Contrast Vol 6 Issue 1

CONTRAST COVER

VASSAR’S ART AND STYLE MAGAZINE VOL. 6, ISSUE 1 1 contrastfall2012.indd 1

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A Letter from the Editor Dear readers,

As always, Contrast looks to capture the dynamism and creativity of Vassar’s student body.

However, given the varying eccentricities that span the spectrum of Vassar students, this task remains somewhat idealistic. In a sense, each year, issue by issue, Contrast compiles an informal archive documenting the evolving aesthetics, interests, and creative manifestations of Vassar’s ever-changing student body.

As a senior, I have only a few months left at Vassar. With graduation in the near future, I often find myself looking back at my time here, sometimes with embarrassment, or nostalgia, but also with a sense of pride. With this Fall issue of Contrast I hope to continue the visual and written record of some of the elements of Vassar life that make Vassar, Vassar. Now that our sesquicentennial celebration lies behind us, our focus has shifted from unearthing Vassar’s history and drawing connections to the past, to focusing on our present.

Rather than explain the reasoning behind each photo shoot individually, which has been our tradition, I will allow you to travel through the pages of the issue, without any of my own preconceived intentions or opinions. Vassar is our inspiration.

Your Editor-in-Chief,

Ali Editor-in-Chief Alison Dillulio

Layout Alex Reynolds, Editor

Treasurer Jasmine Timan

Style Alycia Anderson, Women’s Editor Sean Chang, Men’s Editor Alec Aldrich Emma Bird Angela Brown Julia Kawai Sarah King Molly Kornfeld Erin Leahy Jenny Leung Margot Mayer Iyana Shelby Grace Sparapani Christine Torres Athena Wyatt

Editorial Zoey Peresman, Editor Jade Chung Becca Endicott Anna Iovine Sarah King Jacqueline Krass Hadiya Shire Sarah Traisman Blog Hadiya Shire, Editor Alycia Anderson Anna Iovine Kielyn Jarvis Sarah King Jacqueline Krass Hannah Ryan

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Models Alec Aldrich Emma Bird Jordan Burns

Models (cont’d.)

Eugene Fasano Michael Gambardella Maggie Ginoza Emily Goddard Adam Kruschka Gray Anveshi Gusha Sanne Jarvinen-Cosse Zachary Joseph Christina Koller Molly Kornfeld Jenny Leung Margot Mayer Noah Michelon Siobhan Reddy-Best Noah Ross Elizabeth Scopel Julia Sharpe-Levine Benjamin Simpkins Grace Sparapani Justin Warren Laura Webber Athena Wyatt

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Table of Contents 4 The Devil Pays Nada: My Summer as a Vogue Intern

6 A Look Into the Loeb with Vassar’s Student Docents

10 Vassar’s Wildest Show

12 Fall Forward

20 Inside the Sketchbooks of Vassar Artists

24 An Interview with Abigail Baird

26 Playing Around with the Barefoot Monkeys

32 Me, Myself and Pikachu: Life Lessons from a Younger You

34 Offbeat Beginnings

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The Devil Pays Nada My Summer as a Vogue Intern

by Becca Endicott, illustration by Alex Reynolds

If my life had an FAQ section, the number one question would be, “What are you going to do with that major?” The answer is, Idontknow and you’re stressing me out. But the number two question is easier, “Was working at Vogue just like The Devil Wears Prada?” And the answer to that question is yes. Working at Vogue is exactly like the The Devil Wears Prada, except it lasts longer than two hours, and you don’t get to wear the clothes.

Also, if you’re an intern, you differ from Anne Hathaway in one major way. She got paid to pick up scarves from Hermes and drive Meryl Streep’s Standard through Midtown. Interns do just as much legwork, probably more, but for a grand total of five hundred and fifty dollars and the glamour of it all.

I worked as one of twenty interns responsible for any busywork for the Accessories Department.

Over the course of a single day, I could’ve been asked to pick things up from designer showrooms or PR companies, make storyboards for the editors, organize the bursting closet, lay out accessories for shoots, pack trunks, check-in new pieces, and make sure that everything made it back to the designer—even if that meant spending hours scouring the shelves for that one pair of Marc Jacobs loafers that someone needs NOW, even though you know for a fact that they are still packed in a trunk on-location in Peru somewhere.

