Vassar College Digital Library

Vassar Scholarship

Vassar Scholarship, the institutional repository formerly known as Digital Window, reflects the research and scholarly output of the Vassar College community.  It provides access to a variety of collections, including senior theses and projects across a wide range of disciplines.

Automatic control: the vertebral column of dogfish sharks behaves as a continuously variable transmission with smoothly shifting functions

Publication Date
2016-July-07
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During swimming in dogfish sharks, Squalus acanthias, both the intervertebral joints and the vertebral centra undergo significant strain. To investigate this system, unique among vertebrates, we cyclically bent isolated segments of 10 vertebrae and nine joints….

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Colonial Imaginaries: Reconstructing French Indochina through Cultural Artifacts

Publication Date
2021-January-01
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This senior project examines the colonial conquest of Indochina on the part of the French during the last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century not purely as a geographical and historical phenomenon, but...

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Duelling and the Fantasmatic Spectre of Male Honour in Imperial Germany: The Kaiser’s Will and Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest

Publication Date
2022-May-15
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Underneath the historiographical disagreements about military honor and dueling in Imperial Germany there lurks a consensus that most duelists simply internalized the dictates of honor. This article troubles that presumption by attending to the Prussian-German military honor code’s mixed messages...

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The Age of Alice: Fairy Tales, Fantasy, and Nonsense in Victorian England

Publication Date
2015-February
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A catalogue of the exhibition The Age of Alice: Fairy Tales, Fantasy, and Nonsense in Victorian England February 12 – June 17, 2015 Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library Vassar College.

Cover design by Nikolai Firtich Layout and typesetting by George...

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The Captain of Köpenick and the Uniform Fantasies of German Militarism

Publication Date
2022-June-15
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This article examines a famous 1906 event that occurred when a con man dressed in a captain's uniform commandeered two small contingents of soldiers in Berlin and took them to nearby Köpenick, where he proceeded to arrest the city’s mayor...

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The Emperor’s New Uniforms: The Uniform Fantasies of Wilhelm II and His Critics

Publication Date
2024-February-15
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In light of Wilhelm II’s well-known predilection for military uniforms and displays, many of his contemporaries regarded him as a real-life version of the titular figure in Hans Christian Andersen’s fable “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” This essay uses the concept...

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We're City Lifers: Transformative Community Organizing in Boston's City Life/Vida Urbana

Publication Date
2014-January-01
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City Life/Vida Urbana is a base-building community organization committed to structural transformation through racial, economic, gender, and other forms of social justice. Its local work currently focuses on preventing evictions as a result of foreclosures. Most people come to City...

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