available records limit this study to the experiences of the British during the slave trade; discussions of European disease experience will be based primarily upon British records. Although European nations did form distinct cultural and political entities, they were part of a unified disease environment and were equally sheltered from the African disease environment before the earliest European exploration in the late fifteenth century. Thus, the European, or at least Western European, experience is likely fairly accurately mirrored by the British experience. These self-imposed limitations reduce the scope of this study but do not necessarily detract from its findings. Examining the role of disease in history, however, faces numerous other limitations that shall be discussed in Chapter 1. That chapter begins by examining the historiographical foundations of both Atlantic Studies and historical epidemiology. It locates this thesis in a theoretical framework with roots tracing to the mid-twentieth century. Chapters 2 and 3 provide the historical and biological contexts that frame the analysis. Chapters 4 to 7 build on these foundations to address disease experience in West Africa and the West Indies, apparent racial differences in those disease experiences, and the implications of those differences for Africans in the slave trade. Chapter 4 examines disease incidence and the implications of disease among European troops serving in West Africa. Chapter 5 explores the mechanisms and effects of racially differentiated disease experience. Discussion of the biological basis of some forms of perceived racial differences occupies the remainder of this chapter; this analysis continues in Chapter 6, but focuses on the other side of the Atlantic. This chapter asserts that biologically based "racial" differences combined with European economic motives to drive the system of plantation slavery that flourished during the 18th century. While contributing to modem understandings of European and African disease experiences in the early modem Atlantic world, this thesis also addresses larger issues in historical scholarship involving biological influences on racial conceptualizations, the limits ofhistorical and epidemiological analysis, and the applicability and utility of scientific knowledge and methods to history.
Engaging elegance: the politicization of the New Yorker, 1934-1946
(2003) Scribner, Campbell; Krippner, James; Gerstein, Linda
My thesis discusses political and ethical changes in the editorial policy of the New Yorker magazine during the 1930s and 1940s. Specifically, it examines the impact of Communist literary criticism, the United Front, and class struggle on the editorial copy of what began as an aloof, humorous publication. Why, by 1946, was the New Yorker printing serious political material, such as John Hersey's famous article "Hiroshima," and to what extent did the change result from the leftward shift of the Great Depression? This thesis is an appropriate supplement to studies of art and Communism, as well as studies of American politics vis-a-vis humor, mass culture, and publishing.
Food and the Spanish Nation Islamic Influences in Early Modern Spanish National Cuisine
(2020) Cho, Zachary; Krippner, James; Kitroeff, Alexander
This thesis discusses the visibility of Islamic influences in the cuisine of early modern Iberia and its cultural and political implications on the emerging discourse of a "Spanish" national identity. Formerly divided into numerous independent and competing kingdoms, the Iberian Peninsula was mostly unified under Christendom in 1492 and the new joint monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile, chartered several imperial expeditions under the name of the crown. Having this semblance of unity, the peninsula's inhabitants started to think of what notions such as "Spain" and "Spanishness" meant and how factors such as race, geography, and culture constituted this nascent sense of national identity. Eventually, the idea that "Spaniards" were descended from a long line of non-convert Christians became firmly ingrained in society, meaning Hispano-Muslims and mudéjares (Muslim converts to Christianity) were not considered to be "Spanish" despite their longstanding legacy in the Iberian Peninsula. However, food, which is significant to discussions of national identity as it plays a crucial role in forming individual and collective identities, presented a more complicated picture in how early modern Iberia dealt with the cultural imprint of Al-Andalus. Cookbooks published in early modern Iberia mirrored their medieval Al-Andalusian counterparts in terms of their content and conventions, from including ingredients and recipes particularly prized in the culinary sphere of Islam to approaching food from a medicinal perspective. But food culture in early modern Iberia also distanced itself from that of Muslims, as seen through privileging pork (which is prohibited in Islam) and cookbooks heavily focusing on Christian dietary laws such as food for Lent. All in all, there remains no doubt that constructions of a "Spanish" national identity through food in the early modern period extensively borrowed from the gastronomy of Hispano-Muslims, but overt segregations of tastes in numerous instances complicates the issue of whether the culinary legacy of Al-Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula was truly recognized.
From Migrants in a "Host Country" to Transnational Permanence: Dominican Americans in New York City, 1965-2000
(2014) Dominguez, Marla; Krippner, James; Armus, Diego
The Dominican Republic and the United States have a long-standing relationship and the waves of immigration that occurred starting in 1965 still continues today. The hyper-globalization of modernity decreases time and space, making flights inexpensive and accessible. Dominicans frequently travel between the United States and the Dominican Republic, but it should not devalue their presence in New York and how they have come to affect the economy, politics, and social life. This thesis argues that the term "host country" is inadequate in describing the transnational identity of Dominicans in New York City as they have built a permanent presence in the metropolis. I utilize the examples of Dominican ethnic associations, the Dominican Day Parade, and second-generation Dominicans to determine how Dominicans established themselves as important shapers of New York City while reshaping their own perspectives and identities.
From Revolution to Democratic Transition: Mexican Political Culture In Implementing Political Change
(2002) Yereniuk, Anne K.; Beltrán, Cristina; Krippner, James
Haverford College Holds the Center: Navigating Issues of Free Speech and Anti-War Activism in the 1960s
(2024) Winkler, Lucas; Krippner, James; Gerstein, Linda
This thesis uses the Vietnam War protest movement as a case study to explore campus conflict and free speech at Haverford College. Using internal memorandums, letters, newspapers, statements, photographs, legal briefs, and interviews found in the Haverford College Special Collections and the Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, this thesis analyzes how Haverford College managed anti- war activity on its campus, upheld academic freedom and freedom of speech, and applied Quaker values to campus controversies. It argues that the history of the anti-war movement at Haverford provides an example of students being able to protest effectively and constructively while also allowing for the expression of dissenting views because they were mentored by a generally supportive faculty and administration. This thesis begins with an overview of Haverford during wartime, specifically the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. This history of the tensions between Haverford’s Quaker traditions and an increasingly non-Quaker campus frames the context within which the Vietnam War would play out. The second section explores Haverford’s most notable anti-war activity between 1960 and 1965. While most students at Haverford were not opposed to the war this early in the ‘60s, there were a handful of student radicals whose actions raised awareness of the war’s moral problems. The third section explores the effects of student antiwar demonstrations, how President John Coleman evaluated Haverford’s policy on military recruitment visits, and how a protest statement at Bryn Mawr led to condemnation from alumni and administrators for violating academic freedom. The fourth section examines Haverford’s antiwar activity from 1969 to 1971. It explores how President Coleman protected Haverford from legal trouble while expressing his support for a withdrawal from Vietnam, how Haverford’s students and faculty struggled to organize for the 1969 National Vietnam Moratoriums, how Haverford’s students organized a college-wide meeting with members of Congress on May 7, 1970, moving beyond the traditional image of radical activism in the process, and how a physics professor at Haverford exposed a covert FBI surveillance program on anti-war dissidents and how the school’s administration responded to it.

Browsing by Author "Krippner, James"

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