It’s safe to say that the stress levels are high, but the benefits are certainly nothing to sneeze at.

For one thing, if you’re seriously interested in fashion, there is no better crash course. Not only will you rapidly learn how to pronounce every fashion buzz-

word (“It’s Proenza SKOOL-er, not SHOOL-er”), but you’ll get some obscureknowledge as well. Within two weeks, you’ll have the address of every major showroom memorized, know the dates of every sample sale and, in my case, know the exact size of NeNe Leaks’ feet. It’s a European size 42, for the record.

Between the random celebrity sightings and the soldier-in-the-trenches bond you form with your fellow interns, the Vogue experience is a heap of dramatic fun, liberally dosed with cattiness, tension, and caffeine. That being said, when I look back on the internship, I wonder if the exhaustion, blisters and twelve-hour days were worth a line on my résumé and a paltry stipend. All told, probably the most valuable thing that I gained from my summer is the certainty that Vogue is not necessarily the poster-child for a healthy workplace.

By this, I mean that high heels are all but

mandatory, lunch is—at best—an afterthought, and most everyone who works there is very, very thin. In fact, when I first started, I noticed a girl in the office who was particularly tiny. When I mentioned this one day to a senior intern, he nonchalantly responded, “Oh yes, that’s X. She doesn’t eat in the winter.”

If any one moment can summarize the Vogue experience, it’s that conversation.

However, at the end of the day, I’m glad I did it. I’m grateful for the job interview bonus points, and for that one time that I got to take a chauffeured car all the way across Manhattan in order to drop off an envelope for Karl Lagerfeld at a trendy boutique hotel. Most importantly, I learned something about myself. Namely, that I like lunch, comfortable shoes, and eating no matter what season it is.

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A Look Into the Loeb with Vassar’s Student Docents Introduction by Jade Chung, photos by Rachel Garbade From its start, Vassar aimed to promote the visual arts in an academic environment. Our esteemed Matthew Vassar once said that art should stand “boldly forth as an educational force.” Sure enough, 3 years after Vassar’s foundation saw the establishment of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.

In the ensuing 148 years, the arts have become the heart of the college, contributing to our unconventional curriculum, our proudly ‘quirky’ student population, and our campus-wide respect for diversity.

But art displayed in museums, including works in our own gallery, have all been sourced and examined by experts in art history, who then pass objective – and sometimes subjective – opinions onto viewers.

Those experts at Vassar are the Loeb’s Student Docents, who utilize historical sources and piece comparisons to explain how art tells stories. These stories may reflect the artist’s life, or may reflect society at the time of their production. Contrast spoke with Student Docents to see which of the Loeb’s various works speaks to them most profoundly.

Simone Dubé Levine on

“Horns of the Landscape” Arshile Gorky’s “Horns of the Landscape” straddles Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism from its historical position in the year 1944. Its effect of slipping away perfectly renders the elusive essence of dreams and memories—the visions of the subconscious—that Surrealists chose as their subjects. While the Surrealist painters before Gorky, such as Salvadore Dali and Juon Míro, chose to render fantastic scenes or otherworldly creatures, Gorky realizes that the vision of the subconscious can never be held after it has occurred, but instead slips through our fingers if we try to pull it. We can never fully grasp the future, either, and if we attempt to expect it, we realize that we have no vision to project onto it and that it stubbornly remains unexpected.

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Angela Brown on

“Dawn’s Wedding Feast Columns”

Standing with “Dawn’s Wedding Feast Columns,” (1959) by Louise Nevelson, is like standing with two strangers whom I feel I’ve met before. They allow me to forget that habit, which seems so “correct” to us, of viewing art as an outsider and instead offer a freeing sense of interaction with and connection to the inanimate. Paired together the way they are in the Loeb, they are easy to connect with in a very human way because they seem to symbolize the simple-on-the-surface, but complexat-the-core relationships that our lives tend to revolve around. These two columns trigger the viewer to think about his or her own purposes, appearances, and interactions, both with others and with art.

