english major thesis

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

Home > HFA > ENGLISH > ENG_DISS

English Department Dissertations Collection

Current students, please follow this link to submit your dissertation.

Dissertations from 2023 2023

In Search of Middle Paths: Buddhism, Fiction, and the Secular in Twentieth-Century South Asia , Crystal Baines, English

Save Our Children: Discourses of Queer Futurity in the United States and South Africa, 1977-2010 , Jude Hayward-Jansen, English

Epistemologies of the Unknowable in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature , Maria Ishikawa, English

Revenge of the Nerds: Tech Masculinity and Digital Hegemony , Benjamin M. Latini, English

The Diasporic Mindset and Narrative Intersections of British Identity in Transnational Fiction , Joseph A. Mason, English

A 19TH CENTURY ETHNOGRAPHIC EXHIBIT UN/CAGED: NARRATIVES OF INFORMAL EMPIRE, AFROLATINIDAD, AND CONTEMPORARY ARTISTIC (RE)FRAMINGS , Celine G. Nader, English

Dissertations from 2022 2022

Writing the Aftermath: Uncanny Spaces of the Postcolonial , Sohini Banerjee, English

Science Fiction’s Enactment of the Encouragement, Process, and End Result of Revolutionary Transformation , Katharine Blanchard, English

LITERARY NEGATION AND MATERIALISM IN CHAUCER , Michelle Brooks, English

TRANSNATIONAL POLITICAL AND LITERARY ENCOUNTERS: THE IDEA OF AMERÍKA IN ICELANDIC FICTION, 1920–1990 , Jodie Childers, English

When Choices Aren't Choices: Academic Literacy Normativities in the Age of Neoliberalism , Robin K. Garabedian, English

Redefining Gender Violence: Radical Feminist Visions in Contemporary Ethnic American Women’s Fiction and Women of Color Activism 1990-2010 , Hazel Gedikli, English

Stories Women Carry: Labor and Reproductive Imaginaries of South Asia and the Caribbean , Subhalakshmi Gooptu, English

The Critical Workshop: Writing Revision and Critical Pedagogy in the Middle School Classroom , Andrea R. Griswold, English

Racial Poetics: Early Modern Race and the Form of Comedy , Yunah Kae, English

At the Limits of Empathy: Political Conflict and its Aftermath in Postcolonial Fiction , Saumya Lal, English

The Burdens and Blessings of Responsibility: Duty and Community in Nineteenth- Century America , Leslie Leonard, English

No There There: New Jersey in Multiethnic Writing and Popular Culture Since 1990 , Shannon Mooney, English

Ownership and Writer Agency in Web 2.0 , Thomas Pickering, English

Combating Narratives: Soldiering in Twentieth-Century African American and Latinx Literature , Stacy Reardon, English

“IT DON’T ‘MEAN’ A THING”: TIME AND THE READER IN JAZZ FICTIONAL NARRATIVE , Damien C. Weaver, English

SATURNINE ECOLOGIES: ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD, 1542-1688 , John Yargo, English

Dissertations from 2021 2021

"On Neptunes Watry Realmes": Maritime Law and English Renaissance Literature , Hayley Cotter, English

Theater of Exchange: The Cosmopolitan Stage of Jacobean London , Liz Fox, English

“The Badge of All Our Tribe”: Contradictions of Jewish Representation on the English Renaissance Stage , Becky S. Friedman, English

On Being Dispersed: The Poetics of Dehiscence from "We the People" to Abolition , Sean A. Gordon, English

Echoing + Resistant Imagining: Filipino Student Writing Under American Colonial Rule , Florianne Jimenez, English

When Your Words Are Someone Else's Money: Rhetorical Circulation, Affect, and Late Capitalism , Kelin E. Loe, English

Indigenous Impositions in Contemporary Culture: Knotting Ontologies, Beading Aesthetics, and Braiding Temporalities , Darren Lone Fight, English

NEGRITUDE FEMINISMS: FRANCOPHONE BLACK WOMEN WRITERS AND ACTIVISTS IN FRANCE, MARTINIQUE, AND SENEGAL FROM THE 1920S TO THE 1980S , Korka Sall, English

Negotiating Space: Spatial Violation on the Early Modern Stage, 1587-1638 , Gregory W. Sargent, English

Stranger Compass of the Stage: Difference and Desire in Early Modern City Comedy , Catherine Tisdale, English

Dissertations from 2020 2020

AFFECTIVE HISTORIES OF SOUTHERN TRAUMA: SHAME, HEALING, AND VULNERABILITY IN US SOUTHERN WOMEN’S WRITING, 1975–2006 , Faune Albert, English

