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.

"Racism is Solved!" A Fake Conservative's Guide to Social Justice

Publication Date
2014-January-01
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Under the cloak of a character who is as ignorant as he is conservative, Stephen Colbert delivers snaps-worthy "truthiness"-insights that often shine a light to mainstream systemic forms of oppression by embodying their very nature. In my thesis, I acknowledge...

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“They were real, they were American”: Jeans in Soviet magazines in the 1970s and 1980s

Publication Date
2023-April-14
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The 1970s and 1980s saw a significant increase in the popularity of jeans among the Soviet Union's youth. To gain a better understanding of the origins of this trend, the paper analyzes interviews with former Soviet Union citizens, as well...

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(this never happened): Queer monstrosity, survival, & the monstrous-feminine on stage & screen

Publication Date
2016-January-01
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In what ways are monstrosity, the abject, and queerness connected? What are the mechanisms by which we as a culture twist perceptions of difference into denouncements of monstrous otherness? How can we use creation as a tool for healing? How...

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

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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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A Menagerie of Monstresses: (Re-)Tracing Female Monsters in Jewish Folklore

Publication Date
2023-May-15
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Dybbuks (spirits of the dead who possess the bodies of the living) and Lilith (the first wife of Adam turned child-killing night demon) are monsters who have existed in Jewish folklore, religious writings, and entertainment media for hundreds of years...

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An exploration of the diary as a medium: during the 17th and 18th centuries

Publication Date
2017-January-01
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Looking through the 17th and 18th centuries and specifically the diaries of Samuel Pepys and William Byrd, I aim to explore the medium specificity in the diary as well as its particular moment in manuscript culture. Being written by hand...

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