social studies thesis

College of Social Studies

CSS Senior Thesis Information

Css senior thesis guidelines, timeline for identifying problems with senior theses.

Thinking About Theses by Richie Adelstein

Click here for pdf of CSS Senior Thesis Guidelines

To be considered for Honors in the College of Social Studies, a senior thesis must be grounded in, and contribute to, the literature of one or more of the CSS disciplines—economics, government, history, and social theory.  Students wishing to write an alternative form of thesis, such as a novel or screenplay addressing social issues, should plan to pursue Honors in General Scholarship (see  https://www.wesleyan.edu/registrar/honors/general_scholarship.html for relevant requirements and procedures). In ambiguous cases, the suitability of a proposed thesis for Honors in CSS will be determined by the co-chairs in consultation with the faculty advisor. 

A Senior Thesis in the College of Social Studies must present an original line of argument regarding an issue treated in the social scientific literature. This argument may be of an empirical or theoretical nature.  A portion of the work should be devoted to summarizing the antecedent literature and to describing the methodology or analytical perspective applied in addressing the issues engaged by the thesis. The thesis should include a critical synthesis of the relevant social science literature, but it must go beyond providing a simple synopsis of writings on a given topic no matter how skillfully executed. The thesis should also develop and present evidence appropriate to the type of research question it seeks to answer. An original undergraduate Senior Thesis is one in which the student has made the ideas in the literature her or his own by placing them within her or his own framework. 

The thesis work should be conducted under the supervision of a faculty member who is sufficiently knowledgeable about the relevant literature to provide proper guidance and direction. The College expects thesis students to meet with their advisors regularly—typically once a week when classes are in session—until completion . Since a Senior Thesis represents a significant investment of time by both the student and the Advisor, generally only projects for which the student has adequate preparation and resources should be undertaken. As of the first day of spring classes, thesis writers must demonstrate sufficient progress toward completion of the thesis, typically in the form of completed initial chapters and a detailed outline of the entire work.

Senior thesis will be evaluated by the Thesis Advisor and by readers appointed by the CSS Co-Chairs. One reader must be a CSS Tutor and another reader must be a Wesleyan faculty member from outside of the CSS. CSS policy is to keep the names of the thesis readers confidential so that readers’ comments will be provided to the thesis writer without identification. Of course, individual readers are free to reveal their identity to the thesis writer.

CSS students will not be permitted to continue their senior theses unless satisfactory progress has been made by the beginning of the spring term. Thesis advisors will be asked if their students have completed a significant body of writing. The student is required to submit a summary of the work accomplished to date along with an outline of the remaining part of the thesis and a statement of the research (if any) that remains to be completed to their thesis advisor at the start of the spring semester. Any student who has not made sufficient progress on the thesis to indicate expected successful completion by the Honors College deadline will be contacted within the first few days of the spring semester. 

Any student who has not made sufficient progress will be required to convert the senior thesis to a senior essay. Since such a student will generally have received an “X” for the fall thesis tutorial (normally CSS 409), the student and the senior thesis advisor have two options. If they determine that the senior essay can be completed by the end of the fourth week of the spring semester, the fall tutorial (CSS 409) will be changed to CSS 407, designating an individual tutorial with the thesis advisor who will submit a grade for that class when the senior essay is completed. If the thesis advisor and the student determine that completing the senior essay will require more than four weeks, the student will register for CSS 408, designating an individual tutorial with the thesis advisor who will submit a grade for the tutorial by the end of the spring semester.  In that case, the grade of “X” will remain in the student’s academic history.

Thinking About Theses Richard Adelstein

Seniors are submitting their completed honors theses this week, and professors are gearing up to read and evaluate them next week, so this seems a good moment to get you thinking about whether you might want to write a thesis next year, and what such a project entails. Let me help get you started by offering some informal thoughts on what you might expect from the experience as your senior year proceeds.

The thesis year is not congruent with the academic year, even though it has the same summer vacation. It runs from April to April, and if you begin now by trying to articulate a reasonably clear idea of what you'd like to write about, you'll reap the dividends a year from now. Perhaps you have a question or problem in some area of the social studies, broadly defined, that has intrigued you for a while and about which you'd like to learn more, or perhaps you've taken a course that you particularly enjoyed and would like to pursue some of the issues raised there in greater depth. Whatever the source of this initial interest, if you have some ideas about a thesis project, seek out a member of the faculty, inside the CSS or out, whose interests lie close to your own (this is frequently a professor you've had in a course, but it need not be) to discuss these ideas and explore whether you and the professor can enter into a cordial and productive working relationship. Now is the time to be making these preliminary inquiries of potential advisors. Most professors enjoy supervising honors theses -- after all, it's a chance to work closely with highly motivated students on interesting research, and for us older folk, it doesn't get much better than that -- and will be happy to sign on to your project if there's a good match of interests and personalities. Early in September is generally not too late to create this relationship, but if you wait till then, you run the risk that the advisor's dance card will be full, and that he or she won't be able to take on another advisee. Don't worry if your ideas are not yet fully formed, or if you can't yet articulate anything beyond a general area in which your thesis topic might lie -- this is par for the course at this stage. Find a professor whose area of expertise is in or near your general area of interest and talk to him or her about the field and your own ideas. Informal brainstorming of this sort often leads to excellent projects, and gives both sides a chance to size one another up and see whether the relationship is likely to be a smooth one. Be open to suggestions from the professors you speak with and allow yourself to be moved from one topic to another within your general area of interest -- the profs are all experienced researchers, aware of problems or pitfalls that you might not anticipate and perhaps able to see more clearly than you can at this stage what is possible and what is not. As I'll suggest below, negotiation of this sort goes on continuously until the thesis is done, and it's wise to accustom yourself to it right at the start.

