Undergraduate Honors Thesis Spotlight Class of 2023
English Honors Thesis
Nikki Rafferty
Thesis title: “Beyond the Home: An Analysis of Women in Work in the Domestic Noir” dir. by Sarah Boyd
Danielle Richmond
Thesis title: “Jane Austen’s ‘Simpleton:’ What Studying a Single Word Can Teach Us About Austen’s Writing” dir. by Inger Brodey
X Eros Ramos Lara
Thesis title: “Queering Performance and Community: Ballroom Culture as the Subversion of Hegemonic Gender, Race, and Sexuality in “Queer” Identity Formation” dir. by Tyree Daye
Sophie Hass
Thesis title: ““It Sucks Here”: The Absence of Gen Z Ideals in Southern Young Adult Fiction” dir. by Søren Palmer
Alex Benedict
Thesis title: “litany of the green lion: returning the concrete to the concrete and the concrete to the grass, or how grass conquers the necropolis in d.a.levy’s Cleveland undercovers” dir. by Hassan Melehy
Olivia Kersten
Thesis title: “Reader, I Broke the Formula: A Study of Bertha Mason’s Intersectional Identity and the Gothic Double Formula” dir. by Jeanne Moskal
Mary-Elisabeth Combs
Thesis title: “Bitches, Bastards, and Book Bans: Finding Space for William Faulkner in The Face of False Canonization” dir. by Henry Veggian
Leo Bautista
Thesis title: “Queer Aesthetics: Oscar Wilde and the Development of the “Queer Artist”” dir. by Kim Stern
Elizabeth Leonard
Thesis title: “The Joke Is on Us: An Analysis of the Purpose and Techniques of Eighteenth- and Twenty-First Century Western Satire” dir. by Joe Fletcher
Ben Foster
Thesis title: “The Big Sky over Fair Land: The Influence of 20th Century American Environmental Discourse in A.B. Guthrie’s “Dick Summers” Western Trilogy” dir. by Mark Cohen
Elsa Karcher
Thesis title: “Looking Medusa in the Eyes: The Monster Who Shaped Classical Culture” dir. by Jessica Wolfe
Ash Radtke
Thesis title: “THIS PLACE IS HAUNTED: ON THE DEPICTION OF TRAUMA IN HORROR LITERATURE, PARTICULARLY THROUGH HAUNTED HOUSES” dir. by Gabe Bump
Benjamin Linford
Thesis title: “IMAGE EMPIRE: The Chaos of the Images in INLAND EMPIRE” dir. by Gregory Flaxman
Creative Writing Thesis
Fiction
Simon Palmore
Thesis title: Do You Hear What I’m Saying?
Jessica Jones
Thesis title: “A (Short Story) Collection of My Sweat and Tears”
Ian Washabaugh
Thesis title: The Tundewan and Other Stories
Sa’Tia Brown
Tiosa Iyamu
Susan Jones
Jay Moran
Aryan Rai
Maggie Hall
Molly James
Poetry
Aryani Pallerla
Thesis title: Red Dirt Mosaic
Caroline Brogden
Gina Flow
Chelsea Hignite
Cecil May
Mike O’Brien
Quinton Okoro
Megan Pramojaney
Lila Richardson
Creative Non-Fiction
Ruth Jeffers
Thesis title: “Bodies of Salt”