Abstract
The session focuses on the 1960s, beginning with Krippendorff’s move to the United States in 1961 on a Ford Foundation International Fellowship and Fulbright travel grant. He recounts his brief stint with the psychology department at Princeton University, leaving at the suggestion of Princeton psychologist Hadley Cantril. On Cantril’s suggestion, Krippendorff traveled to meet with George Miller (MIT), Jerome Bruner (Harvard), Anatol Rappoport (Michigan), and George Gerbner (Illinois). He recounts his encounters, including an important visit to Michigan State University, where he was recruited to join its communication doctoral program. Krippendorff describes how, visiting Illinois, he visited with both Heinz von Foerster, Ross Ashby, Dallas Smythe, and Gerbner, and decided to join the Institute for Communications Research doctoral program. Krippendorff recounts his experience with Illinois faculty, especially Ashby’s teaching around systems, information theory, and cybernetics, as well as his appointment at the young Annenberg School of Communications (ASC) at the University of Pennsylvania alongside Gerbner, the School’s new dean, in 1964. Krippendorff’s dissertation project on content analysis, along with a major conference he organized on the topic in 1967 at Annenberg, are detailed. His early participation in, and experiences with, Gerbner’s Cultural Indicators project are recounted. Krippendorff also touches on his memories of the Annenberg School as it transformed from a media arts orientation to a scholarly focus. He discusses some of his late 1960s and early 1970s engagement with information theory and cybernetics in published papers.
