The Films of Preston Sturges

To this day, Preston Sturges remains one of the most celebrated screenwriters in American film history. His clever dialogue and ridiculous antics took the screwball comedy genre to a new level. In addition to writing, Sturges began directing his own films in 1940 with The Great McGinty. His career spanned more than twenty years and he managed to leave a lasting impression on Hollywood.

A still from Sturges 1937 film Easy Living.

This summer, I had the opportunity to work with Professor Sarah Kozloff on the first academic anthology ever published by Sturges. As an editor, Professor Kozloff was responsible for editing drafts from contributing writers, preparing photographs for the publisher, and establishing a consistent writing style for the book. To assist in the editing process I kept track of information on each chapter and made a style sheet. I also captured screenshots from several of Sturges’s films and edited them in Photoshop for the best print quality.

Preston Sturges in his director’s chair.

In addition to editing the anthology, Professor Kozloff also contributed two chapters. The first chapter discusses Sturges’s strength as a writer compared to his directing ability. Professor Kozloff argues that while Sturges enjoyed the control that came with directing his own screenplays, many of his films ultimately benefited from the influence of other directors. In the second chapter, Professor Kozloff explores Sturges’s influence on later filmmakers. She pays special attention to Ethan and Joel Coen who have previously acknowledged Sturges as one of their inspirations. Their 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? took its title from the film-within-a-film in Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels (1941) and Catherine Zeta-Jones’s character in Intolerable Cruelty (2003) bears a strong resemblance to the cunning heroines of films like The Lady Eve (1941).

A still from Sturges’s 1935 film The Good Fairy.

To aid Professor Kozloff in the writing process, I conducted extensive research on each of the films discussed. This included finding books and periodicals in the Vassar library and making use of many online resources. Databases like WorldCat, Media History Digital Library, and EBSCOhost allowed me to find scholarly articles and film reviews that provided useful information. In addition, I was able to view Production Code documents on Sturges’s films on microfilm. I learned a great deal about the academic writing and researching processes. Once published, I have no doubt that the anthology will prove to be an important contribution to the world of film scholarship. I am extremely grateful to have received the opportunity to participate in such a fascinating project.

Russian Science Fiction Cinema: From Aelita to Kin-Dza-Dza! (and beyond)

This Summer I worked with Professors Firtich and Ungurianu on a research project which explored Russian Science Fiction Cinema. The project’s ultimate goal was to assist in the initial stages of gathering research for a book that the professors have begun writing on the topic, and exploring the trajectory scifi took from the Revolution in 1917 all the way through to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Additionally, I helped the Professors in developing course materials for a class on Russian Sci-fi Cinema that Professor Ungurianu plans to teach in the future.

A still from Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci-fi masterpiece, Solaris

While Russian Science-fiction cinema is a very deep field (in my research I discovered well over a hundred films which belong to that category) the majority of its riches, beyond perhaps Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris which has an ardent following in Europe and the States, remain almost wholly unknown outside of the former Soviet bloc. Throughout my time working on the project, I created a comprehensive spreadsheet of all science-fiction films made in the Soviet Union/Russia. I was also tasked with making a comprehensive bibliography of all academic texts and scholarly works written about the field, as well as bibliographies of major texts about Russian Science-fiction literature (a field with its own plethora of important and highly influential works, such as Yevgeny Zamyatin’s phenomenal We – a precursor and almost certain inspiration to George Orwell’s 1984) and Western Science-fiction. Through these assignments, I was able to get a good sense of just how much research and effort goes into the creation of an academic work while simultaneously having the opportunity to discover many new films, some of which I now hold among my very favorite.
The research ultimately culminated with a project looking at the trajectory of space exploration in Soviet science-fiction cinema. Beginning with Yakov Protazanov’s Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924), generally considered the first Soviet science-fiction film ever made, and going all the way through to Georgiy Daneliya’s Kin-Dza-Dza! (1986), the project broke down Soviet space exploration on screen into 5 distinct phases: Revolutionary, Heroic, Philosophical and Metaphysical, Consequeces of Human Action, and Dystopian. Coupled with each of these phases was a film used as a mini-case study of that unique category. Having this as the final part of my Ford Scholarship, allowed me to put all of the research I had done over the course of the Summer into practice and can hopefully be used by others as a brief introduction into this fascinating, little known genre of cinema.