Materially Queer: Identity and Agency in Academic Writing , Joshua Barsczewski, English

ANGELS WHO STEPPED OUTSIDE THEIR HOUSES: “AMERICAN TRUE WOMANHOOD” AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY (TRANS)NATIONALISMS , Gayathri M. Hewagama, English

WRITING AGAINST HISTORY: FEMINIST BAROQUE NARRATIVES IN INTERWAR ATLANTIC MODERNISM , Annaliese Hoehling, English

Passing Literacies: Soviet Immigrant Elders and Intergenerational Language Practice , Jenny Krichevsky, English

Lisa Ben and Queer Rhetorical Reeducation in Post-war Los Angeles , Katelyn S. Litterer, English

Daring Depictions: An Analysis of Risks and Their Mediation in Representations of Black Suffering , Russell Nurick, English

From Page to Program: A Study of Stakeholders in Multimodal First-Year Composition Curriculum and Program Design , Rebecca Petitti, English

Forms of the Future: Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Visioning Work of Aesthetics in U.S. Poetry, 1822-1863 , Magdalena Zapędowska, English

Dissertations from 2019 2019

Black Men Who Betray Their Race: 20TH Century Literary Representations of the Black Male Race Traitor , Gregory Coleman, English

“The Worlding Game”: Queer Ecological Perspectives in Modern Fiction , Sarah D'Stair, English

Afrasian Imaginaries: Global Capitalism and Labor Migration in Indian Ocean Fictions, 1990 – 2015 , Neelofer Qadir, English

Divided Tongues: The Politics and Poetics of Food in Modern Anglophone Indian Fiction , Shakuntala Ray, English

Globalizing Nature on the Shakespearean Stage , William Steffen, English

Gilded Chains: Global Economies and Gendered Arts in US Fiction, 1865-1930 , Heather Wayne, English

“ÆTHELTHRYTH”: SHAPING A RELIGIOUS WOMAN IN TENTH-CENTURY WINCHESTER , Victoria Kent Worth, English

Dissertations from 2018 2018

Sex and Difference in the Jewish American Family: Incest Narratives in 1990s Literary and Pop Culture , Eli W. Bromberg, English

Rhetorical Investments: Writing, Technology, and the Emerging Logics of the Public Sphere , Dan Ehrenfeld, English

Kiskeyanas Valientes en Este Espacio: Dominican Women Writers and the Spaces of Contemporary American Literature , Isabel R. Espinal, English

“TO WEIGH THE WORLD ANEW”: POETICS, RHETORIC, AND SOCIAL STRUGGLE, FROM SIDNEY’S ARCADIA TO SHAKESPEARE’S THEATER , David Katz, English

CIVIC DOMESTICITY: RHETORIC, WOMEN, AND SPACE AT HULL HOUSE, 1889-1910 , Liane Malinowski, English

Charting the Terrain of Latina/o/x Theater in Chicago , Priscilla M. Page, English

The Politics of Feeling and the Work of Belonging in US Immigrant Fiction 1990 - 2015 , Lauren Silber, English

Turning Inside Out: Reading and Writing Godly Identity in Seventeenth-Century Narratives of Spiritual Experience , Meghan Conine Swavely, English

Dissertations from 2017 2017

Tragicomic Transpositions: The Influence of Spanish Prose Romance on the Development of Early Modern English Tragicomedy , Josefina Hardman, English

“The Blackness of Blackness”: Meta-Black Identity in 20th/21st Century African American Culture , Casey Hayman, English

Waiting for Now: Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time , Amanda Ruth Waugh Lagji, English

Latina Identities, Critical Literacies, and Academic Achievement in Community College , Morgan Lynn, English

Demanding Spaces: 1970s U.S. Women's Novels as Sites of Struggle , Kate Marantz, English

Novel Buildings: Architectural and Narrative Form in Victorian Fiction , Ashley R. Nadeau, English

CATCH FEELINGS: CLASS AFFECT AND PERFORMATIVITY IN TEACHING ASSOCIATES' NARRATIVES , Anna Rita Napoleone, English

Dialogue and "Dialect": Character Speech in American Fiction , Carly Overfelt, English

Materializing Transfer: Writing Dispositions in a Culture of Standardized Testing , Lisha Daniels Storey, English

Theatres of War: Performing Queer Nationalism in Modernist Narratives , Elise Swinford, English

Dissertations from 2016 2016

Multimodal Assessment in Action: What We Really Value in New Media Texts , Kathleen M. Baldwin, English

Addictive Reading: Nineteenth-Century Drug Literature's Possible Worlds , Adam Colman, English