Once you've secured the services of a suitable advisor, late in the spring of your junior year or very early in the fall, the next step is to register for the senior thesis tutorial (CSS 409) under the advisor's supervision in the fall. You may not preregister for CSS 409 but you simply add it during the fall drop-add period. If the work goes as planned and the thesis is continued into the spring semester, students receive a grade of "X" for CSS 409 (that is, a placeholder grade for work not yet completed) and register for a second thesis tutorial, CSS 410, in the spring. Candidates for honors must complete their theses by the second week in April (see above!), a date set by the Honors College, not the CSS. In a very few cases, thesis writers choose not to submit their work for consideration for honors, or fail to complete the work by the Honors College deadline; these students have until the end of the spring semester to complete their work, and while they cannot graduate with honors, they do receive full credit with a grade (given by the advisor) for each of the two thesis tutorials. Students who do submit their work for honors have it evaluated by a committee that includes their advisor and two other professors, one a CSS core faculty member and the other from outside the CSS. These evaluations determine whether the thesis will receive Honors, High Honors or no honors. The honors designation is independent of the grades given by the advisor in CSS 409 and 410; honors candidates receive both the honors designation and the tutorial grades.

If you aren't able to secure the agreement of an advisor before you leave for the summer, try at least to have one or two on tap who will be willing to consider the question further in September. Your advisor may suggest some reading for the summer, but then again, he or she may not. Sometimes such summer work is fruitful, sometimes not, sometimes it's enjoyable, sometimes not, but in general it's not essential. The senior year is quite long enough for your research, if you work steadily and conscientiously. But whatever the state of your work at the end of the summer, your advisor will want you to get off to a quick start in the fall. So at the very start of the semester, he or she may well ask you to prepare a short research prospectus (roughly five to seven pages) that lays out the questions you hope to investigate and the research strategy you will use to address them. Be prepared for a request of this kind -- it's yet another reason to begin thinking seriously about your project before your junior year ends.

Once these organizational details are taken care of, the actual work of scholarly research begins. This will almost certainly be very different from anything you've ever done in school before, a long, intense experience filled with pleasure, anxiety, satisfaction, frustration, despair, elation and a thousand other emotions that tumble on one another throughout the year, so it's good to try to be prepared for it. Perhaps the first thing to say is that the thesis year almost always lasts longer than your initial enthusiasm for your topic. No matter how fired up you are in September, in February, when the days are cold and short and it feels like you've been working on this thing forever with no light at the end of the tunnel, you will almost certainly hit an emotional low point that puts your project in some peril. If you started the year with a topic area in which you had a "reasonable" interest, such that the initial reading was sort of interesting and the thesis work itself not too bad, then your thesis is likely to crash in the February through -- tepid enthusiasm in September, or even strong enthusiasm that doesn't anticipate the trials of the thesis winter, will be fully drained by the first day of the spring semester. The lesson from this is not to start a thesis in September unless you're really excited about the topic area, and have a deep and genuine intellectual curiosity about it. Only this kind of "supercharged" enthusiasm about the subject and the prospect of the research itself will be enough to sustain your project through the dark days of February, and even in this case, the enthusiasm of September will likely turn to something less in midstream, with the excitement and pressure created by the deadline serving as the major forces pushing you through to the end. I certainly don't mean to suggest that the thesis experience is a bleak one; for most people it isn't, and the rewards are wonderful. But I do mean to say that a thesis is not a casual undertaking, as one might take a course just to get a taste of the subject matter. It's a project that requires lots of hard, lonely work, lots of self-discipline, and a toughness of mind and spirit that can overcome the obstacles that will inevitably crop up as you work. Most of us can't summon the energy to complete such a project without a very strong initial motivation to know more about the subject. Just thinking that it would be nice to graduate with honors is generally not enough. If you're sure that you've got the requisite enthusiasm for the project, and the strong desire to see the project through to completion, by all means go for it. But if you don't, think very hard before you start.

Let's suppose now that you've passed this first internal hurdle, and are sure that you're sufficiently fired up about your topic area now that you'll be able to push your thesis through to a successful conclusion a year from now. What's it like to actually write a thesis? One thing that seniors are often surprised by is that serious scholarship is, in the nature of things, an exercise in continuous uncertainty. By this I mean that, even though you are an undergraduate and thus not likely to produce a piece of truly original scholarship of the kind that more experienced researchers are expected to produce, you are writing about questions that no one has ever written about in the particular way that you are writing about them. So there's no "answer" to be found in a book in the library, or even in your advisor's head. A thesis is not a problem to be solved, so that you know you're done when you get the answer and it all checks out; it's more like clearing a path in a forest that no one has ever traversed before. Indeed, not only will you be unsure about the "answer," you are almost certain to be unsure about the question until the two or three weeks before the thesis is due. This is because, for every scholarly researcher, young or old, research begins with a topic area rather than with a real topic. Today, for example, you might suppose that you can write a thesis about topic X, devoting twenty pages to "subquestion" X1, fifteen to X2, another twenty to X3, and so on till you've got a thesis. But not long after you begin work on subquestion X1, it will become clear to you that, in order to do a decent job on X1 and treat it in the depth it deserves, you'll have to consider a range of "subsubquestions" X11, X12, and so on. And perhaps subsubquestion X11 requires some investigation of even finer questions, X111, X112, etc. By the time you've covered all the relevant bases for the initial subquestion X1, you've written 120 pages and it's April 5th, so that your thesis has turned out not to be about X at all, but about a (very small) part of X, a part that you thought in September that you could treat adequately in ten or twenty pages. Similarly, of course, with X2 and X3 and so forth. Every thesis topic area X, that is, contains many, many potentially superior honors theses within it, and one of the major tasks of the thesis project is to identify this needle of a thesis topic in the haystack of the topic area and confine your writing to an adequate treatment of the needle without trying to expand the thesis beyond what the time you have for it will allow and without losing your interest in the topic as you "zoom in" from the big area X to the tiny plot of ground that ultimately comprises your thesis. Along the way, there is a series of painful choices to be made -- "I'm interested in X1 and X2, but here it is the first of December and I've barely scratched the surface of X1; now I've got to abandon X2 for the duration of the thesis, simply turning away from the readings and the questions relating to X2 until the thesis is done." Writing a thesis, in this sense, is like peeling an onion. It's a continual process of narrowing your focus down, putting some interesting questions aside because you must pursue others in greater depth. As a result, until almost the very end, you can't really say just what your actual thesis topic is. Instead, your topic area simply becomes smaller and smaller until all that's left is what in retrospect turned out to be a finely delineated topic for which the thesis that you've actually written is the appropriate vehicle. This sort of continuous uncertainty -- your inability to say what the title of your thesis will be until it's done -- is very hard on everyone's psyche. Be prepared, but by all means don't despair.