A still from Kin-Dza-Dza!, one of the best scifi films to come out of the Soviet Union (and, unfortunately, one that is almost wholly unknown of in the United States)

A still from Kin-Dza-Dza!, one of the best scifi films to come out of the Soviet Union (and, unfortunately, one that remains almost wholly unknown in the United States)

The Politics and Culture of Transparency in 18th century France

This summer I devoted my studies to one of the most dramatic, blood-crazed periods in modern history- the French Revolution. With the guidance of Professor Sumita Choudhury, I examined the century leading up to this historic event through a socio-political lens. In particular, we researched the public’s heightened longing for transparency in the grip of an increasingly secretive despotism. This involved poring through thousands of manuscripts, pamphlets, and critiques wishing to expose the malevolent nature of the monarchy, the clergy, or (in some cases) secret societies such as the Jacobins, Jesuits, Templars, and the Illuminati. Needless to say, there was a vast wealth of mudslinging and speculation from a people who only wanted to know the truth about its government’s shady actions and intentions. This social phenomenon was without a doubt one of the greatest contributing factors to the revolution, which would ultimately be regarded as the most radical period of political and social upheaval in French history. In the hopes of writing a book, Professor Choudhury had me create a rich collection of sources, as well as develop a running vocabulary from the public’s expressions of dissatisfaction towards its rulers. By the end, I have gained a formidable connaissance of the period’s deeper motivations and our active nature as political subjects. Being a psychology major, I was frequently captivated most by the implications of my research in a modern, social context. The enlightened atmosphere of our current society certainly draws many parallels to that of the 18th century in Europe, who made endless reforms on all levels of existence as a result of the birth of the Scientific method. Today, there are millions of citizens asking the same questions as their not-so-distant European ancestors, often concerning the legitimacy of the “transparent” nature of our digital age. Whatever these parallels may imply for the future of our civilization, it is certain that our transition to real Enlightenment will not be as easy as we might have hoped.

Translation of Castiglione’s Il Libro del Cortegiano

The Book of the Courtier plays a significant role in the history of courtesy literature. Written by Baldassarre Castiglione over the course of twenty years, it remains the most definitive account of the life and culture among the Renaissance nobility. The handiwork of the 16th-centruy diplomat addresses the aristocratic manners of the Italian Renaissance and the constitution of a perfect courtier. It was read widely and influenced the writings of representative figures in Western literature and civilization, such as William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser. The project works on the first Chinese translation of the book from its Italian original. 51W32WAR90L__SL500 Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, Dover Publications, 2003

Initially, different editions of the book that have been published over time were compared and contrasted. We began the translation with the fourth edition of Il Libro del Cortegiano by Vittorio Cian in 1947 and the second edition of Il Libro del Cortegiano: con una scelta delle opere minori di Baldassarre Castiglione by B. Maier in 1973. Moreover, we researched and referenced the literature of Renaissance historiography, such as Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, in order to attain a more sophisticated understanding of the Renaissance culture and philosophy. In the process of the translation, the most acclaimed English editions have also been taken into account, i.e. Charles S. Singleton’s translation as well as annotations in 1959, George Bull’s translation in 1967, and so on.

Renaissance court dance

The next phase of the project is to continue with the translation of the book and the revision of annotations. The complete translation of the book is intended for publication. With China’s long-standing solicitude for morality and social manners, the book will add to the discourse of etiquette in the contemporary society.

Toy Stories: The Production, Marketing, Consumption and Psychology of German Children’s Literature and Toys from the Enlightenment to the Present

It has been a very busy few weeks for us in Chicago Hall (and beyond)! Our collaboration has focused on the history of German children’s culture, particularly toys and children’s books, one of Prof. Elliott Schreiber’s key research interests. Throughout the summer, Kristen Caccavale has assisted Prof. Schreiber with research into the psychology of children’s play as depicted especially in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s famous children’s story, “Nutcracker and the King of Mice.” This research will culminate in an article to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal in Fall 2014.

