Psyche's Library

This lecture presents the architectural program of the Frederick Thompson Memorial Library at Vassar College as the instantiation of the introduction of the concept of research into American undergraduate education by early Vassar faculty who were invested in the direct study of material reality as a path to female self-empowerment. The educational curriculum is written especially in the library’s visual program, which features college and university seals, the great stained glass window depicting Elena Lucretia Piscopia Cornaro receiving in Padua in 1678 the first doctoral degree granted to a female scholar, and a series of five Gobelin tapestries depicting the Tale of Cupid and Psyche from the Metamorphosis (or The Golden Ass) of Apuleius. I will embed my presentation in the context of the phenomenological force this material program has had on Vassar students past and present, and as it is yet circulated orally and embodied by Vassar faculty, students, and alumnae/i.

Presented at the April 2, 2022 conference 2022 RGME Spring and Autumn Symposia on “Structured Knowledge”