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.

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
Document Type
Access Level
Abstract

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...

View

Secular Dreams, Bloody Oracles: Staging State and Religion in Classical Athens and Enlightenment Paris

Publication Date
2020-January-01
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

I perform a comparative reading of <em>Iphigeneia Among the Taurians</em> by Euripides (around 414 BCE) and the adaptation <em>Iphigénie en Tauride</em> by Claude Guimond de La Touche (1757 CE). I aim to read the development of the secular with regards...

View

The Captain of Köpenick and the Uniform Fantasies of German Militarism

Publication Date
2022-June-15
Document Type
Access Level
Abstract

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...

View

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

Publication Date
2024-February-15
Document Type
Access Level
Abstract

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...

View