Theses from 2025
‘That Gaze Across the Gulf of Being’: The Culture of Disalienation and its Limits in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, Samantha Tassillo '22
Theses from 2022
Expansion and Progress: Walt Whitman’s Visions and Revisions of American Prosperity, Samuel Dils '22
Violent Archetypes in Elfriede Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher and Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season, Gregory Duke '22
Arthur Once and Future: Death, Disunity, and Temporal Disjunction in The Awntyrs off Arthure, Clara Kohrman '22
Imperfect Mirror: Affect, ethics, and homage in E.M. Forster’s Howards End and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, Garret Lualdi '22
Not Like the Other Girls: Tomboy Narratives in Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Karen Russell’s Swamplandia!, Rachel Lu '22
The Triumph of a Feminine Ethic of Care in Matthew Lewis’ The Monk, Alexandra Millar '22
The War and The Road: Revisiting the Authenticity of Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac in an Age of Evolved Masculinity, John Sullivan '22
Bad Blood: Deconstructing Fantasies of Empathetic Capitalism in The Merchant of Venice and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Audrey Wallace '22
Theses from 2021
Loyalty and Lust: A Close Reading of Aaron’s Interactions with Tamora in Modern Productions of Titus Andronicus, Isabel Bates '21
Unlocking the Roman à Clef: Gossip as a Literary Concept in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, Genevieve Cohen '21
Contemplating Race and the Sentimental Genre in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Daniella M. Edwards '21
Toward a Moral Education in Literature: A Comparison of Lolita and Johnny Mad Dog, Haley Katz '21
Gloria Naylor’s 1996: Where Form Breeds Content, Philip Marks '21
A Portrait of Gertrice/Altrude: (Self-)Portraiture and Alterity in Gertrude Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Kyra Richardson '21
Feeling Like a Jew, Leo Ross '21
Performing Queenship: The Fairy Queen in the Elvetham and Ditchley Progresses, Majestic R. Terhune '21
An Incomprehensible Passage of Time: Authorial Control and Bewilderment in “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Swimmer”, Eleonor Wolf '21
The Evolution of the “Woman Warrior”: Reconfiguring Asian American Femininity, Stephanie Wu '21
Theses from 2019
Representing Childbirth: Making and Unmaking Language to Communicate Experiences of the Body, Sabrina Boutselis '19
Cloaking Desire: Stasis and Sexuality in Nikolai Gogol's Short Stories, Katie Dolan '19
Christine de Pizan as Architect of Women’s Spaces in The Book of the City of Ladies, Allison Donlan '19
Intentional Inheritance: William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez in Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, Elizabeth Maier '19
Passing: The Performance and Visibility of Identity, Kendall Nichelle Rallins '19
Waving in the Ferns: Nature, Imagination, and Storytelling in Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon, Haley Tietz '19
"A Divided Duty:" Liminal Space and Coming-of-Age in Shakespeare's Father/Daughter Relationships, Alexa Zildjian '19
Theses from 2018
Autotelia: Composing the Self Through Personal Critical Theory, Annie H. Berman '18
Shamanism in an Inflexible Society: Slaughterhouse-Five and Briefing for a Descent Into Hell, Dana Holloway '18
Valmont and the Allure of Virtue in Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Sarah Morrill '18
Feminine Heroism in Scandinavian Variants of Aarne-Thompson Uther Tale Type 425A, Paula Weiman '18
Approaching Traditions: the Ideological Ambivalence of Modern Intellectuals in 20th-century Ireland and China, Hou "Chloe" Xiaohan '18
Theses from 2017
How Publishing Detrimentally Determines Dickinson's Poetry, Mali Barker '17
Theses from 2015
Constructed Intimacy: How Christian Devotional Poets Manage Audience, Emma Bowman '15
“Eddying with the vowels of all rivers”: Language, Body, and Gender in Finnegans Wake, Hannah Chappell '15
Theses from 2014
Color Theory in Tess of the D’Urbervilles: The Elicitation of Sympathy through a Verbal Palette, Abigail Saks '14
“Gatherers of Flowers” and Introductions to “Greatness and Variety”: Anthologists' Roles in the Formation and Interpretation of the Canon, Grace Parker Zielinski '14
Theses from 2013
“Thy Love to Empire I Prefer!” The Function of Romantic Love in Nahum Tate’s King Lear, Cooper Creagan '13
“Colours Intolerably Bright”: The Presence of the Past In Sean O’Faolain’s The Man Who Invented Sin and Frank O’Connor’s Crab Apple Jelly, Genevieve Davinia Nierman '13
Theses from 2012
Jane Austen’s Censure of Mercenary Marriage: Who Crosses the Line and How Do We Know?, Laura Gilson '12
Modernism and Cultural Economies: Neo-Marxian and Keynesian Anticipations in T.S. Eliot, Pat McNally '12
Prison Writing and Beckett, Andrew Taub '12
“Once Upon a Time in Victorian England: Translating the Brothers Grimm for a British Audience”, Chelsea Wiggins '12
Theses from 2011
Empowered Ladies and Gentlemen of Grass-Green Complexions: Feminist and Post-Colonial Close Readings of Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, Caitlin C. Fitzsimons '11
Theses from 2008
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Short Fiction and the Literary Values of the Jazz Age, Ali Fisher '08
In Sickness and in Hell: a Study of Religious Fantasy and Satire in Good Omens and The Screwtape Letters, Whitney P. Kimmel '08
Ceremonies and Song: Folklore in the Works of Silko and Morrison, Katherine Minton '08
Performing the Polite Young Lady: Frances Burney and the Politics of the Manners Novels, Victoria Schacht '08
Theses from 2007