One final set of thoughts. Different people work in different ways. Some students need a lot of structure in the form of specific assignments of work and clear deadlines, and some don't. Some advisors are "hands on," and take the task of supervising more literally than other, more "laissez- faire" advisors do. It's important that you and your advisor are on the same page in this respect. If you need the structure of a schedule and deadlines, make sure your advisor is willing to do his or her part in creating it; if you chafe under such close supervision, find an advisor who will let you organize your work on your own. But if you take the latter course (as, for example, I would), remember that the responsibility for kicking yourself in the behind and getting the work actually done is completely yours. The danger is that, without the pressure of deadlines or regular meetings with your advisor, you will simply let the work slide through the fall semester. You are, after all, taking a thesis course , CSS 409. But it's a course without a syllabus, without class meetings or homework or tests or due dates. You, and only you, determine when you will work, and when you won't. If you have the foresight and the self-discipline to set aside twelve or fifteen hours every week (the time you'd have to spend each week on a regular course) during which you commit yourself to concentrate on your thesis work, you will be at an enormous advantage, and the spring semester will be tolerable, even enjoyable, as the work proceeds toward its conclusion. But if the lack of direct supervision leads you to find a reason or excuse not to work this week or next ("It's only October, my thesis isn't due for six months, no one will notice if I skip the three hours of reading I'd planned for this afternoon and go catch some rays"), so that your work has not progressed very much past the first layer of two of the onion by Christmas, you're in trouble. A serious thesis takes serious, continuous, concentrated work over an extended period of time. You've almost certainly never done anything like it. Promise yourself that you'll do it right, and then put that promise first on your list of priorities for your senior year.

Sounds like a prison sentence, doesn't it? In some ways, I suppose, it is, but it's worth it. As you respond to the many challenges, intellectual and emotional, of the year, you learn a great deal about yourself. You learn a lot about something you're interested in as well, you have a strong shot at graduating with honors, and you have the satisfaction of doing a hard job well. There's nothing quite like that last feeling. And there's nothing that comes close to the period between April 10 and Commencement for people who have completed an honors thesis -- trust me, it's the absolute zenith of your life. Your college work is done (I know, you've got a course or two to finish, but that's a piece of cake for experienced seniors in the spring). So you have nothing more that has to be done in order to graduate. And until you graduate, you have no opportunity to do the next thing in your life, so there's no reason to feel guilty for not doing that next thing now. You thus have six weeks when the last thing in your life is done (and done well) and the next thing in your life can't yet begin. The sun is out, the weather is warming up, you're the master of your undergraduate domain, and the only responsibility you have is to live long enough to shake President Roth’s hand when he gives you your diploma. There's nothing like it -- ask (next week!) any senior you know who's just finished an honors thesis. You'll never forget it.

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Home > College of Social Sciences > Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences > Social Science Master's Theses

Master’s Theses and Graduate Research, Social Sciences

Theses/dissertations from 2004 2004.

www.to-get-her.org : a global cyber community for Taiwanese lesbians , Ping-Ying Chang

Theses/Dissertations from 2003 2003

The role of attachment in the social production of place in Pajaro Valley , Lori Burgman

The Nishimutas: the oral history of a Japanese/Spanish family, who lived in Oklahoma from 1917 , Juli Ann Ora Nishimuta

Muslim women speak their mind , Alexandra Maria da Silva Rubens

Theses/Dissertations from 2002 2002

Gay bars of Silicon Valley : a study of the decline of a social institution , William M. Coker

Legacies transforming memories into memorials , Bonnie Evans

Identity and political consciousness : community involvement of Mexican/Chicano youth , Etsuko Maruyama

Theses/Dissertations from 2001 2001

Homophonbia : a socio-cultural barrier to U.S female athletes in Olympic tryouts , Natalie L. Wells

Theses/Dissertations from 2000 2000

The Vietnamese elderly refugees' experience in America , Thanh Dac Tran

Theses/Dissertations from 1999 1999

The social construction of nature as the other and its human consequences , Shannon Abernathy

Telecommuting and its impact on business and personal relationships , Margaret G. Dreher

American family/work relationships : a case study of hospital nurses , Valora Glandt

Differential diagnosis of vertebral lytic lesions from an Ohlone cemetery site CA-SCL-038 , Victoria M. Wu

Theses/Dissertations from 1998 1998

Audre Lorde and poetic activism , Jennifer Blackman

Sons of alcoholic fathers : psychological and methodological considerations , Dennis Haines

Doing quality time : development of a feminist treatment program for women prisoners and their children , Ann Rebecca Pierce Harrison

Women's education and employment in Yugoslavia and California , Milina Jovanovic

Understanding aging and the aged through mainstream films , Linda Janet Proudfoot

Theses/Dissertations from 1997 1997

California Native American college students' experience : an ethnographic study , Linda Jane Christie

The Paleodemography of the Yukisma Site, CA-SCI-38 : a prehistoric cemetery of the South San Francisco Bay , Susan Morley

Beyond princess and squaw : Wilma Mankiller and the Cherokee gynocentric system , Maureen O'Dea Caragliano

The feminization of poverty : welfare to work research project , Kim S. Petersen

Theses/Dissertations from 1996 1996

Every woman her own midwife : a study of empowerment through wise woman health care , Kimberly A. Bick-Maurischat

Cultural diversity training : corporate stratification or cultural diversity , Judy Lynn Carrico

On the trail to the coast : a view from CA-MEN-2136 : the Zeni Site , Patricia A. Dunning

Walker's way : an oral history of Mark Walker , Elizabeth L. Lake

Marketing culture : an ethnographic case study of organizational culture in Silicon Valley , Kathleen MacKenzie