Children’s culture also features heavily in Vassar’s year-long Beginning German sequence. We started our summer with Kristen compiling a list of over 50 contemporary, award-winning German children’s books, which we have ordered for Vassar’s Thompson Memorial Library. We will be using these books in Beginning German to help students improve not only their understanding of the German language, but also of the German culture. Students in this class write and illustrate their own children’s books and read them to elementary school children at Deutsche Schule New York, located about an hour south of Vassar in White Plains. We have been working with several staff members at Academic Computing Services in order to incorporate iBooks into this project, and we will now be piloting some of the iBooks software in class next year. We also had a very productive trip to the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York during our fifth week. There, we had access to the museum’s extensive archives, where we were able to look at original editions of German pop-up books written by Lothar Meggendorfer, some of which were over 100 years old. We have ordered reproductions of these books to use in Beginning German, and they will make another excellent addition to the curriculum.

This scene is from the first page of the Lothar Meggendorfer pop-up book; it shows the mother and father being driven in a car on the right, and a maid on the left.

This scene takes place on the fourth page of the book and shows a little girl with her cat and a maid in the kitchen.

While at the Strong also discovered some extensively detailed books regarding German dolls and dollhouses, which Kristen will be using in her culminating Ford Scholar poster and presentation, as well as in a presentation she will be giving to students in Beginning German in the Fall. Kristen has decided to center her presentation on German girlhood in Imperial Germany, and has been reading several girls’ memoirs from that period, as well as researching German girls’ dolls, toys, dollhouses, and societal roles during this time.

The whole book laid out at the Strong National Museum of Play Archives.

In our last few weeks, we will be preparing for our October Ford Scholar poster presentation, as well as looking through the archives in Special Collections for any rare German children’s books or illustrations of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, which we will also be using to educate students in Beginning German about German art, literature, history, and culture. We can’t believe that our fellowship is almost over, but we have certainly made the most of it!

The Corporatization of American Education

Kyle DeAngelis (Class of 2015) and Professor Chris Bjork

Educational historians generally identify the publication of A Nation at Risk as the start of the corporate school reform movement.

In 1983, the National Commission for Excellence in Education published a report titled A Nation at Risk, which insisted that American schools were chronically failing, posing an imminent threat to America’s economic and military supremacy at home and abroad. Since the publication of the report, a bipartisan consensus has emerged around the imperative for structural school reform. The series of reforms that have resulted from this consensus are heavily influenced by business and neoliberal economic theories, earning this movement the nickname “corporate school reform”.

President Bush signs the No Child Left Behind Act into law.

The agenda of corporate school reform emphasizes test-based school accountability, high standards, and school choice as the main levers to improve educational outcomes. The reformers contend that students should be tested annually, and their scores on these standardized tests should be used to punish or reward teachers, principals, and schools accordingly. Rigorous academic standards should be set for all students and no excuses should be accepted for failure to meet these standards. Reformers promote vouchers, charter schools, and other policies that increase choice in education, arguing that competition among schools will drive improvement. Critics of corporate reform have pointed out that these reforms are not as effective in practice as they appear to be in theory, and have had several unforeseen negative effects on American education.

In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law. Passed by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support, NCLB took the test and punish accountability measures touted by corporate reformers to scale and promoted school choice. In 2009, President Barack Obama revealed his major education initiative, Race to the Top, which continued to embrace the same education reforms as NCLB.

Like their predecessors, President Barack Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, both embrace corporate school reform.