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Stephanie Muir on

“Tête de Femme” One of the 37 works by Picasso in the Art Center’s collection, “Tête de Femme (Head of a Woman)” plays with shape and depth in a manner evocative of the cubist movement popular earlier in the 20th century. Picasso uses thick, bold lines to render the subject of the 1953-1954 portrait, reducing her likeness to its most basic, geometric elements. This enables the viewer to adopt multiple perspectives from a single standpoint, making the back of the head, the left side of the face and the right side of the face simultaneously visible. By depicting a recognizably human figure in a manner that defies the spatial limitations of our material reality, Picasso makes the both appealing and mystifying. The figure simultaneously looks at and away from the viewer, drawing you into the painting, yet remaining ultimately inaccessible. As I desperately yearn to discover more about the inner character of the subject, I am simply left pondering.

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Sophie Asakura on

“Second Night of Summer” As a native Texan, I like warmth. Jules Olitski’s “Second Night of Summer” (1972) reminds me of my hometown’s heat and humidity and brings back fond memories of galavanting about on summer nights, and of those perfect nights of youthful freedom when it’s impossible not to explore. Its traces of light imply those late and lingering sunsets, marked by the heavy and sweet air of summertime. While the painting’s dull color and formless composition have little visual information to interact with, making it an easy work to pass by without much thought, “Second Night of Summer” is much more than it first appears. So take your time with Olitski and allow yourself to enter the world he has created from what appears to be a mere grey blob.

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Justine Paradis on

“Weyerhaueser Sorting Yard Along Chehalis River, Cosmopolis, Washington” I’m drawn to Eirik Johnson’s “Weyerhaueser sorting yard along Chehalis River, Cosmopolis, Washington” (2006). for its subtlety. When I first approach the piece, I’m struck by the landscape’s stark decay. I study ecology, so I’m often tempted to condemn the human side of a conflict. However, as an environmentalist, my outlook can sometimes be too simplistic. Johnson’s photographs achieve a critical nuance: I can’t help but sympathize with the sense of loss embedded in the landscape, both human and natural. Although the story of environmental exploitation is familiar, Johnson’s landscape demands a nuanced critique of systematic destruction of both biological and cultural diversity.

Olivia Zisman on

“Black and White Rome F” Willem de Kooning’s “Black and White Rome F” didn’t particularly strike me when I first walked through the Art Center’s 20th Century gallery. The graphic black and white composition seemed disjointed and uninviting. However, once I got past this less-than-glowing first impression, I really began to connect to de Kooning’s painting. Viewers of the work may be unsurprised to hear that de Kooning painted this piece after his turbulent divorce to wife and fellow abstract expressionist Elaine de Kooning. The piece’s unexpectedly complex composition accordingly evokes feelings of anger and distress to which any angsty college student should be able to connect.

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Vassar’s Wildest Show

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The Rocky Horror Picture Show, released in 1975, has become a cult classic synonymous with Halloween. Filled with a cast of bizarre characters and memorable songs, the film has enjoyed one of the longest releases in history, as its distributor, 20th Century Fox, has never pulled it from theaters. Its most common form of release, however, is midnight showings.

While I’d seen the movie before coming to Vassar, I’d never been to a midnight showing and was not sure what to expect when I arrived at Sanders Auditorium for Vassar’s annual production. After my friend Maggie and I purchased tickets, an usher asked if we had been to a showing of Rocky Horror before.

When we said no, she promptly wrote a “V” in red lipstick on our foreheads—traditional treatment of “virgins.” We walked in and found the auditorium nearly packed; some people were dressed in casual wear while others were wildly done-up for the show in fishnets, corsets and bold makeup.

Before the movie started, co-director Emma Matters called out a list of virgins for hazing. Maggie and I were slightly anxious—I considered hastily wiping off my “V.” The virgins were then paired in groups of two and made to stimulate an orgasm: one person would provide the visual, the other, the audio.

I knew beforehand that there was shouting at screenings, but I w­as oblivious to the fact that shouting punctuated the entire film. While many callbacks were Rocky Horror traditions, others were unique to Vassar, including the clever “forks are a social construct.” Even if we hadn’t had “V’s” on our foreheads, it would’ve been easy to spot the RHPC virgins by their simultaneously amused and dumbfounded expressions. Maggie, for example, had never seen the movie before; while she initially asked me questions, after a while she became resigned to the fact that she was never going to comprehend the film’s bizarre plot twists and shenanigans.

The screening would not be complete without the “shadow cast” of actors miming the onscreen action. Assistant Director Ben Slaw said of the cast, “Everyone brings their all to the show; no one comes in to do the show half-assed.” These desiccated performers were perfectly outrageous and followed the movie’s cues with an almost eerie perfection. They even kept character in the midst of the raunchy callbacks, a seemingly impossible feat. Matters, too, admires those involved with the production, calling them an “amazing, lovely, energetic community of people.”