Korean women in the labor market , Jeamin Seung

Theses/Dissertations from 1995 1995

The public response to homelessness , Celine-Marie Pascale

Theses/Dissertations from 1994 1994

An archaeological survey of some major drainages within Henry W. Coe State Park, Santa Clara and Stanislaus Counties, California , Theodora Goodrich

Oral histories of black gay men and a black transgender person in the San Francisco Bay Area , Nina Schjelderup

Theses/Dissertations from 1993 1993

Four problems, one solution , Edward Emmanuel Corneille

Women, child-free and single , Margaret Hood Hynan

A reinterpretation of some Bay Area shellmound sites : a view from the mortuary complex from Ca-Ala-329, the Ryan Mound , Alan Leventhal

Institutional inequality : a case of educational tracking , Mary Etta Marshall

Chicanas in higher education : the road to success , Laura Alicia Salazar

U.S. policy toward Vietnam, 1960-1990 , An Ngoc Vu

Theses/Dissertations from 1992 1992

Strong hopes/shattered dreams : study of college females and perceived economic future , Heather M. David

The Vietnamese refugee experience : a fundamental redefinition of an ethnic identity , Laura A. Furcinitti

Prelude, interludes, and etudes : a study of the feminist/spiritual journey and designs for its nurture and practice , Maureen Hilliard

Not in his image : a study of male priesthood and catholic women , Marilyn Faye Crnich Nutter

The Formation of an ethnic identity : the life history of a Filipino/Native American , Mark Pasion

The Problem of black access to American higher education is connected to institutional underpreparation , Daryl M. Poe

San Jose State University students and domestic violence , Bette S. Ruch Rose

A leadership model for a woman in the U.S. presidency , Patricia Anne Stroup

Theses/Dissertations from 1991 1991

Archaic milling cultures of the southern San Francisco Bay region , Richard Thomas, Jr Fitzgerald

The use of terrorism as a means to create a homeland for stateless refugees in the Middle East , Chris D. Funk

A new method of skeletal aging using stages of sacral fusion as seen in the CA-Ala-329 burial population , Charlane Susan Gross

A breach of conduct : James A. Garfield and the court-martial of Fitz John Porter , William Warren Holland

Prehistoric native American adaptations along the central California coast of San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties , Mark Gerald Hylkema

The Culpability of James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, in the North Berwick witchcraft trials of 1590-91 , Margaret Carol Kintscher

Black Berets for Justice , Arturo Villarreal

Theses/Dissertations from 1990 1990

A history of the Ohlone Indians of Mission Santa Clara , Debra Kitsmiller Barth

Women reclaiming ourselves : the conflict between affiliation and individuation , Jana Bartley

The cycle of the feminine spirit : women, the earth, and athe return of the goddess , Wendy Denton

Sourcing Monterey banded chert, a cryptocrystalline hydrosilicate : with emphasis on its physical and thermal traits as applied to central California archaeology , Gary Alan Parsons

Theses/Dissertations from 1989 1989

Concerned women for America : the handmaidens of the new right , Teri Ann Bengiveno

Daughter of the landlord : life history of a Chinese immigrant , Joan M. Beck Coulson

Self-esteem of sexually abused adolescent girls in group home placement , Audrey Damon

The U.S. policy toward China during the Nixon presidency , Tuan Khac Truong

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An Evaluation of Two Methods of Teaching Social Studies in Junior High School

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Description

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of two methods of teaching the social studies to junior high school pupils. An attempt has been made to ascertain the relative progress in the studying efficiency of a group of children in social studies taught by the basic-study-skills plan, as compared to that of a group of children taught by the assign-study-recite-test plan so commonly employed.

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vi, 168 leaves

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King, Oma Allie 1950.

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• King, Oma Allie
• Toulouse, Robert B. Major Professor

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• Bridges, Clarence Allen Minor Professor
• North Texas State Teachers College Place of Publication: Denton, Texas

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• Level: Master's
• Grantor: North Texas State Teachers College
• Name: Master of Science
• Department: School of Education
• Discipline: Education
• junior high school
• social studies

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• Social sciences -- Study and teaching (Middle school)
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• Definition of Social Studies
• About National Council for the Social Studies

What is Social Studies?

Social studies is the study of individuals, communities, systems, and their interactions across time and place that prepares students for local, national, and global civic life.

Using an inquiry-based approach, social studies helps students examine vast human experiences through the generation of questions, collection and analysis of evidence from credible sources, consideration of multiple perspectives, and the application of social studies knowledge and disciplinary skills. As a result of examining the past, participating in the present, and learning how to shape the future, social studies prepares learners for a lifelong practice of civil discourse and civic engagement in their communities. Social studies centers knowledge of human rights and local, national, and global responsibilities so that learners can work together to create a just world in which they want to live.

Disciplines and Courses

At the  elementary level , social studies includes the interdisciplinary study of history, geography, economics, and government/civics and is well-integrated with the study of language arts, the visual and performing arts, and STEM.

At the  secondary level , students engage in social studies through singular, disciplinary lenses as well as interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary ones.

States, districts, and schools use various names to identify the disciplines, fields, and subjects of a comprehensive social studies education. As such, creating an all-inclusive list of subject and course titles is almost impossible. Fundamentally, social studies courses include those that study the array of human experiences and the spaces in which we interact as humans.

Social studies can include but is not limited to, disciplines and courses such as:

• History , including local and state history, United States history, world history and global studies, African American history, and women’s history as well as other courses about the history of specific groups, regions, and eras; 
• Geography , including physical, environmental, cultural, and human geography as well as courses related to the application of geographic tools (i.e. GPS and GIS); 
• Economics , including general economics, macroeconomics, microeconomics, and international economics; 
• Government and Citizenship , including civics, citizenship education, political science, local, state,   tribal, and United States government, international relations, comparative government, and law and legal studies; 
• Social Sciences,  including psychology, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, gender studies, LGBTQ+ studies, and religious studies; 
• Ethnic Studies , including African American studies, Asian American and Pacific Islander studies, Indigenous studies, and Latin American studies; 
• Human Rights and Social Justice , including human rights education, social justice issues, international organizations, and genocide studies; 
• Financial Literacy , including personal finance (NCSS recognizes financial literacy as an important course for students, but financial literacy is distinct from and is not a replacement for economics and economic education); and 
• Contemporary Issues , including courses in current events and the study of one or more social studies topics in current contexts.