My project with Professor Chris Bjork involved the creation of a new senior seminar in education to be offered in the spring of 2015 on the subject of corporate education reform. I spent several weeks reading books, essays, government reports, research articles, and news pieces on the subject of corporate school reform. I used this research to create a schedule of reading for Professor Bjork’s seminar. Next spring, students in “The Corporatization of American Education” seminar will read from both proponents and critics of corporate school reform and analyze the arguments put forth by all sides of the debate. Students will investigate the neoliberal theories underpinning corporate school reform, the research regarding accountability and school choice, the political history of school reform since 1983, and the influence of teachers unions and billionaire philanthropists on educational policy. At the end of the course, students will research the potential for alternatives to corporate school reform. Ultimately, students will gain a comprehensive and critical knowledge of U.S. school reform over the last three decades.

The World of Shojo Manga: Mirror of Girls’ Desires

This upcoming fall there will be a shojo manga art exhibition in Vassar’s Palmer Gallery and Dutchess Community College’s Washington Gallery from October 29^th to November 21^st. Vassar College’s Professor Dollase is collaborating with Professor Toku of California State University, Chico (Curator of the Exhibition), Teresa Quinn (Director of Palmer Gallery), Monica Church (Associate Director of Palmer Gallery) and Margaret E. Craig (Professor of Art History at Dutchess Community College) to make this exhibition possible. My job this summer was to assist Professor Dollase in the planning of this exhibition, contribute to the gallery with English translations of manga, and prepare a speech about shojo manga to give at Vassar and Dutchess Community College on two unknown dates.

Now why should you come to this shojo manga art exhibition? What is shojo manga? Manga are Japanese graphic novels, and they are split into two categories: shojo manga (marketed towards a female audience) and shonen manga (marketed towards boys). My focus this summer was on shojo manga, which is such an important part of Japanese culture that there are even classes on manga in Japanese universities! Women of all ages read shojo manga, and it is distinguishable by its use of large eyes and cute, feminine men. Shojo manga isn’t just love stories and fantasies; there is an underlying importance in shojo manga artists’ usage of love, gender fluidity, and homosexual relations that suggests something important about the emotions of girls in Japan. Japanese girls strive for true love and a better life, but shojo manga also suggests that there are still issues with equality in heterosexual relationships.

Rose of Versailles by Riyoko Ikeda: A popular and influential shojo manga.

The art exhibition is comprised of pictures of the artwork in shojo manga, not the books themselves. As part of my internship, I translated two works from Japanese to English with the help of Professor Dollase. One of the translations will be in Vassar’s Palmer Gallery during the exhibition. With this addition, visitors can read some shojo manga stories and see the book form, instead of just viewing singular pictures of covers and pages in the gallery. Having visitors see actual manga books will help introduce them to Japanese popular culture. The rest of my project was dedicated to researching Japanese culture, reading manga from the 1960s to the 1990s, and using this knowledge to make a speech and PowerPoint presentation to present at later dates in the fall. My speech topic will be the importance of love in Japanese shojo manga, so I will be discussing the history of love in Japan, the variety of love portrayed in manga, and what this variety suggests about love and relationships for girls in Japan.

A page of the translation that will be shown in Vassar’s Palmer Gallery.

If you have time in the fall, please stop by either Vassar College or Dutchess Community College between October 30^th and November 21^st to delve into the interesting world of shojo manga!

This summer, I worked with Professor Lydia Murdoch on research for her current book project, Called by Death: The Politics and Public Mourning of Child Mortality in Nineteenth-Century England. This will be the first comprehensive history of the Victorians and child death. The book examines the ways in which discourses of grieving for dead children changed over the course of the nineteenth century and, in particular, how women drew upon their experiences of child death as they claimed a greater public role as authorities on political topics ranging from imperial expansion and factory production to working-class housing conditions and state welfare programs. My research this summer centered on women abolitionists in Britain in the nineteenth century. Professor Murdoch and I explored how these British women abolitionists contributed to political expressions of grief through their discussion of children who had died or were separated from parents under slavery.

