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.

A bug in the system: speculations on cybernetics, superorganisms, and simulated serendipity

Publication Date
2016-January-01
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What is a cybernetic organism in the age of digital imagining? Where can we find a historical nexus between the methods used to models systems and the increasing velocity of digital images? How do bodies fracture and congeal when integrated...

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An Issue of Sewerage: The role of Ellen Swallow Richards in Broad Irrigation at Vassar College and the present day impacts of excavation on Haven Loam soil

Publication Date
2023-April-20
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From 1896 to 1909, a system of sewage disposal existed on the Vassar farm, purifying sewage through sandy soils and irrigating the adjacent crop fields. This system was ecologically innovative in its time and Ellen Swallow Richards, a Vassar alumna...

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Shifting music culture in the age of streaming

Publication Date
2017-January-01
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This thesis investigates why music streaming services are so popular, beyond their affordability, and the ways in which streaming is shifting music culture. Certain aspects of listening culture which we tend to understand as originating from streaming services, specifically the...

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The Strategy of Explanations

Publication Date
2015-January-01
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To better understand the strategic aspects of human decision-making, we conduct a power-to-take game in which takers are required to send messages explaining their actions to receivers. We vary the types and timing of information takers have available to them...

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