"The Book Can't Teach You That": A Case Study of Place, Writing, and Tutors' Constructions of Writing Center Work , Christopher Joseph DiBiase, English

Protest Lyrics at Work: Labor Resistance Poetry of Depression-Era Autoworkers , Rebecca S. Griffin, English

From What Remains: The Politics of Aesthetic Mourning and the Poetics of Loss in Contemporary African American Culture , Kajsa K. Henry, English

Minor Subjects in America: Everyday Childhoods of the Long Nineteenth Century , Gina M. Ocasion, English

Enduring Affective Rhetorics: Transnational Feminist Action in Digital Spaces , Jessica Ouellette, English

The School Desk and the Writing Body , Marni M. Presnall, English

Sustainable Public Intellectualism: The Rhetorics of Student Scientist-Activists , Jesse Priest, English

Prosthetizing the Soul: Reading, Seeing, and Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Devotion , Katey E. Roden, English

Dissertations from 2015 2015

“As Child in Time”: Childhood, Temporality, and 19th Century U.S. Literary Imaginings of Democracy , Marissa Carrere, English

A National Style: A Critical Historiography of the Irish Short Story , Andrew Fox, English

Homosexuality is a Poem: How Gay Poets Remodeled the Lyric, Community and the Ideology of Sex to Theorize a Gay Poetic , Christopher M. Hennessy, English

Affecting Manhood: Masculinity, Effeminacy, and the Fop Figure in Early Modern English Drama , Jessica Landis, English

Who Do You Think You Are?: Recovering the Self in the Working Class Escape Narrative , Christine M. Maksimowicz, English

Metabolizing Capital: Writing, Information, and the Biophysical World , Christian J. Pulver, English

Audible Voice in Context , Airlie S. Rose, English

The Role of Online Reading and Writing in the Literacy Practices of First-Year Writing Students , Casey Burton Soto, English

Dissertations from 2014 2014

RESURRECTION: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BLACK CHURCH IN CONTEMPORARY POPULAR CULTURE , Rachel J. Daniel, English

Seeing Blindness: The Visual and the Great War in Literary Modernism , Rachael Dworsky, English

HERE, THERE, AND IN BETWEEN: TRAVEL AS METAPHOR IN MIXED RACE NARRATIVES OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE , Colin Enriquez, English

Interactive Audience and the Internet , John R. Gallagher, English

Down from the Mountain and into the Mill: Literacy Sponsorship and Southern Appalachian Women in the New South , Emma M. Howes, English

Transnational Gestures: Rethinking Trauma in U.S. War Fiction , Ruth A.H. Lahti, English

"A More Natural Mother": Concepts of Maternity and Queenship in Early Modern England , Anne-Marie Kathleen Strohman, English

Dissertations from 2013 2013

Letters to a Dictionary: Competing Views of Language in the Reception of Webster's Third New International Dictionary , Anne Pence Bello, English

Staging the Depression: The Federal Theatre Project's Dramas of Poverty, 1935-1939 , Amy Brady, English

Our Story Has Not Been Told in any Moment: Radical Black Feminist Theatre From The Old Left to Black Power , Julie M Burrell, English

Writing for Social Action: Affect, Activism, and the Composition Classroom , Sarah Finn, English

Surviving Domestic Tensions: Existential Uncertainty in New World African Diasporic Women's Literature , Denia M Fraser, English

From Feathers to Fur: Theatrical Representations of Skin in the Medieval English Cycle Plays , Valerie Anne Gramling, English

The Reflexive Scaffold: Metatheatricality, Genre, and Cultural Performance in English Renaissance Drama , Nathaniel C. Leonard, English

The World Inscribed: Literary Form, Travel, and the Book in England, 1580-1660 , Philip S Palmer, English

Shakespearean Signifiers , Marie H Roche, English

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Collections
• Disciplines

Author Corner

• Login for Faculty Authors
• Faculty Author Gallery
• Expert Gallery
• University Libraries
• English Website
• UMass Amherst

This page is sponsored by the University Libraries.

© 2009 University of Massachusetts Amherst • Site Policies

Privacy Copyright

College of Arts & Sciences

Thesis Topics

You are invited to pursue any topic that falls under the English department’s purview, and the Honors Committee will assume that you will pursue it with scholarly rigor, intellectual seriousness, and artistic integrity. You should follow your own interests and commitments in defining your project, though you should avail yourself of the advice of those faculty members whose expertise will help you focus your ideas and give them depth. Again, we welcome critical, creative, interdisciplinary, mixed genre, and hybrid creative/critical projects. Most successful applicants have derived their projects from interests developed during their time as English majors at Georgetown. During the actual writing of the thesis, of course, you will work closely with a faculty mentor.