She promptly wrote a “V” in red lipstick on our foreheads—traditional treatment of “virgins.”

The Rocky Horror screening is a great Vassar—and cultural—tradition to behold, one that establishes a safe space for quirk and camp. Matters and Slaw both agree that Rocky has an important presence at Vassar because the show keeps with Vassar students’ commitment to challenging social norms. To Matters, “Rocky Horror Picture Show means a community willing to accept all quirks, all aspects of yourself that might even make you comfortable. This is a wonderful thing.”

Article by Anna Iovine, photo by Katherine Stegmann

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FALL FORWARD FALL FASHIONS INSPIRED BY VASSAR’S ARBOREAL ALLURE As everyone knows from the campus tour, Vassar was once an arboretum. In this issue we explore these 1,000 wooded acres in layered looks inspired by the mustard yellows, burnt oranges, deep burgundies and army greens of Vassar College’s most beloved fall foliage.

Photos by Alycia Anderson, Rachel Garbade, Jacob Gorski, Kevin Vehar

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It’s been said that the army jacket on Molly goes with everything, and Contrast agrees.

Here, paired with a cream vintage nightgown, simple collar necklace and Vince Camuto leather boots, we hit a great mix of hard and soft.

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Like Grace, ake a page from Bill Cosby’s book and try a crazy knit. Teamed with bright orange skinnies, neutral suede shoes and a simple white button down, the look has impact without going over the top pudding pop.

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Balance out a large vintage wool coat with contemporary fitted jeans. A subtle mix of patterns adds interest, shown here with a bright patterned sweater clashing perfectly with the coat’s plaid lining, shown here on Noah.

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This look makes Emma look like a modern Penny Lane.

The subtle bellbottom shape of these cords almost begged to be paired with classic Chuck Taylors, a white lace top and a vintage army jacket to create an homage to the 70s through color, texture and silhouette.

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Make life easier for yourself with staples like neutral sweaters, buffalo check button downs, and riding boots, seen here on Jenny. These can easily be mixed with anything in your wardrobe for a quick and classic fall outfit in time for 9am lectures.

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Inside the Sketchbooks of Vassar Artists 20

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Top page: sketchbook by Quinn Milton Bottom page: illustrations by Gram Hill

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Top page: sketchbook by Joel Orloff Bottom page: illustrations by Alex Reynolds

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WOULD YOU LIKE SOME STAND-UP WITH YOUR STUDIES? An Interview with Abigail Baird Article by Sarah Traisman, photo by Kevin Vehar “It’s a good thing we’re doing this interview now because I’m leaving on a plane after this” Professor Abigail Baird says as I sit down for the interview. “Oh, where are you going?” I ask. She replies matter-offactly, “I’m going to an elephant conservatory in Tennessee to study the species’ social bonds.” Instantly, I knew I was talking to someone who had a million things up her sleeve.

Abigail Baird is both a Vassar alum and professor of psychology, and esteemed scholar in the field of developmental psychology, focusing on neural development in adolescents. Her approach to teaching reflects her past as a comedian as well as her deep passion and excitement for her work. While Baird’s intelligence and comedic talent is undeniable, it is her down-to-earth quality and willingness to listen that ultimately leads so many people on this campus, including myself, to feel connected to her.

Vassar students are known for using quintessential “buzzwords” such as “social construct” and “heteronormativity.”

What were the buzzwords when you were a student here?

When the YouTube video “Shit Vassar Kids Say” went around, I posted it on my Facebook page because it was identical except

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for the specific words. One that is the same is patriarchy – I used that constantly. Misogyny, My mother once told me that if I used the word patriarchy or misogyny one more time I would have to pay her. We also called the deece ACDC. It’s hilarious to me that you guys abbreviate an abbreviation. I’m convinced in another 20 years, it’ll just be C or D, or a hand signal. But it was also really funny to us because ACDC meant bisexual, which is something people your age do not use anymore. We always wanted to know if it was inside joke of the administration at the time.

We also didn’t call it “Vassar Straight”, we used to say “he’s not THAT gay”. Though, it was a strange time to go to college, because my second year here HIV hit the world. We went from being a really affectionate campus to a much more reserved campus. It was a very odd point to be at such an open, liberal place.

