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.

"This week, a loving mother fatally shot her child:" The consequences of sympathetic media portrayal of parents who kill their disabled children

Publication Date
2014-January-01
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
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Champagne and Caviar for all? Exploring the juxtaposition of gourmet culture with social justice activism and transitions within the Slow Food movement

Publication Date
2013-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Abstract

As issues of food and agriculture enter the mainstream culture of the United States, the number of passionate supporters of efforts to change the industrial food system is growing steadily. However, those at the helm of the movement are conflicted...

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Coalition for Abolition: Strategic Alliances and Antiprison Activism in California's Central Valley

Publication Date
2013-January-01
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
Abstract

There are currently over 3 million people locked behind bars in United States prisons, jails, and detention centers. In this era of mass incarceration, prison abolitionists envision a world entirely without prisons. The politics of abolition are complex, and the...

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How to Make it Rain: A Practical Analysis of Storytelling Forms

Publication Date
2014-January-01
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
Abstract

The following is an experiment in practical analysis of storytelling media. The project seeks to explore what insights can be gained about media specificity and adaptation theory
through the process of constructing a story and adapting it into background notes...

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I heard it through the grapevine: Gossip as observational learning at college

Publication Date
2013-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Abstract

After personally engaging in the communication networks present at Vassar College, I have chosen to research the function of gossip in small communities such as college campuses. After collecting data on the many facets of gossip and informal information sharing...

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Meditative Breath Promotes Healing in the Process of Loss, Grief and Mourning

Publication Date
2013-January-01
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
Abstract

Death and grief are universal experiences. Although this suffering is endured privately, individuals are often encouraged to seek external resources such as medication, therapy or religion to ease their pain. The objective of this study was to determine how a...

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Olympe de Gouges and Qiu Jin: The Revolutionary Women of France and China

Publication Date
2013-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Abstract

The extent to which the reform movements of revolutionary China and France "emancipated" women is difficult to assess. In many ways, French and Chinese women both benefited greatly from the sociopolitical changes wrought by the reformist ideologies of these periods...

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Scripting (In)security: Cartographic Violence and Performances of Securitization in the Western Sahara

Publication Date
2014-January-01
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
Abstract

Throughout the forty-year conflict over the Western Sahara, the United States has supported Morocco's occupation of the disputed territory. This overall policy has remained relatively consistent over time, yet constantly subjected to contestation. The debates over policy and various modes...

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The Moral of the Mulberry: Early Vernacular Reinterpretations of Pyramus and Thisbe

Publication Date
2013-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Abstract

This thesis concerns the transmission of Ovid's <em>Metamorphoses </em>and the story of Pyramus and Thisbe during the Late Middle Ages, and early reinterpretations of the tale in Italian, Old French, and Middle English in the fourteenth century. Ovid's original version...

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Wanted: Smart Students from Poor Families Neoliberal Multiculturalism & Diversity in the New Racial Capitalism

Publication Date
2014-January-01
Document Type
Department or Program
Abstract

The primary objective of this senior thesis is to explore how the logics of access, affirmative action, equal opportunity, educational pipelines, and diversity have been constructed, defined, and understood in contemporary U.S. American higher education; and how these meanings and...

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