Senior Independent Study Theses from 2025
Once Frontier, John A. L. Barwick
Department: English
Agency, Autonomy and the Fairy Tale: Exploring Sleeping Beauty, Riley Clever
Department: English; Philosophy
My House is Filling With Corpses, Theodore Cooper
Department: English
A House Divided: America, Masculinity, and the Vietnam War, Mitchell C. Ecklund
Department: English; History
Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue: The Populist Songs Of Modern America Through Presidential Campaign Music, Julia Garrison
Department: English; Global Media and Digital Studies
Paradise Lost, Paradise Deferred: Combining Close and Distant Reading in Milton’s Seminal Text, Abihail Geremew
Department: English; Statistical and Data Sciences
A Mourning Response, James Hennemann
Department: English
They’re Not Snowflakes, You Just Want to See the World Burn: Reinventing Historical Stock Characters for Modern and Inclusive Comedy Stages, Morgan A. Hunter
Department: English; Theatre and Dance
Sharp Young Things, Dylan Kretchmar
Department: English
Traveling by Paddle Too: A Collection of Poems, Matthew McMorrough
Department: English
Ballades par Temps, Passages par Fleuve: Illuminating the Franco-Americans of Southern Maine, Audrey Pantaz
Department: English; French and Francophone Studies
The Breeding Industry: Reproductive Horror in Frankenstein, Rosemary's Baby, & "Bloodchild", Emi Ponzetti
Department: English
GREASEFIRE & Other Poetry, Oliver Sackrey
Department: English
Positively Medieval: Constructing the Middle Ages in Literature and the Museum, Emily Voneman
Department: English; Sociology and Anthropology
The White Woman Imagination: Defining and Apprehending the Dissociative Impulses of White Womanhood in Young Adult Literature, Caroline Ward
Department: English
Hazard: A Screenplay, Seth Aaron Whitehead
Department: English
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