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Papers by A. Kristen Foster
Journal of the Early Republic, 2005
Children and Youth in a New Nation
Journal of American Studies, 2021
American National Biography Online, 2000
Urban Studies, 2020
Cities in America’s early republic developed on the edge of two worlds. The majority of these urb... more Cities in America’s early republic developed on the edge of two worlds. The majority of these urban areas had been born in colonies that belonged to European powers, including England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. In this colonial world, cities hugged the Atlantic coast and served the interests of Europe’s mercantile empires. After the American Revolution, however, urban areas developed in line with the interests of the United States, expanding geographically, economically, politically, socially, and culturally. The cities of the early republic were central to the first debates about the fate of the fast-changing republic. On 23 September 1800, on the verge of wresting power from the first generation of Federalist politicians, the Republican Thomas Jefferson wrote to his old friend Dr. Benjamin Rush that he viewed “great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man.” Jefferson, ever the champion of the independent farmer, argued that cities “nouri...
Panorama, 2019
The eleven essays in A Material World: Culture, Society and the Life of Things in Early Anglo-Ame... more The eleven essays in A Material World: Culture, Society and the Life of Things in Early Anglo-America focus on eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century Philadelphia and New England (Boston and Salem, Massachusetts, and southwestern Connecticut), with single essay excursions to Monticello and Charleston. The historical narrative of the volume is one of transition from colony to early republic, with attention to the consequences and meanings of that transition for wealthy Anglo-American, and generally urban, male and female consumers. Most of the essays in one way or another address portrait painting, the fine art that dominated the period. The authors are for the most part from powerhouses for American material culture studies (Yale, Berkeley, and Delaware) or from museums with major collections of the period (Philadelphia Museum of Art, National Portrait Gallery, Stenton in Philadelphia, and the Salem Maritime National Historic Site). The result is that the writers have deep backgrounds in American studies, American history, and American art history, as well as curatorial experience in American decorative arts, and this is reflected in their approaches. Because of this, the volume will be useful to anyone in those fields. Coeditor Margaretta M. Lovell, whose research and teaching have long modeled close engagement with objects, sets out the framework for the collection in the introduction.
Journal of American History, 2017
History: Reviews of New Books, 2016
The American Historical Review, 2016
The Journal of the Civil War Era, 2015
ambitious than Gibson’s.2 Future studies will have to determine the extent to which stories of am... more ambitious than Gibson’s.2 Future studies will have to determine the extent to which stories of ambitious and masculine women cut across racial and ethnic lines. Such research will require rejecting the assessments of previous literary critics who, beginning in the 1860s, dismissed story papers as lowbrow trash. Now that feminist critics have rescued women’s domestic novels from such biased assessments, Cohen urges us to look to the story papers to recover a richer and more varied tradition of women’s writing. For now, the short story “Hero Strong” would make a great addition to any college course that touches on women’s literary achievement in the Civil War era. Corinne T. Field
History: Reviews of New Books, 2013
emphasized the reality of moral ambiguity and revolted against the mythology of moral purity embe... more emphasized the reality of moral ambiguity and revolted against the mythology of moral purity embedded in the Motion Picture Production Code that the rating system replaced in 1968. The horrors of Vietnam and the lies voiced and dirty tricks perpetrated by President Nixon and his henchmen resulted in a widespread lack of trust in American policy and Americans’ actions. Seventies filmmakers did not make movies in a creative vacuum. Rather, they were influenced significantly by the likes of Hitchcock, Houston, and others, as well as by film noir and the French New Wave. Kirshner acknowledges these influences. In making a persuasive argument about the significance of and the critiques in seventies films, however, he, out of necessity, ignores the often significant critiques of the postwar corporate-capitalist social and economic order evident in earlier films such as Abraham Polonsky’s anti-corporate gangster-syndicate film Force of Evil (1948); Nicholas Ray’s cult western critique of McCarthyism and corporate consolidation Johnny Guitar (1954); Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s commentary on American racism No Way Out (1950), featuring the fledgling actor Sidney Poitier; and even Nunnally Johnson’s screen adaptation of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), to name only a few. Earlier filmmakers working under the politically oppressive historical context of McCarthyism created movies with critical themes, and they did much to crack the code before it eventually shattered in 1968, providing the likes of Mike Nichols, Roman Polansky, Alan Pakula, and others the liberty they enjoyed to create the outstanding cinema Kirshner analyzes so well. Hollywood’s Last Golden Age is an excellent book, well argued, clearly written, and free of the theoretical jargon that plagues so much film scholarship. It provides undergraduates, graduate students and general readers without much historical knowledge of these years just enough to enable them to understand the astute connections Kirshner makes between “politics, society, and the seventies film in America.”
The Journal of the Civil War Era, 2011
Journal of American History, 2008
... Mark Voss-Hubbard Eastern Illinois University Charleston, Illinois Let a Common Interest Bin... more ... Mark Voss-Hubbard Eastern Illinois University Charleston, Illinois Let a Common Interest BindUs Together: As-sociations, Partisanship, and Culture in Phila-delphia, 17751840. By Albrecht Koschnik. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Page 2. ...