My work consisted of researching and creating bibliographies of primary and secondary materials on British abolitionists. First, I looked at the Wilson Anti-Slavery Collection of British abolitionist pamphlets, a collection of nearly 500 total pamphlets spanning the entire nineteenth century. I collected pamphlets written by or for women that addressed themes of childhood, child death, and separation of families. Types of pamphlets ranged from Annual Reports of Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Societies to collections of stories and poetry for children, advertisements for Anti-Slavery Bazaars, and reports on the education of slave children. Many of these pamphlets attempted to garner sympathy from British women through depictions of the life of children in slavery, particularly through the scope of motherhood.

Next, I turned to the life of Mary Prince, a freed slave who struggled to survive in Bermuda, Turks Island, Antigua, and finally in England. Commissioned and edited by Thomas Pringle, Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, and transcribed by Susanna Strickland Moodie, sister of the historian Agnes Strickland, Prince’s slave narrative was the first account of the life of a black women to be published in Britain. Sarah Salih’s edited edition of Prince’s The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave (1831) provided a foundation for my research into Prince’s life.[1] In her autobiography, Prince equates the separation of slave children from their parents with death as she describes her mother shrouding her children and mourning their loss the day they were separated, making Prince’s story perfect for a project on child death in slavery. I found very few primary sources written about Mary Prince; most are newspaper articles that focus on a libel case regarding the validity of Prince’s narrative. I also collected a variety of secondary sources about Mary Prince; most focused on Prince’s voice and agency in her narrative. Despite the importance of Prince’s voice as a black woman in the British abolitionist movement, she was largely excluded from the movement by white women abolitionists, namely those who wrote the abolitionist pamphlets in the Wilson Anti-Slavery Collection, and she was treated as a victim of slavery rather than a fellow activist.[2]

I then looked through Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates for themes of child mortality and loss in Parliamentary speeches that centered around abolition. Speeches discussing children largely focused on the plights of children who were enslaved from birth.

Figure 1- Sarah Parker Remond

The final portion of my research focused on the life of Sarah Parker Remond, a black abolitionist from Salem, Massachusetts who gave a series of lectures in Britain from 1859-1866 (See Figure 1). Her lectures focused particularly on the sexual abuse of female slaves and separation of families under slavery, and were recorded in both British and American publicans, including the Warrington Guardian, Warrington Times, Warrington Standard, Anti-Slavery Advocate, Bolton Chronicle, The Morning Chronicle, Manchester Times, The Liberator, among others. As for child mortality, Remond concentrated on the case of Margaret Garner, a slave woman who killed her children rather than see them taken into slavery.[3] The amount of primary sources on Remond’s lecture series is extensive; these accounts speak to Remond’s incredible influence as a black women abolitionist in the public eye during this time.

Figure 2- “Am I not a Woman and Sister,” from the Annual Report of the Edinburgh Ladies’ Emancipation Society (1867)

Figure 3- “The Negro Mother’s Appeal,” from Anti-Slavery Scrapbook (1829)

Professor Murdoch will use the sources I collected to write this chapter on women abolitionists and child death and complete her book. This preliminary research has revealed a thick fabric of women’s voices in the British abolitionist movement. However, this fabric is largely dominated by white women’s voices. The pamphlets in the Wilson Anti-Slavery Collection written by white women victimized slaves and elevated white abolitionists. They include startling images of black powerlessness—black women kneeling before white women for aid, or slave children reaching up to the aid of a white woman savior (See Figures 2 & 3).[4] They erased the possibility of black resistance to slavery, which as we know from Mary Prince, Sarah Parker Remond, and countless others, was a powerful force in the abolition of slavery and women’s rights. Nonetheless, through their publications, stories, and lectures mourning the suffering and death of children under slavery, all of these women gained political agency in the public sphere.

[1] Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave (1831), edited by Sarah Salih (London: Penguin Books, 2004).

[2] Clare Midgley, Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns 1780-1870 (London: Routledge, 1992), 91.

[3] “Lecture on American Slavery by a Coloured Lady,” Warrington Times (January 29, 1859, no. 4): I.

[4] Midgley, Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns 1780-1870, 204.