147 Social Studies Topics for Your Research Project

Social studies is an integrated research field. It includes a range of topics on social science and humanities, such as history, culture, geography, sociology, education, etc. A social studies essay might be assigned to any middle school, high school, or college student. It might seem like a daunting task, but perhaps the most challenging part of the job is choosing the best topic from the many research topics in social studies. Sure, you might have a specific topic assigned to you.

If you’re looking for social science research topics, you’re in the right place! Custom writing experts have prepared a fresh list of ideas! This article contains 147 social studies project topics on history, culture, politics, law, migration, and other fields.

New headings & sections:

• Social Study Areas => Social Science Topics & Research Areas
• Social Studies Topics on History => Social Studies Project Topics on History
• Other Social Studies Topics => Other Research Topics in Social Studies
• 🔝 Top 10 Topics

👨‍🎓 Social Study Areas

🎨 social studies topics on culture, 🏛️ social studies topics on politics & governance, 🏧 social studies topics on economics & consumption, 🏺 social studies topics on history, 💡 other social studies topics, 🔗 references, 🔝 top 10 social studies topics.

• Pros and cons of monarchy.
• Is voting a civic responsibility?
• Should democracy be everywhere?
• The causes of mass consumption.
• Globalization vs. Americanization.
• The elements of personal identity.
• What are the USA’s major resources?
• Do communication technologies impact politics?
• The importance of cultural diversity in the workplace
• How do religious institutions reinforce social stability?

Social studies can be represented by ten aspects described below:

• Culture. While working with social studies, you need to understand how culture shapes our society and affects our lives. It includes learning how people create, adapt to, and share their cultural diversity.
• People and the environment. This aspect helps students create their perception of the world and how human beings interact with their environment. It is achieved through learning about different locations, people, and resources that are there.
• Production and consumption. Here, it is all about studying how people manage the production and distribution of goods. Usually, this theme is represented by subjects connected with economics.
• Time. It is mostly related to history. Therefore, students get to know about the significant events and changes that influenced our present. In addition, they learn about the beliefs and values of our ancestors.
• Identity. This theme is vital because it allows learners to understand how personal identity develops. They find out how family, culture, and friends affect people’s actions and personal growth.
• Institutions and groups. There are multiple institutions created by people: families, colleges, governments, and religious organizations. This theme lets students understand how institutions are formed and maintained and what changes they bring.
• Authority and governments. One of the essential parts of social studies is the theme of authority. Thanks to it, students can understand how different forms of governance are created. It also includes analyzing the functions and purposes of political systems.
• Globalization. Learners are helped to discover the interconnections between societies and the issues they create on a global scale. Everything is interdependent nowadays, and the importance of global connections is rising.
• Civic ideas. Students need to understand civic ideas to be fully functioning independent members of society. This vital theme includes learning about citizen’s rights and responsibilities.
• Science and technology. This aspect is not only about the development of technology and scientific achievements. It is also about how society is connected to those processes. Moreover, students learn about their impacts on people.

If you are looking for social studies project topics on the culture, you might consider the following aspects.

Every social study project would focus on how cultural attributes, such as traditions, arts, literature, are created and shared. It is important to remember to highlight both differences and similarities while doing comparative research.

One of the features of culture is that it’s dynamic and continuously changing, which means it is correlated with the personal development and beliefs of citizens. Moreover, you can look into the influence of culture on different political and religious institutions.

All in all, the list of topics in social studies below is all about the interconnection between culture and society. If you’re not a fan of the listed options, you can at least take the keywords and use a generator of random topics to write about . This will give you a lot more variants to choose from.

• The principles of the multicultural policy of Australia : benefits. Australia is one of the countries that support cultural diversity. The government even created an official policy based on four principles to ensure that everybody has equal rights to participate in the community.
• Indonesian communities and ancestor worships. Practices connected to ancestor worship are based on the belief that the spirits of the dead have the powers to affect the destinies of the living.
• The domestic etiquette of modern Americans . All cultures have different etiquette – a set of rules that governs social behavior. Those norms are changing along with the culture, but can also be different depending on the social situation.
• Gender issues and women in Medieval society. In the Middle Ages, women were not allowed to receive education, had limited social rights, and had to obey their fathers’ and husbands’ will.
• Gender roles : how are boys and girls raised in American families? Gender roles enforce some specific standards and expectations of how men and women should behave. Study the socially appropriate gender roles in modern families.
• Taboos and emotions in modern society. Taboo is something prohibited from doing under the fear of punishment. Even though taboos are originally related to the sacred and spiritual practices, today, people are banned from expressing some emotions.
• How have hippies created the US? This research would focus on the ways the hippie movement made a change in the history of the country. Their cultural practices have influenced many aspects of our lives.

• Family values and religion. The family has always been considered the base of a happy American life. However, to what extent has religion affected the most common family values?
• Why does political correctness matter so much today? Political correctness means the ban on using some phrases that may be inappropriate. As a cultural phenomenon, it was created by college students in America in the 1980s.
• Is our future in social responsibility ? Social responsibility is a policy that encourages people to act for the benefit of their community and society as a whole. Could this approach help us build a better future?

One of the most important themes of social studies is about politics. When conducting science research related to this topic, you should possess a considerable amount of knowledge and experience in the issues described below.

Understanding the existing systems of governance means also knowing how political views and institutions were created. In the constantly changing world, the functions of authorities are dynamic as well.

However, you should not forget to include the relationship with citizens in this equation. Every member of society has needs, rights, and responsibilities, issues with which should also be addressed.

