Among the oldest student publications in the United States, the Miscellany News traces its roots back to 1866. Beginning as a literary magazine and evolving into a contemporary newspaper, the paper has reported nearly 150 years of student experiences. The Miscellany has seen generations of Vassar College students who have witnessed the horrors of international war, felt the injustices of racial strife, and observed stirring protests unfold on their own campus. This narrative history of the Miscellany tells the story of the young men and women writing about their collegiate environment against the grand backdrop of American history. With careful qualitative and quantitative analysis-along with scores of interviews with former editors-Brian Farkas navigates the complex and fascinating history of the Miscellany. Blending historical investigation with his personal experience, Farkas presents a fascinating and often humorous window into journalism, history's first draft.

In this book, James Longenbach develops a fresh approach to major American poetry after modernism. Rethinking the influential "breakthrough" narrative, the oft-told story of postmodern poets throwing off their modernist shackles in the 1950s, Longenbach offers a more nuanced perspective. Reading a diverse range of poets--John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Amy Clampitt, Jorie Graham, Richard Howard, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, Robert Pinsky, and Richard Wilbur--Longenbach reveals that American poets since mid- century have not so much disowned their modernist past as extended elements of modernism that other readers have suppressed or neglected to see. In the process, Longenbach allows readers to experience the wide variety of poetries written in our time-- without asking us to choose between them.

The first book-length investigation of a pioneering English professor and theorist at Vassar College, A Feminist Legacy: The Rhetoric and Pedagogy of Gertrude Buck explores Buck’s contribution to the fields of education and rhetoric during the Progressive Era. By contextualizing Buck’s academic and theoretical work within the rise of women’s educational institutions like Vassar College, the social and political movement toward suffrage, and Buck’s own egalitarian political and social ideals, Suzanne Bordelon offers a scholarly and well-informed treatment of Buck’s achievements that elucidates the historical and contemporary impact of her work and life. Bordelon argues that while Buck did not call herself a feminist, she embodied feminist ideals by demanding the full participation of her female students and by challenging power imbalances at every academic, social, and political level. A Feminist Legacy reveals that Vassar College is an undervalued but significant site in the history of women’s argumentation and pedagogy. Drawing on a rich variety of archival sources, including previously unexamined primary material, A Feminist Legacy traces the beginnings of feminist theories of argumentation and pedagogy and their lasting legacy within the fields of education and rhetoric.

John McAndrew's Modernist Vision tells the compelling story of the architect, scholar, and curator John McAndrew, who played a key role in redefining modernism in the United States from the 1930s onward. The designer of the Vassar College Art Library—arguably the first modern interior on a college campus—and the curator of architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1937 to 1941, McAndrew was instrumental in creating a distinct and innovative aesthetic that bridged the European modernist lineage and American regional vernacular. Providing a fascinating glimpse into McAndrew's life, his associations with important architects and artists, and the historical context that shaped his work, this book is a thoroughly researched testament to a man who left a powerful mark on the evolution of American architecture.