This campus does change though, and while there are many things that stay the same, things are always evolving. What I have finally figured out is [Vassar] was always be my college, but right now it is your campus. I will always feel like this is my home, and after you guys graduate in 10 years we will be in a more similar place. But now, this is all yours and it’s unique to you.

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What were the major fashion statements on campus when you were a student?

When I got here, I had a Mohawk. Bi-level haircuts were big, and so many more girls had short haircuts. Almost all of you guys have long hair; seeing a girl with a hairstyle that’s short is very unusual.

In my day, there were a lot of people who shaved their head or part of their head. There was also lots of hair product. There was just plain huge hair. Hair was definitely a big deal.

Clothing-wise, there was a very specific Vassar uniform for girls.

Jeans, usually just boot cut Levis, black cowboys (either Justin’s or Tommy Lama’s), black top –usually a turtleneck- and silver hoop earrings. You couldn’t go wrong with that look. It was also the 80’s, though, so there were some pretty wacky patterns. Skirts were either very, very short or very, very long. A lot of people wore a minidress with patterned leggings or biking shorts, usually to the knee.

While there is a Vassar uniform today, there is still just enough variety. There really is a space here for everyone. It’s not always easy to find your space, but I don’t think there are really many other schools that actually peer-pressure you to be yourself. So yeah, there are trends and there are some Vassar-like things, but there really is a space for everyone. And even if someone is different, everyone wants to know about it, which is something I never really saw at other schools.

And actually if you want to know about fashion, my son is a fashionista. I don’t know many 4 year olds who have 12 bowties. He also, this summer, wanted to wear his sister’s dresses. He put on one of her dresses and it popped on his skin. He looked at himself and just said “so handsome”. I’m not going to say to him he looked bad, he looked rockin’. I wish I looked like that in a dress.

We went out somewhere on campus and everyone came up to him and said “Griffin, that dress looks so nice on you”. He likes to look fancy. My dancer is definitely much more like me; she’s more edgy. She will be wearing her ripped jeans, spray-painted t-shirt, and high tops. She’s definitely more drawn to edgy.

How did you end up performing stand-up, and how does your experience as a comedian influence how you conduct your classes?

I always tell my students that I was so funny that I had to go to graduate school; I’m that good, so they better watch out and stop me and participate in discussion or else I’ll just keep going. Obviously, if I were actually any good I wouldn’t be here today. But part of being a good teacher does satisfy my need to perform. I know I’m competing with the internet and television; there is a reason that Vassar nerds will hit up the Discovery Channel and not be able to turn it off – because it is so fascinating. That’s what I want my class to be like. Ideally, my class will be both interesting and entertaining, that’s how students will retain information.

There are so many teachers that teach in so many different ways, but you have to find your voice as a teacher. I could teach you a very serious, straight lecture on neuroanatomy – I could do it – but I think I could do it so much better in my voice. And that’s what I want to give you guys: a real excitement about learning. I feel a certain responsibility to do that.

when I mostly talked about Vassar stuff. When I worked professionally, I was working in Australia and you can basically get anyone on the planet to laugh when you make fun of Americans. I also love imitating people, and I totally do it accidentally sometimes.

I imitated Cappy once in a speech for an event before Founder’s Day – and she was such a good sport. I heard from two or three people that tears were coming out of her eyes that she was laughing so hard. She’s actually very funny herself.

What I would consider my greatest accomplishment in the comedy world was when one of my friends dragged Lisa Kudrow to one of my talks and afterwards [Lisa Kudrow] emailed and told me that I was hysterical – then I was like, “Okay, I’m officially funny”.

After finishing your graduate work, what made you decide to return to Vassar to teach?

Here, my professors took me seriously and had very high expectations of me and really instilled in me a sense to do good work and change the world. It’s not okay to just take this gift and run, this is my way of giving back. I want to give back.

What made you decide that you wanted to be a House Fellow on campus? What’s it like being one of the only adults on a campus full of young people?

I wanted to be a House Fellow for the exact same reason [as why I wanted to return to Vassar to teach]. And as a single mom, I thought it would be fun for my kids. But I also was given a lot here and so showing students that I could be a source for them is what I wanted to do.