Here are some examples of social studies topics related to politics, which you may find useful:

• The American Whig party: a case study of the South. In the 19th century, the Whigs were one of two main political parties in the US. In this research, you could concentrate on analyzing the political tensions of this party in the South.
• Political parties and violence in the US. There are two major political parties nowadays. However, have you ever thought about why there are so much political violence and harsh competition between them?
• The change of the ideology of the Republican party after the Civil War. The Civil War has changed the perception of many people. It left a mark on the political views as well. Track the transformation of the Republican party’s ideology since then.
• Tory party and the British welfare under their rule. For the sake of some diversity, we have included a topic on the British political party as well. In this research, you would look into the social issues caused by the Tories.
• Is there a connection between anti-Americanism and anti-Semitic movement? Study the roots of anti-Americanism as a political view. Also, you can work on contrasting and comparing it to anti-Semitism.
• Student activism and the Black Power movement. This civil rights movement has been around for ages. For this research, you would need to study the Black Power’s topic and the student activism involved in it.
• The difficulties of the civil war in Sri Lanka. This island country has suffered the Sinhalese-Tamil conflict and the proceeding civil war. Your task would be to look into the complexities of this conflict.
• The power of Congress over presidential elections. It is one of the social science topics that requires gathering a lot of materials. You would have to analyze the Constitution and find the related cases in history.
• Voting technology: what can the law do against election fraud? Bribery and other corrupt practices in relation to the election process is not anything new. However, how can the law make a change?
• The most prominent political machines of the last decade. This paper would be interesting for students you prefer analyzing and comparing. You would need to gather information on the most prominent political machines in the US.
• A discussion of judicial independence
• Political culture in the U.S.
• A comparison of the models of democracy
• A comparison of electoral systems
• Authoritarianism vs. totalitarianism

Research topics in social studies on economics would always be related to the theme of production and consumption. You would have to understand how people manage to produce and sell goods and services worldwide.

There are multiple issues in the global economics that you, as a student, could address in your argumentative paper. It includes the unequal distribution of goods along with the growing demand.

You might as well find it interesting to research how the production of specific goods is organized and the role of technology in that process. It is also essential to look into how governments cope with market failures and how they improve the well-being of the economies.

• The flaws of the economic democracy system: a case study. Pick and analyze the issues that this socioeconomic system might have. It would be better if you add real-life cases to the analysis.
• Morality and global capitalism. Your task would be to analyze the five features of global capitalism and determine how it can be socially acceptable. Look through every moral issue that arises.
• The bankruptcy of the middle class in the US. This research focuses on the root causes, as well as consequences, of so many cases of bankruptcy among American middle-class families.
• Can we foresee the future of the European Monetary System? Ever since 1979, the Euro has been serving its purpose. However, this paper would highlight the economic factors that can lead to disruptions in this system.
• Wall Street: did we learn from the 2008 crash ? The year of 2008 punched many Americans, leaving their wealth reduced noticeably. But did we learn from past mistakes? Can we prevent the crisis from happening again?
• Understanding stock markets : profitable investments. To make a profitable investment, you need to know everything about the industry sector and stock market cycles. Compile the tips and tricks that can make it work.
• How has the Silk Road influenced the current global economy? Connecting East and West, those trade routes existed for centuries. For this cool research, you would need to analyze the current economic situation and find the features that exist thanks to the Silk Road.
• Coffee beans and fair trade. Selling coffee beans internationally, some communities and families depend on this business. However, how fair is this fair trade market? Who looks after social justice?
• Pros and cons of dollarization: a case study. Currency substitution or dollarization can’t solve the economic crisis. Study some cases of this process in different countries and analyze the benefits and problems of it.
• How to predict the exchange rate behavior? In this research, you would need to study the sources of changes in the exchange rates. You might as well look into the tools that might help predict the behavior of the rates.

• Provide real-life examples of how you or someone else plans their studies, controls pocket money, or organizes their working day.
• How organizations foster social and civic responsibility
• Crisis management post-9/11
• The growth of management in developing countries
• Conflict management in virtual and global teams
• An analysis of the benefits vs. cost of attaining a post-secondary education
• Wealth distribution and the availability of resources
• An examination of the trickle-down effect in today’s society
• Is the financial crisis of 2008 really over?
• How advertisements can create a sense of separation and association with the feminine identity
• The role of censorship in advertising
• The image of perfection in advertising
• Gender roles in advertising
• Rhetorical analysis of various marketing campaigns . How global corporations influence people’s decisions?
• Transnational organizations analytics. Determining the most appropriate and effective marketing strategies
• Advertisement analysis . The significance of the assessment in a rhetorical essay.
• Marketing reports. Explain the primary objectives of the document. When writing business or marketing essays, it is crucial to include analysis of particular examples.
• The importance of an analytical paragraph in a business essay. How does it help to define specific company’s strengths and weaknesses?
• Unethical advertising examples. What must be avoided when developing another strategy?
• Is it always worth it to spend immense amounts of money on risky advertising campaigns?
• Will the most common advertising methods work for every kind of a product?
• What issues must be considered when organizing an ad campaign?
• Positive and negative effects of advertising .

In the list of social science essay topics, there should always be at least a few questions dedicated to history. Unless we know our past, we can’t possibly understand human nature.

For high school students, it is necessary to learn about the changes and different experiences in society. The way that values, traditions, and rules have been changing shapes our current development.

While looking for interesting social studies topics in this field, consider analyzing the root causes and consequences of different changes. Look into the ways how our social system has been developing, and you would find something exciting, for sure!