Here is a partial list of the kinds of literary and interdisciplinary topics that Honors students have pursued over the past few years:

• Polyphony in the novels of Cormac McCarthy
• Women in post-Stonewall gay male literature
• Madness and skepticism in Hamlet and Don Quixote
• Dialogism in Toni Morrison and Christa Woolf
• The Booker Prize as post-colonial phenomenon
• Jazz in the Harlem Renaissance
• The scientific revolution and 18th-century narratives
• Irvine Welsh and dialect writing
• Sound and structure in scripts
• Identity and memory in Maxine Hong Kingston
• Influence of the internet on writing
• The written legacy of oral narratives in Amerindian culture
• Medieval women troubadours
• African-American women writers and their Biblical heritage
• Adult-child discourse in real-life conversation and classic children’s literature
• The role of bible-making in the works of Blake, Wordsworth, and Hardy
• Morality plays in the Middle Ages and the twentieth century

In addition, Honors students have written short story collections, memoirs, and collections of poetry. Students have also written hybrid creative/critical projects, such as a critique of postcolonial memoir within a postcolonial memoir. Those students who propose creative projects should have developed their skills through taking courses with the Georgetown English Department creative writing faculty or through participation in campus and professional journals and other creative venues.

• USF Research
• USF Libraries

Digital Commons @ USF > College of Arts and Sciences > English > Theses and Dissertations

English Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

Of Mētis and Cuttlefish: Employing Collective Mētis as a Theoretical Framework for Marginalized Communities , Justiss Wilder Burry

What on earth are we doing (?): A Field-Wide Exploration of Design Courses in TPC , Jessica L. Griffith

Organizations Ensuring Resilience: A Case Study of Cortez, Florida , Karla Ariel Maddox

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Using Movie Clips to Understand Vivid-Phrasal Idioms’ Meanings , Rasha Salem S. Alghamdi

An Exercise in Exceptions: Personhood, Divergency, and Ableism in the STAR TREK Franchise , Jessica A. Blackman

Vulnerable Resistance in Victorian Women’s Writing , Stephanie A. Harper

Curricular Assemblages: Understanding Student Writing Knowledge (Re)circulation Across Genres , Adam Phillips

PAD Beyond the Classroom: Integrating PAD in the Scrum Workplace , Jade S. Weiss

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Social Cues in Animated Pedagogical Agents for Second Language Learners: the Application of The Embodiment Principle in Video Design , Sahar M. Alyahya

A Field-Wide Examination of Cross-Listed Courses in Technical Professional Communication , Carolyn M. Gubala

Labor-Based Grading Contracts in the Multilingual FYC Classroom: Unpacking the Variables , Kara Kristina Larson

Land Goddesses, Divine Pigs, and Royal Tricksters: Subversive Mythologies and Imperialist Land Ownership Dispossession in Twentieth Century Irish and American Literature , Elizabeth Ricketts

Oppression, Resistance, and Empowerment: The Power Dynamics of Naming and Un-naming in African American Literature, 1794 to 2019 , Melissa "Maggie" Romigh

Generic Expectations in First Year Writing: Teaching Metadiscoursal Reflection and Revision Strategies for Increased Generic Uptake of Academic Writing , Kaelah Rose Scheff

Reframing the Gothic: Race, Gender, & Disability in Multiethnic Literature , Ashely B. Tisdale

Intersections of Race and Place in Short Fiction by New Orleans Gens de Couleur Libres , Adrienne D. Vivian

Mental Illness Diagnosis and the Construction of Stigma , Katie Lynn Walkup

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Rhetorical Roundhouse Kicks: Tae Kwon Do Pumsae Practice and Non-Western Embodied Topoi , Spencer Todd Bennington

9/11 Then and Now: How the Performance of Memorial Rhetoric by Presidents Changes to Construct Heroes , Kristen M. Grafton

Kinesthetically Speaking: Human and Animal Communication in British Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century , Dana Jolene Laitinen

Exploring Refugee Students’ Second Language (L2) Motivational Selves through Digital Visual Representations , Nhu Le

Glamour in Contemporary American Cinema , Shauna A. Maragh

Instrumentalization Theory: An Analytical Heuristic for a Heightened Social Awareness of Machine Learning Algorithms in Social Media , Andrew R. Miller

Intercessory Power: A Literary Analysis of Ethics and Care in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon , Alice Walker’s Meridian , and Toni Cade Bambara’s Those Bones Are Not My Child , Kelly Mills

