Senior Independent Study Theses from 2024
Taking Bows and Batting Zero: An Inquiry into Mothers' Selfhood as Represented in Narrative and Film, Johnna Blystone
Department: English; Philosophy; Interdepartmental
A Family Matter, Ethan Boudreau
Department: English
Embodied Reimagining: A Queer Mapping of Identity Performances in Percy Jackson Fan Fiction, Kaleigh Bozick
Department: English; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Someone Knows Best, Sam Elwood
Department: English
There’s Something about The Fifth Season: Negotiating Difference, Violence, and Freedom, Isabella Ergh
Department: English
Once Upon Today, Anna C. Holdsworth
Department: English
Tiny Object Hurtling Through Space, Grace A. Krage
Department: English
And Call It Mercy: A Collection of Poetry, Julie Larick
Department: English
Chrysalis, Joseph Lewis
Department: English
Changing the Narrative to Change the Climate: An English Teacher’s Guide to Incorporating Environmental Literature in High Schools, Ellen McAllister
Department: English
The Watermelon Knight, Zachary Payne
Department: English
Victorians and Video Games: Exploring Historical Education Through Video Games in the 1851 Great Exhibition, Adam M. Ryan
Department: History; English
Etsujin: An Exploration of Gender and Player Choice, Harper Ryan
Department: English
Reaching for Soft Mangoes: A Collection of Poems on the Exploration of Puerto Rican Identity Through Generations, Liz Santiago
Department: English
The Farm: A Screenplay, Laura E. Sevilla
Department: English
“Shades of Pemberley”: Transformation and Preservation through Adaptations of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Emma Shinker
Department: English; History
Electric Exegesis: An Investigation into Transforming Entanglements of Cyberpunk Fiction, Benjamin A. Van Horssen
Department: English; Statistical and Data Sciences
One Yarn Below, Zhongting Wang
Department: English
Redeeming Disability Representation in the Horror Genre: Can Horror Be Saved From Itself?, M. Whitlock
Department: English
The Oral Tradition as a Literary Device through the Indigenous Feminist Perspective, Isabella Claire Wild
Department: English
Are We Not Men? We Are Dada: Devo and the Intersection of Music and Performance Art, Ursula Williams
Department: English
Senior Independent Study Theses from 2023
Sanctuary, Katherine Adams-Fisher
Department: English
Memories of Tomorrow, Lillian S. Beach
Department: English
Dawn of Darkness, Pookar Chand
Department: English
No One Is an Island: Towards a Geocritical Perspective of Identity via Japanese Culture and Literature, Zachary Filippi
Department: Religious Studies; English
Books, Technology, and Readers; A Multidimensional Bond, Oriana Marsella Galvis Marin
Department: English
Agency: The Art of Human Choice - Finding Space Between Free Will and Determinism, Langston Hood
Department: English; Philosophy
Confronting Climate Change: A Real(ist) Problem, Hannah Keough
Department: English
Little Gems: A Poetry Anthology Examining Family Structure and How it Affects Self Discovery Through a Feminist Lens, Kathryn Rose Materick
Department: English
Angel, Take A Dive, Andy Mockbee
Department: English
Utopia Across Time and Space: Could There Ever Be a "Perfect World"?, Ashini Patel
Department: English; Philosophy
The Shuck Pit, Matthew Rohlman
Department: English
Sir Skink in The Cold Knight, Adam Schneider
Department: English
The Funeral of Dr. Tulp, Nicholas Yungbluth
Department: English
Senior Independent Study Theses from 2022
Anthem Of The Stars, Zachary A V Corwin
Department: English
Little Boxes, Zoe K. Dudack
Department: English
The Development Of The Fairy In English Popular Culture: A Mutual Relationship, Beatrice E. Glassman
Department: English
Sirens In Symphony, Emily Rae Herczeg
Department: English
Memories, Melancholia, And Myself (Song Of): A Collection Of Nature-Based Poetry, Kate Joseph
Department: English
For Every Adaptation Belonging To Me As Good Belongs To You: Analyzing Intertextuality In Lauren Gunderson's Literature-Based Plays, Brian S. Luck
Department: English; Theatre and Dance
What Girls Do: Girls' Political Participation Reflected In Contemporary Young Adult Literature, Carly McWilliams
Department: English; Political Science
All In The Audience: Examining Columbine Narratives To Unveil The Reasons Behind The Acceptance Of False Narratives, Olivia M. Mittak
Department: English
Jesus As Educator: An Analysis Of Parabolic Teaching In The King James Bible, Caitlin Olsen
Department: English
Drift, Pilar Randolph
Department: English
Hands That Grab And Tongues That Say: Understanding Animal Narrators And Protagonists, Sophie Ryan
Department: English
A Strange Object That Breaks Your Heart: Short Stories, Annie Sheneman
Department: English
A Critical Analysis Of Antiracist Pedagogical Strategies And Diverse Young Adult Literature For White Educators, Jenna Lee Stanton
Department: English
Perspectives: Understanding Conflict In New Religious Movements Through Epistolary Voices And Their Entanglements, Rebekah Emily Trunnell
Department: English; Religious Studies
Affect, Trauma, And Self In Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh, Corey Ullman
Department: English
Inherent Misfortune, Cole Ward
Department: English
Senior Independent Study Theses from 2021
Code War Savior: A Novella, Wyatt H. Brugge
Department: English
Sunscreen, Zoe Covey
Department: English
Can Climate Fiction Novels Inspire Social Change? A Literary and Empirical Ecocritical Analysis, Claire Davidson
Department: English; Sociology and Anthropology