I have to remind myself sometimes that you all are younger because you guys are always thinking such big things and doing such big things and I do take you seriously. Obviously, I don’t want to go to the Mug or TH party with you, but when we’re in the classroom together or having a conversation about something that is important to you, I don’t really count the years. I’m ridiculously spoiled in terms of the students I get to interact with. My favorite example of what makes Vassar different was when I was teaching development psych on my first day: I had 30 slides and got through about 6 with all the good questions that were being asked. The first day my brothers were here they snuck into one of my classes and they were leaving class and asked “is every class like that?” And I said, “yeah, students always talk that much.” And he said, “I just think I would have enjoyed college if it was like that”. I’m so lucky to be around students who want to soak up everything that they can.

Photoshoot Credits Hair and makeup: Abigail Baird for Haus of Baird Jeans: 7 for Mankind for the Elderly Top: No idea (really, we have no idea where it came from) Styling: Phoebe Baird for Haus of Baird Witty commentary: Abigail Baird from the Haus of Baird

Did you ever incorporate Vassar into your stand up routines?

I’ve opened for campus comedy groups once or twice and that’s

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PLAYTIME WITH THE

Barefoot Monkeys PHOTOS BY RACHEL GARBADE, JACOB GORSKI,JULIA KAWAI

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Me, Myself, and Pikachu

Life Lessons from a Younger You

by Danny Lempert, photos by Rachel Garbade

As I near the final semester of my Vassar career, I cannot help but reflect on youth. A time when life was vivid, and—thanks to a significant shift in hormones—the stakes were always very high. For reference, watch Carrie or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (#yolo, amiright?).

Guide. I kid you not, I did the math, and I genuinely believed I was making a profit on these pieces of colorful paper. Like a hedge fund trader who’s blackout drunk at a 5 Star weekend retreat, I was living fast and ignoring the consequences. It was liberating.

Youth is filled with a desire, nay, an expectation for adventure! And yet slowly, we’re indoctrinated into a life of order and “productivity.” A word that bears all the trappings of sitting in a cubicle and being passive aggressive with Meredith from Accounting because she never closes the communal fridge and keeps sending you Foursquare invites. We get it Meredith. You’re the Princess of Starbucks.

You should probably fortify your sovereign rule because the baristas aren’t looking too happy.

Your adult self: I’m worried that I’m performing my gender in a way that perpetuates stereotypes/the nuclear family/90’s sitcom dynamics.

I digress. Simply, I’d like to draw a few parallels between our current, studious lives, and our younger years—if only to prove how much fun we’ve really lost.

Your adult self: My aunt/dad/friend hooked me up with an internship/job because I need to make money/a name for myself/a decent stock portfolio.

Your 12-year-old self used extensive connections (generous and distant grandparents) to get your hands on some expendable income (allowance). And then you did what all the cool kids were doing.

You threw it away on Pokémon Cards and Beanie Babies. Why?

Fear not, there was an outlet for discourse.

It was called

Power Rangers.

Because you were an entrepreneur. You proceeded to consolidate your assets into colorful and bespeckled binders to keep them safe (I’m looking at you, Romney). If you were a true connoisseur like myself, you purchased the Official Pokémon Card Collector’s Value

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Your 10-year-old self had several imagined outlets to explore your relation to gender and identity. The biggest was simply called House and IT WAS THE SHIT. On the surface, yes, House seems pretty abysmal. Wife stays home, and the husband goes off to work. But in reality, kids didn’t play that way. You know which member of the family I usually played? The dog! That’s all we ever wanted to be.

Household animals. I’d love to see Judith Butler tackle that one.

And sure, boys tended to stick together and get down with Batman and Robin, while the girls kicked it with Spice Girls. But fear not, there was an outlet for discourse. It was called Power Rangers. And outside of some problematic color schemes, it provided boys a way get down with the ladies and see what all the fuss was about. That said, at the end of the day, they were still pretty gross.

Your adult self: I’m trying to cut down on my fun /debauchery, because it’s time to grow up.

Listen. 15-year-old you was fortunate enough to grow up during the era of 7th Heaven. Jessica Biel and co. got into crazy antics my mother would assume this was the norm for all children our age.

There’s one episode when the youngest son is caught sniffing paint and it’s a big deal. My mom gave me a serious talking to. Luckily, the Camden’s threw my parents completely off the trail. Which left me wide open to kill Smirnoff Ices in the Park with my friends and be a general B.A. I embraced this wild, crazy side of myself. It was a rite of passage. Not a shameful secret.