Recusant Readership and the Library of Catherine of Braganza

Recusant Readership and the Library of Catherine of Braganza

Professor Dorothy Kim & Nicholas Hoffman ‘14

Catherine of Braganza is seldom discussed both within and outside of the academic sphere. An Infanta of Portugal, she is usually mentioned in the context of her marriage to Charles II of England, and a poor, often neglectful marriage it was. However, a closer analysis of her life reveals a rich history—of scandal, isolation, and recusant readership. A staunch Catholic, she was forced to navigate the complicated and often dangerous socio-political playing field of the English Restoration. During the hysteria of the Popish Plot, Titus Oates even accused her of being an agent of the Vatican sent to orchestrate the assassination of the King. In defiance of suggestions that she convert (or that Charles should divorce her or even have her kidnapped), she disregarded the volatility of her political status and commissioned the printing of numerous Catholic texts, in some cases at the expense of her printers who were arrested and thrown in prison for their dissension.

I had the privilege of working with Professor Dorothy Kim on evaluating and expanding upon a complete bibliography for Catherine, reading through each text in search for clues as to how she was able to publish and maintain this private library of what her public saw as “licentious” or “libelous” texts. I researched London printers, the migration of her private chapel between Whitehall and Somerset House, all mentions of her reading habits, her correspondence back home in Portugal, the various laws passed against her form of readership, and inventories of her goods (some of these sources only available in Portuguese) and delved into any mention of her religion. A majority of my time was spent poring over the Calendar of State Papers: Domestic Series, of the Reign of Charles II—an exhaustive volume that chronicles all the internal affairs of Charles’ reign.

Using resources online and at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California, significant headway has been made in the scholarship surrounding Catherine of Braganza. The endeavor was fruitful, revealing links between Catherine and various monasteries, both in England and on the Continent. One volume that can be traced back to her was discovered in Australia. In addition, the original bibliography of all texts that mention her has been greatly expanded.

Framing Black Fiction

Professor Eve Dunbar’s commitment to exploring the spectrum of Black literary production, and more broadly black art production, lead to this particular Ford Scholars project in which Laci Dent and I assisted Professor Dunbar in the exploration of the relationships between the visual arts and Black literary fiction. We began the project constructing portfolios on a host of Black literary fiction authors and an editor of many Black Authored titles, to provide Professor Dunbar with detailed contextualized views of the subjects we would interview. In our research of archives, literary fiction, academic writings and interviews, we focused on the links between the visual arts and the authors work and processes. We focused on why it might be beneficial to understanding mass culture through exploring these links between visual arts and black authorship.

Author Martha Southgate left, Author Victor Lavalle right

The intensive research periods culminated in a series of interviews with authors, Tayari Jones, Kiese Laymon, Victor Lavalle, Martha Southgate, and editor at Random House, Chris Jackson, all of whom displayed a diverse set of relationships with visuality in their art production. Yet all of the interviews touched upon interesting narratives of progress, liberation, and black artist tradition. In the interview with Chris Jackson he highlighted disjunctures in the work of contemporary black authorship, Martha Southgate yearned to see greater interest in the diverse production of work on the lives of Black people today, and Kiese Laymon lamented the potential for love and honesty that is threatened when Black youth, in particular, don’t have access to diverse representations of themselves across media forms. These topics of nurturing, building, setting the tools for empowerment, and love for Black art production sprung from the theorization upon visuality in authorship, all of which has inspired my own personal work to look towards fiction as a space of radical imagination and theorization upon social ills, specifically pertaining to racist, patriarchal, and capitalist exploitation and marginalization. The research and interviews conducted lead everyone involved in the project with a plethora of deductive studies to explore.
Laci Dent explains how the Ford Scholarship continues to influence her work and thought production, “I was interested in the idea of black identity being tied to iconicity in the visual realm (film, television, and etc). I’m interested in depicting black subjects in the visual realm as in ‘process’, as ‘thinking’ beings who are subjective and hold claim to some form of consciousness. Later in the summer, I’m shooting a short film in New Orleans called “Shared Wounds” that challenges the troubling nature of blackness in visuality.”