The Power of Non-Compliant Logos: A New Materialist Approach to Comic Studies , Stephanie N. Phillips

Female Identity and Sexuality in Contemporary Indonesian Novels , Zita Rarastesa

"The Fiery Furnaces of Hell": Rhetorical Dynamism in Youngstown, OH , Joshua M. Rea

“We developed solidarity”: Family, Race, Identity, and Space-Time in Recent Multiethnic U.S. American Fiction , Kimber L. Wiggs

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Remembrance of a Wound: Ethical Mourning in the Works of Ana Menéndez, Elías Miguel Muñoz, and Junot Díaz , José Aparicio

Taking an “Ecological Turn” in the Evaluation of Rhetorical Interventions , Peter Cannon

New GTA’s and the Pre-Semester Orientation: The Need for Informed Refinement , Jessica L. Griffith

Reading Rape and Answering with Empathy: A New Approach to Sexual Assault Education for College Students , Brianna Jerman

The Karoo , The Veld , and the Co-Op: The Farm as Microcosm and Place for Change in Schreiner, Lessing, and Head , Elana D. Karshmer

"The weak are meat, and the strong do eat"; Representations of the Slaughterhouse in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature , Stephanie Lance

Language of Carnival: How Language and the Carnivalesque Challenge Hegemony , Yulia O. Nekrashevich

Queer Authority in Old and Middle English Literature , Elan J. Pavlinich

Because My Garmin Told Me To: A New Materialist Study of Agency and Wearable Technology , Michael Repici

No One Wants to Read What You Write: A Contextualized Analysis of Service Course Assignments , Tanya P. Zarlengo

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Beauty and the Beasts: Making Places with Literary Animals of Florida , Haili A. Alcorn

The Medievalizing Process: Religious Medievalism in Romantic and Victorian Literature , Timothy M. Curran

Seeing Trauma: The Known and the Hidden in Nineteenth-Century Literature , Alisa M. DeBorde

Analysis of User Interfaces in the Sharing Economy , Taylor B. Johnson

Border-Crossing Travels Across Literary Worlds: My Shamanic Conscientization , Scott Neumeister

The Spectacle of The Bomb: Rhetorical Analysis of Risk of The Nevada Test Site in Technical Communication, Popular Press, and Pop Culture , Tiffany Wilgar

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Traveling Women and Consuming Place in Eighteenth-Century Travel Letters and Journals , Cassie Patricia Childs

“The Nations of the Field and Wood”: The Uncertain Ontology of Animals in Eighteenth-Century British Literature , J. Kevin Jordan

Modern Mythologies: The Epic Imagination in Contemporary Indian Literature , Sucheta Kanjilal

Science in the Sun: How Science is Performed as a Spatial Practice , Natalie Kass

Body as Text: Physiognomy on the Early English Stage , Curtis Le Van

Tensions Between Democracy and Expertise in the Florida Keys , Elizabeth A. Loyer

Institutional Review Boards and Writing Studies Research: A Justice-Oriented Study , Johanna Phelps-Hillen

The Spirit of Friendship: Girlfriends in Contemporary African American Literature , Tangela La'Chelle Serls

Aphra Behn on the Contemporary Stage: Behn's Feminist Legacy and Woman-Directed Revivals of The Rover , Nicole Elizabeth Stodard

(Age)ncy in Composition Studies , Alaina Tackitt

Constructing Health Narratives: Patient Feedback in Online Communities , Katie Lynn Walkup

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Rupturing the World of Elite Athletics: A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of the Suspension of the 2011 IAAF Regulations on Hyperandrogenism , Ella Browning

Shaping Climate Citizenship: The Ethics of Inclusion in Climate Change Communication and Policy , Lauren E. Cagle

Drop, Cover, and Hold On: Analyzing FEMA's Risk Communication through Visual Rhetoric , Samantha Jo Cosgrove

Material Expertise: Applying Object-oriented Rhetoric in Marine Policy , Zachary Parke Dixon

The Non-Identical Anglophone Bildungsroman : From the Categorical to the De-Centering Literary Subject in the Black Atlantic , Jarad Heath Fennell

Instattack: Instagram and Visual Ad Hominem Political Arguments , Sophia Evangeline Gourgiotis

Hospitable Climates: Representations of the West Indies in Eighteenth-Century British Literature , Marisa Carmen Iglesias

Chosen Champions: Medieval and Early Modern Heroes as Postcolonial Reactions to Tensions between England and Europe , Jessica Trant Labossiere

Science, Policy, and Decision Making: A Case Study of Deliberative Rhetoric and Policymaking for Coastal Adaptation in Southeast Florida , Karen Patricia Langbehn