Sinister Cinema: Depictions of Evil in the WWII and Postwar Thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock and Henri-Georges Clouzot, Holly N. Engel
Department: English; French and Francophone Studies
Representation of African Immigration in Short and Long-Form Media, Abigail E. Everidge
Department: English
A Re-evaluation of Texts Taught in High School English Classrooms: Why a Need for a Curriculum Reboot is Necessary, Morgan Paige Fields
Department: English
At the Corner of Two Walls, Sierra A. Foltz
Department: English
Paradoxical Descriptions of Divine Beings, Tiago Garcia
Department: English; Religious Studies
Multilingual Literature of the New World: A Literary and Semantic Study of Spanglish in Susana Chávez-Silverman’s Killer Crónicas, Justin Garibotti
Department: English; Spanish
The Music of the People: Appalachian Ballads and the Search for the Authentic in the 1960s American Folk Music Revival, Anna Halgash
Department: English; History
This Boat is Obviously Sinking : The Response of 90s Musicians to Neoliberalism, Andrew T. Kilbride
Department: English
American Dragon: A Story of an Asian American Woman Finding Her Way Home, Hannah Langer
Department: English; Art and Art History
Haunted Households: Adaptation, Genre, and Gender Politics in Horror and the Gothic During Second Wave Feminism, Eliza C. Letteney
Department: English
From the Controller to the Television Screen - Adapting Dragon Age: Origins into a Television Drama, Aaron McAllister
Department: English
Know My Rage: A Novel with Critical Introduction, Alicia Messenger
Department: English
A Protest Analysis: Examining the Effectiveness of Occupy Wall Street, Standing Rock, Black Lives Matter, and the Civil Rights Movement, Kate Murphy
Department: English; Global Media and Digital Studies
“The Knight and the Demon”: Intersecting Poetry, Demonology, and the Middle Ages, N Praml
Department: English; History
Immerse, Sarah Rapacz
Department: English
Protest or Riot?: The Role of News Media in Characterizing the Unrest in Ferguson, Emma Reiner
Department: English; Political Science
Eat Your Heart Out: Cannibalism, Incorporation, and Transgression in Contemporary and Traditional Fairy Tales, Kathryn S. Scott
Department: English
The Apprentice: With Critical Introduction, James P. Shanahan
Department: English
Is This Music? Poetry, YouTube Memes, and Rap at Commencement, Charlie Smrekar
Department: English; Music
A Thing Is An Essay Without Words: An Essay Collection, Lillie Therese Soukup
Department: English
"The Bliss of Solitude": In Search of Fulfilled Single Characters in Seventeenth through Twentieth Century Anglophone and Francophone Literature, Annabelle Vosmeier
Department: English; French and Francophone Studies
Senior Independent Study Theses from 2020
So Our Children Can Fly Free: Toni Morrison Challenging a Biased American Literary Tradition and Monolithic Portrayals of Blackness Through African American Discourse, Sofia Abdirizak
Department: English
The Timekeeper's Compass, James M. Alltop
Department: English
Descendants of Jori, Emily H. Bernstein
Department: English
East vs. West: A Study of Orientalist Tropes in Sports Journalism, Benjamin R. Blotner
Department: English
The Dream Machine, Amelia Burke
Department: English
"Nothing That I Don't Like:" Gwendolen Harleth's Search for Life Outside the Marriage Plot in Daniel Deronda, Imogen Campbell Hendricks
Department: English
Brew in Advertising: Marketing and the Craft Beer Industry, Ciaran Conway
Department: English
Out of the Vat: A Collection of Poems, Alexander E. Doone
Department: English
In Your Orbit, Sara Fikse
Department: English
Greenbean Comics: An Independent Study!!!, Samantha Green
Department: English
Awake, Waverly Swan Hart
Department: English
Write It Slant: Queerness and Form in The Argonauts and Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through, Eleanor Linafelt
Department: English; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
An Exploration of Changes and the Effectiveness of Gendered Marketing in Young Adult Novels, Olivia Maher
Department: Economics; English
Life, Spilled, Gianmarco A. Martignetti
Department: English
Cheap Thrills and Moral Guidance: The Limitations of Subversive Themes in Mid-Nineteenth Century Urban Literature Centered on New York City, Victoria McCaslin
Department: English; History
Almost Heaven: An Aubade to Identity in Central Appalachian Memoir, Emilee McCubbins
Department: English
Witch's Luck, Claire Montgomery
Department: English
“In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children”: Victorian Literary Denunciation of the Duties of Motherhood, Ellie Peabody
Department: English
A Grave New World: A Critical and Creative Study Examining Environmental Decline Within Transnational Dystopian Literature, Andrew Newcomb Peacock
Department: English
A House Without Doorknobs: and Other Essays, Kyra Perlmutter
Department: English
The Song of Siros, John-Paul W. Richard
Department: English; Russian Studies
The City of Goblins, Hope K. Siegel
Department: English
Chasing Gold Statues: A Study of Kanye West and the Case for Abstract Minimalism in the Digital Age, Sarah Stutler
Department: Art and Art History; English
Revolutionary Possibilities: Anarchist Philosophy and Its Influence on the Work of Thomas Pynchon, Addison R. Wanner
Department: English
Who are the Savages?: Racialization of Eating and Appetites in Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Brown’s Edgar Huntly, and Melville’s Typee, Taylor Wood
Department: English
Senior Independent Study Theses from 2019
Insurrecting Purity: Creativity as Resistance in Somatic Ambiguity, Margy J. Adams
Department: English; Philosophy