 |
|
 Oliver Benjamin Karp
Research Fellow, YIISA Ben Karp double majored in English and history at Goucher College, Maryland and earned an MA in African American Studies at Yale University. His Master's thesis examined the biblical narrative of Exodus, which more than any other source offered slaves just before and during the Civil War an impression of freedom and the future. Ben is currently writing a doctoral dissertation in African American Studies and History at Yale on the global racial significance of Imperial Japan's rise and collapse, as interpreted by black American writers, particularly W.E.B. Du Bois. Researching the intellectual history of black "philo-semitism," a mimetic, sometimes emulous attachment to Hebrew chronology and symbolism, including and absent a concomitant regard for Jews and Judaism, Ben will examine African American writing on Zionism from the late nineteenth century until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Ben is a founder and director of Eliezer, (formerly "The Chai Society"), which was described by the New York Times in 2000 as "an 'intellectual salon' for blacks and Jews at Yale," whose membership strives to foster meaningful dialogue and engagement across the range of academic disciplines, politics and religious practice. Ben lives in Tokyo and New Haven. |