A New Materialist Approach to Visual Rhetoric in PhotoShopBattles , Jonathan Paul Ray

Tracing the Material: Spaces and Objects in British and Irish Modernist Novels , Mary Allison Wise

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Representations of Gatsby: Ninety Years of Retrospective , Christine Anne Auger

Robust, Low Power, Discrete Gate Sizing , Anthony Joseph Casagrande

Wrestling with Angels: Postsecular Contemporary American Poetry , Paul T. Corrigan

#networkedglobe: Making the Connection between Social Media and Intercultural Technical Communication , Laura Anne Ewing

Evidence of Things Not Seen: A Semi-Automated Descriptive Phrase and Frame Analysis of Texts about the Herbicide Agent Orange , Sarah Beth Hopton

'She Shall Not Be Moved': Black Women's Spiritual Practice in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, and Home , Rondrea Danielle Mathis

Relational Agency, Networked Technology, and the Social Media Aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing , Megan M. Mcintyre

Now, We Hear Through a Voice Darkly: New Media and Narratology in Cinematic Art , James Anthony Ricci

Navigating Collective Activity Systems: An Approach Towards Rhetorical Inquiry , Katherine Jesse Royce

Women's Narratives of Confinement: Domestic Chores as Threads of Resistance and Healing , Jacqueline Marie Smith

Domestic Spaces in Transition: Modern Representations of Dwelling in the Texts of Elizabeth Bowen , Shannon Tivnan

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Paradise Always Already Lost: Myth, Memory, and Matter in English Literature , Elizabeth Stuart Angello

Overcoming the 5th-Century BCE Epistemological Tragedy: A Productive Reading of Protagoras of Abdera , Ryan Alan Blank

Acts of Rebellion: The Rhetoric of Rogue Cinema , Adam Breckenridge

Material and Textual Spaces in the Poetry of Montagu, Leapor, Barbauld, and Robinson , Jessica Lauren Cook

Decolonizing Shakespeare: Race, Gender, and Colonialism in Three Adaptations of Three Plays by William Shakespeare , Angela Eward-Mangione

Risk of Compliance: Tracing Safety and Efficacy in Mef-Lariam's Licensure , Julie Marie Gerdes

Beyond Performance: Rhetoric, Collective Memory, and the Motive of Imprinting Identity , Brenda M. Grau

Subversive Beauty - Victorian Bodies of Expression , Lisa Michelle Hoffman-Reyes

Integrating Reading and Writing For Florida's ESOL Program , George Douglas Mcarthur

Responsibility and Responsiveness in the Novels of Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley , Katherine Marie McGee

Ghosts, Orphans, and Outlaws: History, Family, and the Law in Toni Morrison's Fiction , Jessica Mckee

The "Defective" Generation: Disability in Modernist Literature , Deborah Susan Mcleod

Science Fiction/Fantasy and the Representation of Ethnic Futurity , Joy Ann Sanchez-Taylor

Hermes, Technical Communicator of the Gods: The Theory, Design, and Creation of a Persuasive Game for Technical Communication , Eric Walsh

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Rhetorical Spirits: Spirituality as Rhetorical Device in New Age Womanist of Color Texts , Ronisha Witlee Browdy

Disciplinarity, Crisis, and Opportunity in Technical Communication , Jason Robert Carabelli

The Terror of Possibility: A Re-evaluation and Reconception of the Sublime Aesthetic , Kurt Fawver

Unbearable Weight, Unbearable Witness: The (Im)possibility of Witnessing Eating Disorders in Cyberspace , Kristen Nicole Gay

the post- 9/11 aesthetic: repositioning the zombie film in the horror genre , Alan Edward Green, Jr.

An(other) Rhetoric: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Rhetorical Tradition , Kathleen Sandell Hardesty

Mapping Dissertation Genre Ecology , Kate Lisbeth Pantelides

Dead Man's Switch: Disaster Rhetorics in a Posthuman Age , Daniel Patrick Richards

"Of That Transfigured World" : Realism and Fantasy in Victorian Literature , Benjamin Jude Wright

Advanced Search

• Email Notifications and RSS
• All Collections
• USF Faculty Publications
• Open Access Journals
• Conferences and Events
• Theses and Dissertations
• Textbooks Collection

Useful Links

• English Department Homepage
• Rights Information
• SelectedWorks
• Submit Research

Home | About | Help | My Account | Accessibility Statement | Language and Diversity Statements

Privacy Copyright

While Sandel argues that pursuing perfection through genetic engineering would decrease our sense of humility, he claims that the sense of solidarity we would lose is also important.