• What was the social meaning of corsets in the 20th century? Corsets are the part of the outfit that was designed to shape or modify the figure. By the 20th century, it has somewhat shaped the culture as well.
• Demystifying the stereotypes about 19th-century women in the US. There was war, and there were changes. How did the life a woman look like back then? Find the most common misunderstandings about it and conduct a historical analysis.
• African American: the historical study of social factors affecting crime. For this research, you could look into the cultural and social aspects that have influenced the response of African Americans to crimes and injustice.
• The changes in the lives of average American citizens in the 1930s. Urbanization and technological development shook the world in those years. Find out how Americans were adjusting to their new lives.
• How the environment shapes the perspective: the baby boomers ? In the example of the baby boomers’ generation, study the effects of the social and cultural aspects on identity and personal values.
• The process of development of Italian fashion and the US. You would be studying the historical facts in support of the idea that the US played an essential role in the Italian fashion industry development.
• Generation X and global leaders. This topic focuses on the most prominent world leaders in different areas. Your task would be to find the connection between the personal specifics of generation X and global leaders.
• Women in the Victorian Age and domestic rules. Conduct research on the ideology of Victorian women. What social challenges connected to industrialization were they forced to face?
• Servants in the American houses in the middle of the 20th century. In the 1920s, women started quitting their housewives’ chores and hiring servants to do them instead. You would look into the social sources of such a change in the domestic life of that time.
• What is the connection between social change and the American schooling system? Look into the development of the educational institutions in the US over a chosen period. Find out what social factors have affected the process.
• Civil disorders
• Political terrorism
• Non-political terrorism
• Limited political terrorism
• Expand on the problem of democracy and domestic terrorism
• A study of terrorist groups
• State-sponsored terrorism
• The tactics of terrorism
• The history of terrorism
• The causes of terrorism
• Responses to terrorism and counter-terrorism global policy
• For more topics ideas, check out Research Guide for Students .
• How enlistment in the U.S. Army works
• The top five army bases
• Customs and courtesies in the military
• The history of Memorial Day
• The threat of homelessness for veterans
• Turkic migration
• Mongol invasions
• Great migration of the 1630s
• Great migration of African Americans
• Government regulations
• Socially irresponsible corporations
• Antitrust provision
• International business law and legal regulations for international corporations and companies
• Business law in the Islamic world and how it differs from that of other countries

Criminology

• Crime prevention
• Juvenile delinquency
• Victimology
• Deviant behavior

When you write an essay on justice, you have a great opportunity to present your opinion on the subject. Here are some potential topics:

• Justice: A Myth or Reality?
• Tell about today’s idea of justice. What do people do to establish justice in the world?
• Give your reasons why absolute justice is impossible.
• How justice is portrayed in Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
• Discuss the Heaven Justice

Gender Studies

• Women and the Taliban
• Chinese women as seen through the Chinese culture
• Women and Confucian cultures in Korea
• Witch hunts in the Western world
• The influence of feminism on men
• The challenge of feminist biblical interpretation
• Gender identity and the particulars of word-of-mouth communication
• How leadership styles differ based on gender
• Women empowerment
• Why do women think that their rights are neglected in free countries?
• Gender inequality: are men more likely to receive well-paid jobs than women with precisely same characteristics?
• Are men considered to be better employees than women ?
• Can feminists persuade the government to make changes in the law beneficial for them?
• Gender discrimination in everyday life
• The purpose of feminist demonstrations
• Are people concerned about the problem of gender inequality in their everyday lives?
• Where are the human rights of women neglected and why?
• Causes of gender inequality
• Is the factor of overall equality necessary for the development of the world or not?
• What are the most popular examples of equality among citizens of one country?

• Gender stratification definition. Where can it be observed in the modern society?
• What can be changed because of mass feminism?
• Gender stereotypes . Is everything that we hear about discrimination right?
• What is gender stratification?
• Are females discriminated in the modern society, or this issue is fabricated?
• Gender roles in the workplace
• Factors contributing to gender inequality.
• Disadvantages of gender equality
• Gender equality theory
• Gender imbalance definition. What is the origin of the term and where it is used?
• Gender superiority. Is it true that males were always dominant figures in the history?
• History of gender discrimination . Was this societal rule present in the prehistoric times, and when it was introduced?
• Gender disparity definition. What is the origin of the term and where it is used today?

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Committee on Degrees in Social Studies

• Thesis Formatting

Social Studies Senior Theses should be between 20,000 and 30,000 words of text. Theses that exceed 30,000 words may be penalized by up to half a grade for excessive length. Theses that do not reach the minimum required length may fail to receive honors. You are required to attach a word count to your thesis. To do so, type out the word count on an otherwise blank page and include it as the last page in your thesis. Theses will not be accepted without a word count.

One copy of your thesis is to be submitted electronically to the Social Studies office, uploaded to the Social Studies 99 Canvas site. If you are a joint concentrator, you should submit one copy of your thesis to Social Studies and one to your joint concentration.

Apart from quotations of more than 50 words and from foot­notes, theses should be double-spaced.   

Pages must be numbered.

The margins should be one inch at the top and bottom of each page, with one inch at the left edge and one inch at the right.

Follow the foot- or end-noting conventions of the discipline with which the essay is most closely associated.  

Here is an example of the text that should be appro­priately centered and spaced on the title page:

(title of essay)

An Essay Presented

(first name, middle name, and last name of author)

The Committee on Degrees in Social Studies

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a degree with honors of Bachelor of Arts

Harvard College (month and year)

Acknowledgements  

When the thesis is submitted, please leave out an acknowledgements page. If your thesis is accepted for archives, you will be contacted to provide an acknowledgements page and any minor updates you wish to include.

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CS&E Announces 2024-25 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) Award Winners

Seven Ph.D. students working with CS&E professors have been named Doctoral Dissertation Fellows for the 2024-25 school year. The Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship is a highly competitive fellowship that gives the University’s most accomplished Ph.D. candidates an opportunity to devote full-time effort to an outstanding research project by providing time to finalize and write a dissertation during the fellowship year. The award includes a stipend of $25,000, tuition for up to 14 thesis credits each semester, and subsidized health insurance through the Graduate Assistant Health Plan.

