Brooke is a senior majoring in History and minoring in Art History. Focusing on the early twentieth century, she is particularly interested in modern art and architecture, the interwar period in Europe, and the Scottish nationalist movement. She has also studied early American history with her work on the Penn & Slavery Project throughout her time at Penn. Her work has been published in the Penn History Review and featured on the University Archives website. When she’s not in Van Pelt, Brooke enjoys spending her time exploring Philadelphia’s independent music scene, attending local film festivals, and playing with her roommate’s dog Sasha.
Brooke Krancer
Wolf Humanities Center Undergraduate Fellow
2019—2020 Forum on Kinship
Brooke Krancer
History
CAS, 2020
"A Modern and Distinctively Scottish Portrait”: Scottish Modern Art and National Identity in the Interwar Period
What is national identity if not a sense of kinship with one’s countrymen? In my examination of the origins of modern Scottish identity, I hope to discover specific ways in which Scottish modern art contributed to a Scottish national identity in the interwar period. With this I hope to explore how art helped form a sense of kinship among Scottish people separate from a larger British identity, reveal the role that modern artists deliberately played in the political and cultural rethinking of Scottishness, and examine the role of art in national identity. I would also love to spark wider interest in the study of Scottish modern art and its intersection with national identity.