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

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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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Art Is What We Say It Is: "Easy Art" and the Pragmatics of Interpretation

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2014-January-01
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Since 2009, Brad Troemel and Lauren Christiansen have run the Jogging, a blog on the popular social media site Tumblr in which they and others post a variety of sloppily rendered and generally silly images to be viewed and shared...

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Branding the Globe: The Real Madrid Takeover

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2014-January-01
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Real Madrid got its start in 1902, but it wasn't until the 1950s under Santiago Bernabéu as president and his squad of international superstars that the team began to make a name for themselves as the best, winning five championships...

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Embedded in Iraq: The Evolving Relationship Between the US State and the News Media during Periods of Conflict in post-9/11 America

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2014-January-01
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My thesis is an exploration of the evolving relationship between the US State and the news media in periods of conflict, ranging from World War I to the War in Iraq, and how this relationship culminated in the practice of...

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Everyone's a Critic: An Exploration of Yelp.com and Food Media

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2014-January-01
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Everyone today seems to be a critic. As our online and offline lives become increasingly intertwined, we have never had so many sites that depend upon consumer opinion-making for content. User-generated media satisfies the needs of certain consumers, but consumers...

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Leaks: Tracing the path of secrets through democracy

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2014-January-01
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In this thesis, I explore the unique potential of political leaks to illuminate and critique the underlying power structure of the state. The primary motive of the institutional state is to maximize and preserve its own power; because of this...

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LOL MY THESIS: An Exploration of the Written and Oral Linguistic Effects of Text Messaging

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2014-January-01
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This project explores a new register of language called 'textese,' which has developed as a result of text messaging via cell phones. I research how and why textese is being used, to understand how text messages are linguistically affecting the...

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Looking: Storytelling and Flânerie in the Arcades of Grindr

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2014-January-01
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It is through storytelling, Walter Benjamin believed, that wisdom and experience are shared, letting open narratives achieve an amplitude that information lacks. And Charles Baudelaire considered the window-shopping flâneur to be the observant ne plus ultra of urban modernity. By...

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NET/STALGIA: Nostalgia-Tripping on the Internet Aesthetic

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2014-January-01
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As the Internet drifts away from being a novel technology, people have increasingly become fascinated by the sometimes-garish, comparatively rudimentary aesthetics of the early web. Using Walter Benjamin's reflections on the Parisian arcades as a framework, I propose that this...

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Reality of Love: The Heteronormative Agenda of ABC's the Bachelor

Publication Date
2014-January-01
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This project provides an oppositional reading of ABC's popular <em>Bachelor </em>franchise, arguing that these reality dating programs present viewers with specific narratives of gender, sexuality, class, and race that contribute to greater hegemonic discourse that reifies heterosexual marriage. Through a...

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Streaming Females 2.0: Que(e)ry-ing Sites of Lesbian Counternarrative & Exhibition

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2014-January-01
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The lesbian/queer female audience has a history of being elated with news that its community will be represented on the small screen, then grossly disappointed with how it's represented. For many lesbian, bisexual, and queer women, especially those lacking a...

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The Latina Body in Visual Culture: A Motion for Dance as a Medium

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2014-January-01
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This project calls for a re-thinking of how we consume the performance of choreographed dance in music videos in regards to the Latina body. By taking a look at the underlying mechanisms at work in the entertainment industry, this project...

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The Objects of Our Affection: Objectification, Sexualization and Commodification of the Korean Pop Culture Industry and Fandom

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2014-January-01
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K-Pop with its flashy 'bubble gum pop' aesthetic has developed into a major cultural product and dominating industry in the past decade. In the growing market, idol celebrities have started to emerge as manufactured products that market the fantasy of...

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Uncovering the Collective Labor Behind the Singer/Songwriter: A Collaboratively Produced Album

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2014-January-01
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This project is an album consisting of nine original songs that I arranged, performed, and recorded at Vassar College. The accompanying thesis destabilizes the media construct of the independent singer/songwriter by interrogating the medium-specific space between the composition and the...

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Words: Interacting With Propaganda

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2014-January-01
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<em>Words </em>is a game based at its core on the idea that American citizens should have access to a form of media that gives them the power to interact with, and alter, political propaganda. Defined as information that is "especially...

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