This thesis summarizes several points in Sandel’s argument, but it does not make a claim about how we should understand his argument. A reader who read Sandel’s argument would not also need to read an essay based on this descriptive thesis.  

Broad thesis (arguable, but difficult to support with evidence) 

Michael Sandel’s arguments about genetic engineering do not take into consideration all the relevant issues.

This is an arguable claim because it would be possible to argue against it by saying that Michael Sandel’s arguments do take all of the relevant issues into consideration. But the claim is too broad. Because the thesis does not specify which “issues” it is focused on—or why it matters if they are considered—readers won’t know what the rest of the essay will argue, and the writer won’t know what to focus on. If there is a particular issue that Sandel does not address, then a more specific version of the thesis would include that issue—hand an explanation of why it is important.  

Arguable thesis with analytical claim 

While Sandel argues persuasively that our instinct to “remake” (54) ourselves into something ever more perfect is a problem, his belief that we can always draw a line between what is medically necessary and what makes us simply “better than well” (51) is less convincing.

This is an arguable analytical claim. To argue for this claim, the essay writer will need to show how evidence from the article itself points to this interpretation. It’s also a reasonable scope for a thesis because it can be supported with evidence available in the text and is neither too broad nor too narrow.  

Arguable thesis with normative claim 

Given Sandel’s argument against genetic enhancement, we should not allow parents to decide on using Human Growth Hormone for their children.

This thesis tells us what we should do about a particular issue discussed in Sandel’s article, but it does not tell us how we should understand Sandel’s argument.  

Questions to ask about your thesis 

• Is the thesis truly arguable? Does it speak to a genuine dilemma in the source, or would most readers automatically agree with it?  
• Is the thesis too obvious? Again, would most or all readers agree with it without needing to see your argument?  
• Is the thesis complex enough to require a whole essay's worth of argument?  
• Is the thesis supportable with evidence from the text rather than with generalizations or outside research?  
• Would anyone want to read a paper in which this thesis was developed? That is, can you explain what this paper is adding to our understanding of a problem, question, or topic?
• picture_as_pdf Thesis

e-Publications@Marquette

Home > ARTSSCI > English > dissertations

English Dissertations and Theses

The English Department Dissertations and Theses Series is comprised of dissertations and thesis authored by Marquette University's English Department doctoral and master's students.

Theses/Dissertations from 2023 2023

Lifting the Postmodern Veil: Cosmopolitanism, Humanism, and Decolonization in Global Fictions of the 21st Century , Matthew Burchanoski

Gothic Transformations and Remediations in Cheap Nineteenth-Century Fiction , Wendy Fall

Milton’s Learning: Complementarity and Difference in Paradise Lost , Peter Spaulding

“The Development of the Conceptive Plot Through Early 19th-Century English Novels” , Jannea R. Thomason

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Gonzo Eternal , John Francis Brick

Intertextuality and Sociopolitical Engagement in Contemporary Anglophone Women’s Writing , Jackielee Derks

Innovation, Genre, and Authenticity in the Nineteenth-Century Irish Novel , David Aiden Kenney II

Reluctant Sons: The Irish Matrilineal Tradition of Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and Flann O’Brien , Jessie Wirkus Haynes

Britain's Extraterrestrial Empire: Colonial Ambition, Anxiety, and Ambivalence in Early Modern Literature , Mark Edward Wisniewski

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Re-Reading the “Culture Clash”: Alternative Ways of Reading in Indian Horse , Hailey Whetten

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

When the Foreign Became Familiar: Modernism, Expatriation, and Spatial Identities in the Twentieth Century , Danielle Kristene Clapham

Reforming Victorian Sense/Abilities: Disabilities in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Social Problem Novels , Hunter Nicole Duncan

Genre and Loss: The Impossibility of Restoration in 20th Century Detective Fiction , Kathryn Hendrickson

A Productive Failure: Existentialism in Fin de Siècle England , Maxwell Patchet

Inquiry and Provocation: The Use of Ambiguity in Sixteenth-Century English Political Satire , Jason James Zirbel

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

No Home but the World: Forced Migration and Transnational Identity , Justice Hagan

The City As a Trap: 20th and 21st Century American Literature and the American Myth of Mobility , Andrew Joseph Hoffmann

The Fantastic and the First World War , Brian Kenna

Insane in the Brain, Blood, and Lungs: Gender-Specific Manifestations of Hysteria, Chlorosis, & Consumption in 19th-Century Literature , Anna P. Scanlon

Reading Multicultural Novels Melancholically: Racial Grief and Grievance in the Joy Luck Club, Beloved, and Anil's Ghost , Jennifer Arias Sweeney

