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Conversations about Vassar History with Historian Elizabeth A. Daniels

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 of our talking heads and incidental indications 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 '85, and editing by Julia VanDevelder and, later, Riane Harper '09, some of Betty's reflections on what she learned about Vassar are now passed along.

CJ, 2006, 2014

• 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 Johnson 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