Pitying a Pedophile?: The Ethical Implications of Sympathy and Moral Judgment in Nabokov's Lolita, Lindsay Anne Matin '07
The Vonnegut Paradigm: Reading Alarm Systems in the Automated Worlds of Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan Or Goodbye Senior Thesis!, Ryan McGuirk '07
The Meat of the Culture Industry: Determining the Value of Generic Literature, Laura Oman '07
An Investigation of Gender Relations within the Black Panther Party Through Autobiography: What Are the Men Hiding? What Are the Women Revealing?, Rebecca Wagner '07 and Hannah Winer '07
Theses from 2006
Self-Reflective Readers & Self-Reflexive Writers: The Logistics of Metafiction, Christopher T. Fazio '06
The Making of Charlotte Smith: Romantic Artist, Successful Businesswoman, Katrina Fredlund '06
Beyond the Controversy: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a Multicultural Text, Ellen Horbett '06
Dissolving Boundaries: Connecting Nature and Society in The God of Small Things, Anne Schlesinger '06
Women, War, and the Artist: The Destruction of Masculinity in the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Laura Stern '06
The Construction of a Woman's Language in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and Toni Morrison's Beloved, Jessica Wolinsky '06
Theses from 2005
Coming of Age of the Little Friend of All the World: A Critical Examination of Identity In Rudyard Kipling's Kim, Katherine Caldwell '05
The Warrior Within: The Anglo-Saxon Phoenix in Cultural Context, Ana Maria Comparetto 2005
Paranoia and Probability in Gravity's Rainbow, Jake Hartnett '05
"A Terrible Beauty:" The Representation of Political Violence in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats, Katie Ladd '05
A Coalescing of Forces: The Expressive Capacity of the New Journalism and Genre Hybridism, Michelle Marjory Levi '05
Surviving the Language Game: Language and Survival in Don Delillo's End Zone, Cyrus Philbrick '05
Rediscovering Ethnic Identity: Irish-American Literature in the 1990's, Molly Wilson '05
Theses from 2004
Keith Douglas: A New Poetic Response to War, Louis Bosso '04
Theses from 2003
The West is the Best?: The Revision and Criticism of Frontier Mythology in Cormac McCarthy'd Blood Meridian and E.L. Doctorow's Welcome to Hard Times, Schuyler Chapman '03
Creating a New Identity in Contemporary Drama: Redefining History and Culture, Monica do Outeiro '03
Mallrats' Shakespeare: O and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Rebecca Fabricant '03
The Contrived Honest Liar: Narrative Unreliability in The Yellow Wallpaper and The Turn of the Screw, Allison Courtney Fitch '03
Unearthing The Real Hemingway: Polyphonic Gender Expression in The Sun Also Rises, Schuyler Gellatly '03
Decadent New Women and the Philosophy of Schopenhauer, Cory Lown '03
Disobedient Women: Representations of Gender in Cycle Drama, Alisa Nichols '03
Taking Yeats Out of (a Cultural) Context: An Examination of Critical and Pedagogical Approaches to the Study of W.B. Yeats in Ireland and the United States, Dathalinn M. O'Dea '03
Unreliable Authority in Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Linwood Rumney '03
Theses from 2002
Gender Drama: Misogyny, Homosocial Bonding, and Female Domination in the Work of Harold Pinter and David Mamet, Mike D'Alessandro '02
Misogynist "Mis"-Readings of Milton: A Response to Feminist Critics through an Evaluation of Eve's Birth and Reconciliation with Adam in Paradise Lost, Katherine C. Dewart '02
Empire and Escape Artists: Virginia Woolf as Critic of Imperialism and Englishness, Colleen Fenity '02
Applications of the Postpositivist Reality Theory of Identity to Literature, Ashley Lee '02
"Mirrour of Grace and Majeistie Diuine" The Allegorical Presentation and Formation of Elizabeth I in Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Liam Meyer '02
Rediscovering Chaucer: Preserving Style, Satire, and Sense in High School Literature Textbooks, Celeste R. Passos '02
Theses from 2001
Hearing Transcendental Voices in James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, James T.C. Bentley '01
Reader Response Theory and The Canterbury Tales: Reading Chaucer's Clerk's Tale Responsibly, Lew Gleich '01
Conceiving a m(O)ther Consciousness: French Feminism, Monstrous Maternity and the Female Gothic Tradition, Christina Marie Parker '01
Rupturing the Text: T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein, Erin E. Post '01
Theses from 2000
The Ambiguity that Shapes Our Ends: Interpretation, Performance, and the Endings of the Renaissance Drama, Daniele J. Berman '00
"Steps to raise me to Fame's tower:" Margaret Cavendish and the Construction of Personal Fame Through Authorship, Bonnie Erwin '00
Shooting Blind: Plot, Genre, and Ideology in Nashville and Blind Man with a Pistol, John Farranto '00
"Better to Reign In Hell Than Serve In Heaven:" Differing Conceptions of Monarchy in Paradise Lost, Joseph Freeman '00
“Ne jo n’ai soig mais de taisir”: Non-binary Gender Expression in Le Roman de Silence, Patricia H. Gagnon
Fractured Unity: the Responses of F.T. Marinetti and Zora Neale Hurston to the Question of National Identity, Lindsay Getman
Moving Through Mediums: Plath Adaptations for Women Today, Katherine Gwydir
Judging a Book by its Own Standards: Using Character to Evaluate the Literary Merit of Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World, Jennifer Sara Jefferson '00
“The Modern Doctrine”: The Archimedean Point of Drum-Taps in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Lindsay Kramer
Negotiating the Color Line: The Transcription of African Folk Tales in Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman, Matthew Linden
Saul Bellow's Solution: Placing the Displaced Modern American and Contemporary Author, Chris Machera '00