CS&E congratulates the following students on this outstanding accomplishment:

• Athanasios Bacharis (Advisor: Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos )
• Karin de Langis (Advisor:  Dongyeop Kang )
• Arshia Zernab Hassan (Advisors: Chad Myers )
• Xinyue Hu (Advisors: Zhi-Li Zhang )
• Lucas Kramer (Advisors: Eric Van Wyk )
• Yijun Lin (Advisors: Yao-Yi Chiang )
• Mingzhou Yang (Advisors: Shashi Shekhar )

Athanasios Bacharis

Bacharis’ work centers around the robot-vision area, focusing on making autonomous robots act on visual information. His research includes active vision approaches, namely, view planning and next-best-view, to tackle the problem of 3D reconstruction via different optimization frameworks. The acquisition of 3D information is crucial for automating tasks, and active vision methods obtain it via optimal inference. Areas of impact include agriculture and healthcare, where 3D models can lead to reduced use of fertilizers via phenotype analysis of crops and effective management of cancer treatments. Bacharis has a strong publication record, with two peer-reviewed conference papers and one journal paper already published. He also has one conference paper under review and two journal papers in the submission process. His publications are featured in prestigious robotic and automation venues, further demonstrating his expertise and the relevance of his research in the field.

Karin de Langis

Karin's thesis works at the intersection of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and cognitive science. Her work uses eye-tracking and other cognitive signals to improve NLP systems in their performance and cognitive interpretability, and to create NLP systems that process language more similarly to humans. Her human-centric approach to NLP is motivated by the possibility of addressing the shortcomings of current statistics-based NLP systems, which often become stuck on explainability and interpretability, resulting in potential biases. This work has most recently been accepted and presented at SIGNLL Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL) conference which has a special focus on theoretically, cognitively and scientifically motivated approaches to computational linguistics.

Arshia Zernab Hassan

Hassan's thesis work delves into developing computational methods for interpreting data from genome wide CRISPR/Cas9 screens. CRISPR/Cas9 is a new approach for genome editing that enables precise, large-scale editing of genomes and construction of mutants in human cells. These are powerful data for inferring functional relationships among genes essential for cancer growth. Moreover, chemical-genetic CRISPR screens, where population of mutant cells are grown in the presence of chemical compounds, help us understand the effect the chemicals have on cancer cells and formulate precise drug solutions. Given the novelty of these experimental technologies, computational methods to process and interpret the resulting data and accurately quantify the various genetic interactions are still quite limited, and this is where Hassan’s dissertation is focused on. Her research extends to developing deep-learning based methods that leverage CRISPR chemical-genetic and other genomic datasets to predict cancer sensitivity to candidate drugs. Her methods on improving information content in CRISPR screens was published in the Molecular Systems Biology journal, a highly visible journal in the computational biology field. 

Hu's Ph.D. dissertation is concentrated on how to effectively leverage the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) – especially deep learning – to tackle challenging and important problems in the design and development of reliable, effective and secure (independent) physical infrastructure networks. More specifically, her research focuses on two critical infrastructures: power grids and communication networks, in particular, emerging 5G networks, both of which not only play a critical role in our daily life but are also vital to the nation’s economic well-being and security. Due to the enormous complexity, diversity, and scale of these two infrastructures, traditional approaches based on (simplified) theoretical models and heuristics-based optimization are no longer sufficient in overcoming many technical challenges in the design and operations of these infrastructures: data-driven machine learning approaches have become increasingly essential. The key question now is: how does one leverage the power of AI/ML without abandoning the rich theory and practical expertise that have accumulated over the years? Hu’s research has pioneered a new paradigm – (domain) knowledge-guided machine learning (KGML) – in tackling challenging and important problems in power grid and communications (e.g., 5G) network infrastructures.

Lucas Kramer

Kramer is now the driving force in designing tools and techniques for building extensible programming languages, with the Minnesota Extensible Language Tools (MELT) group. These are languages that start with a host language such as C or Java, but can then be extended with new syntax (notations) and new semantics (e.g. error-checking analyses or optimizations) over that new syntax and the original host language syntax. One extension that Kramer created was to embed the domain-specific language Halide in MELT's extensible specification of C, called ableC. This extension allows programmers to specify how code working on multi-dimensional matrices is transformed and optimized to make efficient use of hardware. Another embeds the logic-programming language Prolog into ableC; yet another provides a form of nondeterministic parallelism useful in some algorithms that search for a solution in a structured, but very large, search space. The goal of his research is to make building language extensions such as these more practical for non-expert developers.  To this end he has made many significant contributions to the MELT group's Silver meta-language, making it easier for extension developers to correctly specify complex language features with minimal boilerplate. Kramer is the lead author of one journal and four conference papers on his work at the University of Minnesota, winning the distinguished paper award for his 2020 paper at the Software Language Engineering conference, "Strategic Tree Rewriting in Attribute Grammars".

Lin’s doctoral dissertation focuses on a timely, important topic of spatiotemporal prediction and forecasting using multimodal and multiscale data. Spatiotemporal prediction and forecasting are important scientific problems applicable to diverse phenomena, such as air quality, ambient noise, traffic conditions, and meteorology. Her work also couples the resulting prediction and forecasting with multimodal (e.g., satellite imagery, street-view photos, census records, and human mobility data) and multiscale geographic information (e.g., census records focusing on small tracts vs. neighborhood surveys) to characterize the natural and built environment, facilitating our understanding of the interactions between and within human social systems and the ecosystem. Her work has a wide-reaching impact across multiple domains such as smart cities, urban planning, policymaking, and public health.

Mingzhou Yang

Yang is developing a thesis in the broad area of spatial data mining for problems in transportation. His thesis has both societal and theoretical significance. Societally, climate change is a grand challenge due to the increasing severity and frequency of climate-related disasters such as wildfires, floods, droughts, etc. Thus, many nations are aiming at carbon neutrality (also called net zero) by mid-century to avert the worst impacts of global warming. Improving energy efficiency and reducing toxic emissions in transportation is important because transportation accounts for the vast majority of U.S. petroleum consumption as well as over a third of GHG emissions and over a hundred thousand U.S. deaths annually via air pollution. To accurately quantify the expected environmental cost of vehicles during real-world driving, Yang's thesis explores ways to incorporate physics in the neural network architecture complementing other methods of integration: feature incorporation, and regularization. This approach imposes stringent physical constraints on the neural network model, guaranteeing that its outputs are consistently in accordance with established physical laws for vehicles. Extensive experiments including ablation studies demonstrated the efficacy of incorporating physics into the model. 

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