This symposium brings together scholars working across the Mediterranean and East Asia to explore the manifold dimensions of letter-writing in premodern cultures. Through perspectives spanning ancient Rome, early medieval China, and medieval Japan, the event examines how epistles shaped education, literary self-presentation, emotions, and relationships of power across different historical and cultural contexts.

This event is free and open to the public.

Dr. Kathryn Furlong examines how infrastructure financing and public debt have shaped Medellín’s celebrated urban transformation while creating ongoing crises for vulnerable residents.

This event is free and open to the public.

Featuring Faculty with Curtis Dozier, Associate Professor and Chair of Greek and Roman Studies.

The True North Jazz Project performs original music, jazz standards, world music, and unique interpretations of pop and rock tunes. Featuring Joe North, saxophone; Ryan Cerullo, piano; Buddy Griffith, bass; and Ryan Odell, drums.

This event is free and open to the public.

Celebrate the 2026 Summer Community Fellows and their community partners.

This event is free and open to the public.

Vassar welcomes family members back to campus for a weekend of panels, performances, outdoor fun, art events, and lots more!

Lisa Tetrault, Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, will deliver the C. Mildred Thompson Lecture. The event will include a special message for retiring Professor Rebecca Edwards.

Professor Mary McLeod examines women designers’ influence on European modern architecture between the World Wars.

This event is free and open to the public.

Join us at the Olmsted Greenhouse for a calm doodling session with Vassar’s Counseling Center! No artistic skills necessary—we are just doodling for fun and to calm the mind. All ages welcome.

This event is free and open to the public.

Writer, essayist, translator, and editor Eliot Weinberger delivers the Elizabeth Bishop Poetry Lecture.

This event is free and open to the public.

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the film’s release, the Film Department is hosting a screening of Vassar’s own Associate Professor of Film, Denise Iris’s Minor Visions (2001), followed by a conversation with Iris Charles H. Arndt, Associate Professor of Russian Studies, and Andreea Drogeanu, Tribeca Film Festival Programmer.

This event is free and open to the public.

2026 marks the 40th anniversary of Vassar’s Undergraduate Research Summer Institute (URSI) and was the largest in the program’s history, with over 120 students and faculty working to create a scholarly, scientific community. Please join us in celebrating the accomplishments of our talented faculty and students at this, the 40th annual URSI Symposium.

Campus community only, please.

Join us as we mark the closing weekend of A Living Legacy: Gifts from Lynn Gross Straus with a program featuring three generations of scholars who have been impacted by Lynn's generosity: Elizabeth Prelinger, Professor Emeritus of Art History at Georgetown University; John Murphy, the Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Loeb; and Ruby Funfrock, Vassar Class of 2024 and former Loeb curatorial student assistant.

This event is free and open to the public.

Members of the Vassar Music Faculty will perform a variety of jazz originals and standards.

This event is free and open to the public.

Music from Paris: Vassar faculty members—Marka Young, violin; Liuh-Wen Ting, viola; Iva Casian-Lakos, cello; Marija Ilić, piano; and Alan Hankers, electronics—perform works by Kaija Saariaho and Gabriel Fauré.

This event is free and open to the public.

Dr. Sandrine Thomas, Vera C. Rubin Observatory Associate Director for Summit Operation, will discuss the Observatory’s early results, its history and objectives, and the innovative system built to handle the tidal wave of data it produces.

In The Patient Looks Back: Portraits of My Therapist, Catskill-based painter Joyce Polance reverses therapy’s usual direction of attention by turning the patient’s gaze toward the therapist. Painted in oil entirely with her fingers, the three-year series moves between likeness and disruption, testing how much close looking can—and cannot—reveal.

Join us as our Ford Scholars present their summer research projects. This event is free and open to the public.

Catherine Ramírez explores race, immigration, automation, and visions of labor in Latinxfuturist works.

This event is free and open to the public.