The American Historical Review, 2005
Journal of the Early Republic, 2005
Children and Youth in a New Nation
Journal of American Studies, 2021
American National Biography Online, 2000
Urban Studies, 2020
Cities in America’s early republic developed on the edge of two worlds. The majority of these urb... more Cities in America’s early republic developed on the edge of two worlds. The majority of these urban areas had been born in colonies that belonged to European powers, including England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. In this colonial world, cities hugged the Atlantic coast and served the interests of Europe’s mercantile empires. After the American Revolution, however, urban areas developed in line with the interests of the United States, expanding geographically, economically, politically, socially, and culturally. The cities of the early republic were central to the first debates about the fate of the fast-changing republic. On 23 September 1800, on the verge of wresting power from the first generation of Federalist politicians, the Republican Thomas Jefferson wrote to his old friend Dr. Benjamin Rush that he viewed “great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man.” Jefferson, ever the champion of the independent farmer, argued that cities “nouri...
Panorama, 2019
The eleven essays in A Material World: Culture, Society and the Life of Things in Early Anglo-Ame... more The eleven essays in A Material World: Culture, Society and the Life of Things in Early Anglo-America focus on eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century Philadelphia and New England (Boston and Salem, Massachusetts, and southwestern Connecticut), with single essay excursions to Monticello and Charleston. The historical narrative of the volume is one of transition from colony to early republic, with attention to the consequences and meanings of that transition for wealthy Anglo-American, and generally urban, male and female consumers. Most of the essays in one way or another address portrait painting, the fine art that dominated the period. The authors are for the most part from powerhouses for American material culture studies (Yale, Berkeley, and Delaware) or from museums with major collections of the period (Philadelphia Museum of Art, National Portrait Gallery, Stenton in Philadelphia, and the Salem Maritime National Historic Site). The result is that the writers have deep backgrounds in American studies, American history, and American art history, as well as curatorial experience in American decorative arts, and this is reflected in their approaches. Because of this, the volume will be useful to anyone in those fields. Coeditor Margaretta M. Lovell, whose research and teaching have long modeled close engagement with objects, sets out the framework for the collection in the introduction.
Journal of American History, 2017
History: Reviews of New Books, 2016
The American Historical Review, 2016
The Journal of the Civil War Era, 2015
ambitious than Gibson’s.2 Future studies will have to determine the extent to which stories of am... more ambitious than Gibson’s.2 Future studies will have to determine the extent to which stories of ambitious and masculine women cut across racial and ethnic lines. Such research will require rejecting the assessments of previous literary critics who, beginning in the 1860s, dismissed story papers as lowbrow trash. Now that feminist critics have rescued women’s domestic novels from such biased assessments, Cohen urges us to look to the story papers to recover a richer and more varied tradition of women’s writing. For now, the short story “Hero Strong” would make a great addition to any college course that touches on women’s literary achievement in the Civil War era. Corinne T. Field
History: Reviews of New Books, 2013
emphasized the reality of moral ambiguity and revolted against the mythology of moral purity embe... more emphasized the reality of moral ambiguity and revolted against the mythology of moral purity embedded in the Motion Picture Production Code that the rating system replaced in 1968. The horrors of Vietnam and the lies voiced and dirty tricks perpetrated by President Nixon and his henchmen resulted in a widespread lack of trust in American policy and Americans’ actions. Seventies filmmakers did not make movies in a creative vacuum. Rather, they were influenced significantly by the likes of Hitchcock, Houston, and others, as well as by film noir and the French New Wave. Kirshner acknowledges these influences. In making a persuasive argument about the significance of and the critiques in seventies films, however, he, out of necessity, ignores the often significant critiques of the postwar corporate-capitalist social and economic order evident in earlier films such as Abraham Polonsky’s anti-corporate gangster-syndicate film Force of Evil (1948); Nicholas Ray’s cult western critique of McCarthyism and corporate consolidation Johnny Guitar (1954); Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s commentary on American racism No Way Out (1950), featuring the fledgling actor Sidney Poitier; and even Nunnally Johnson’s screen adaptation of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), to name only a few. Earlier filmmakers working under the politically oppressive historical context of McCarthyism created movies with critical themes, and they did much to crack the code before it eventually shattered in 1968, providing the likes of Mike Nichols, Roman Polansky, Alan Pakula, and others the liberty they enjoyed to create the outstanding cinema Kirshner analyzes so well. Hollywood’s Last Golden Age is an excellent book, well argued, clearly written, and free of the theoretical jargon that plagues so much film scholarship. It provides undergraduates, graduate students and general readers without much historical knowledge of these years just enough to enable them to understand the astute connections Kirshner makes between “politics, society, and the seventies film in America.”
The Journal of the Civil War Era, 2011
Journal of American History, 2008
... Mark Voss-Hubbard Eastern Illinois University Charleston, Illinois Let a Common Interest Bin... more ... Mark Voss-Hubbard Eastern Illinois University Charleston, Illinois Let a Common Interest BindUs Together: As-sociations, Partisanship, and Culture in Phila-delphia, 17751840. By Albrecht Koschnik. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Page 2. ...
The American Historical Review, 2005