Of course, the adventures of youth can’t last forever, and I’m not saying that we should give up on being functioning, productive adults. But don’t lose the fun and don’t forget your roots. I’m planning on being the incredibly embarrassing dad who sings along to “Get Low” as I drive my kids to school. Won’t you join me?

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Freshman Writing Seminars

Quirky Beginnings A requirement for all first-year students, Freshman Writing Seminars provide enticing and outlandish introductions to a Vassar education.

Articles by Sarah King and Jacqueline Krass Photos by Rachel Garbade, Katherine Stegmann, Kevin Vehar

>> ENGL-101-05: Contrasting Americas “[We study] America Dreams, Walking and Falling, New English, The Western Passion, Fall of the Rustbelt Archipelago, and [the] Rise of Creolized Cities. Then we take a breath.” This is how Professor Michael Joyce describes his freshman writing seminar, “Contrasting Americas.” Joyce conceived “Contrasting Americas” as a mini-course in 2010, in the hopes of engaging a group of international students he met while teaching in Sweden. Inspired by the upcoming election year, Joyce expanded the class into a FWS in 2012. Allie Huff, a current student, finds his combination of English and American Studies excitingly novel. “Contrasting Americas,” she says, provides a “very authentic way to talk about American identity,” as it examines whether literature can meaningfully portray something so multifaceted and conflicted as the American experience.

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>> ITAL-178-01: With Dante in Hell Sin, deceit, religion – Professor John Ahern’s “With Dante In Hell” is full of juicy material. Focusing on Dante’s Inferno, the class explores the political, religious, and stylistic issues of Dante’s world through his famous poem.

Where is Hell? Why? Is it organized? How can a poet know so much about it? Professor Ahern poses these and other tantalizing questions, going on to discuss the Empire, tension between past and present, and critics’ responses to the text from the Renissance until the present day.

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<< GRST-102-01: Cleopatra “I wanted a course that bridged the ancient and the modern worlds,” says Professor Bert Lott of his freshman writing seminar, “Cleopatra.” While everyone has heard of Cleopatra, most people know very little about her life and historical background.

Lott responds to this phenomenon by overcoming the obstacles of preconceived notions and assumptions, and this tactic has made his class such a hit that it’s been taught three years in a row. Former student Zoe Adams reflects on “Professor Lott warning us on the first day of class that we were going to end the semester knowing even less about who Cleopatra might have been” than before. And though the assertion was a bit disheartening at the time, Adams says the class helped her comprehend how Cleopatra’s character is an “amalgamation of historical, literary, and artistic perspectives,” and that she was “a malleable figure,” used to support various historical agendas. Students leave the class wondering: does it matter that the truth wins out?

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>> ENGL-101-07: What’s Love Got to Do With It? “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” examines various forms of love through literature from antiquity to the present. Student Emily Stensloff chose the course because she is a self -proclaimed “sucker for love,” and finds that the class offers a complex perspective on its many meanings. The class investigates how literature exposes different, ever-changing conceptions of love. “[T]he class is [very much] about sex,” Stensloff proclaims, “[it] comes up a lot and it seems to dominate [most] of the works that we read.” Readings including Romeo and Juliet, the Bible, Aristophanes, Ovid, Petrarch and Chaucer, each reading building upon one another and examining love’s multifaceted nature. What’s Love Got To Do With It? helpfully allows students to think creatively and analytically about everyone’s favorite and most personal emotion.

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>> ART-160-01: Politics of Art When you hear the word “art,” what’s your automatic association? Probably not politics, but for Professor Lisa Collins, the two are heavily linked. “My interest in art and activism and my desire to share classroom space with first-year students led to my current FWS,” Professor Collins explains, adding that she values “[the class’] shared work to create a healthy space to think deeply about research and writing, to intently practice both, and to foster sustainable and enriching writing practices.”

While the class mainly studies the 20th and 21st centuries, when it comes to topics, it’s all hands on deck, as the class explores “connections between art, politics, and society.” Students will never look at art the same way again.

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BACK COVER (make reverse of Contrast Magazine, Fall 2012 front?) c o n t r a st vassar.blo gspo t .co m Cover photo by Kevin Vehar 40

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