Conversations about Vassar History with Historian Elizabeth A. Daniels

From VCencylopedia

In 1995, Elizabeth Daniels asked me if I would be "willing" to engage in a series of video recordings in which she would tell me "all I've learned about Vassar." I was both willing and honored to be asked, and we started that fall a series of taped interviews, patiently recorded by John McCormick, ranging over a pre-arranged set of topics. I think that the experience for Betty was energizing, and I know that, for me, it was informative and delightful.

In time, we realized that the medium we had chosen was not the right one. We had many hours of video, the sound quality of which was only passable and the video content of which was our talking heads and incidental indication of what the two of us wore as the year went along. Thanks to the efforts of Vassar's Media Resources department, the unwearying transcription of Majorie Krems, and editing by Julia VanDevelder and, later, Riane Harper, Betty's invaluable reflections on what she learned about Vassar, however incomplete they remain, can now be passed along.

                                                                                                                 CJ, 2006

• Conversation One
  • • Overview from 1861 to 1946: Milo P. Jewett... James Monroe Taylor... Henry Noble MacCracken... Vassar College ***Governance... World War Two
• Conversation Two
  • • Overview from1945 to 1964: Sarah Gibson Blanding... The Mellon Study... Alan Simpson... The Yale-Vassar Study
• Conversation Three
  • • 1950s... 1960s... Twelve College Exchange... Modernization of the Curriculum... Lucy Maynard Salmon... Laura ***Wiley... The Governance of Vassar College
• Conversation Four
  • • Matthew Vassar's Death... His Gravesite... Early Physical Education... Early Encouragement of Student Independence.... The Blizzard of '88... Suffragists... Vassar Eccentrics***