Vassar Scholarship

This paper investigates the determinants of child marriage using a new data set from rural India. Specifically, we focus on an extreme form of child marriage--that is, the marriage of girls under the age of ten. No other study to...

This paper proposes a new instrument for institutional quality—the salary of colonial governors—to investigate whether variations in the quality of British colonial rule continue to have an impact on the economic performance of former colonies. Governors' salaries provide a good...

As evidenced by the opening sequences of both films, Kiki’s Delivery Service and Howl’s Moving Castle can be read both narratively and visually. Jonathan Ellis asserts that Miyazaki can be understood not only as a master storyteller, but also as...

Oystering along Long Island has a long and complex history. For thousands of years, oyster beds grew in abundance in the bays and estuaries of the East End, but with European colonization came unsustainable harvesting practices that led to complete...

This thesis interrogates the social function of small-town theater in the United States. Through a series of interviews with theater artists working at regional and local theaters in the northeast United States, I demonstrate theater's capacity to both reproduce and...