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

The Ethos of Dissent: Epideictic Rhetoric and the Democratic Function of American Protest and Countercultural Literature , Jeffrey Lorino Jr

Literary Cosmopolitanisms of Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, and Arundhati Roy , Sunil Samuel Macwan

The View from Here: Toward a Sissy Critique , Tyler Monson

The Forbidden Zone Writers: Femininity and Anglophone Women War Writers of the Great War , Sareene Proodian

Theatrical Weddings and Pious Frauds: Performance and Law in Victorian Marriage Plots , Adrianne A. Wojcik

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Changing the Victorian Habit Loop: The Body in the Poetry and Painting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris , Bryan Gast

Gendering Scientific Discourse from 1790-1830: Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Marcet , Bridget E. Kapler

Discarding Dreams and Legends: The Short Fiction of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty , Katy L. Leedy

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Saving the Grotesque: The Grotesque System of Liberation in British Modernism (1922-1932) , Matthew Henningsen

The Pulpit's Muse: Conversive Poetics in the American Renaissance , Michael William Keller

A Single Man of Good Fortune: Postmodern Identities and Consumerism in the New Novel of Manners , Bonnie McLean

Julian of Norwich: Voicing the Vernacular , Therese Elaine Novotny

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Homecomings: Victorian British Women Travel Writers And Revisions Of Domesticity , Emily Paige Blaser

From Pastorals to Paterson: Ecology in the Poetry and Poetics of William Carlos WIlliams , Daniel Edmund Burke

Argument in Poetry: (Re)Defining the Middle English Debate in Academic, Popular, and Physical Contexts , Kathleen R. Burt

Apocalyptic Mentalities in Late-Medieval England , Steven A. Hackbarth

The Creation of Heaven in the Middle Ages , William Storm

(re)making The Gentleman: Genteel Masculinities And The Country Estate In The Novels Of Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen, And Elizabeth Gaskell , Shaunna Kay Wilkinson

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Brides, Department Stores, Westerns, and Scrapbooks--The Everyday Lives of Teenage Girls in the 1940s , Carly Anger

Placed People: Rootedness in G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and Wendell Berry , David Harden

Rhetorics Of Girlhood Trauma In Writing By Holly Goddard Jones, Joyce Carol Oates, Sandra Cisneros, And Jamaica Kincaid , Stephanie Marie Stella

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

A Victorian Christmas in Hell: Yuletide Ghosts and Necessary Pleasures in the Age of Capital , Brandon Chitwood

"Be-Holde the First Acte of this Tragedy" : Generic Symbiosis and Cross-Pollination in Jacobean Drama and the Early Modern Prose Novella , Karen Ann Zyck Galbraith

Pamela: Or, Virtue Reworded: The Texts, Paratexts, and Revisions that Redefine Samuel Richardson's Pamela , Jarrod Hurlbert

Violence and Masculinity in American Fiction, 1950-1975 , Magdalen McKinley

Gender Politics in the Novels of Eliza Haywood , Susan Muse

Destabilizing Tradition: Gender, Sexuality, and Postnational Identity in Four Novels by Irish Women, 1960-2000 , Sarah Nestor

Truth Telling: Testimony and Evidence in the Novels of Elizabeth Gaskell , Rebecca Parker Fedewa

Spirit of the Psyche: Carl Jung's and Victor White's Influence on Flannery O'Connor's Fiction , Paul Wakeman

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

Performing the Audience: Constructing Playgoing in Early Modern Drama , Eric Dunnum

Paule Marshall's Critique of Contemporary Neo-Imperialisms Through the Trope of Travel , Michelle Miesen Felix

Hermeneutics, Poetry, and Spenser: Augustinian Exegesis and the Renaissance Epic , Denna Iammarino-Falhamer

Encompassing the Intolerable: Laughter, Memory, and Inscription in the Fiction of John McGahern , John Keegan Malloy

Regional Consciousness in American Literature, 1860-1930 , Kelsey Louise Squire

The Ethics of Ekphrasis: The Turn to Responsible Rhetoric in Mid-Twentieth Century American Poetry , Joshua Scott Steffey

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Cognitive Architectures: Structures of Passion in Joanna Baillie's Dramas , Daniel James Bergen

On Trial: Restorative Justice in the Godwin-Wollstonecraft-Shelley Family Fictions , Colleen M. Fenno

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

What's the point to eschatology : multiple religions and terminality in James Joyce's Finnegans wake , Martin R. Brick

Economizing Characters: Harriet Martineau and the Problems of Poverty in Victorian Literature, Culture and Law , Mary Colleen Willenbring

Submissions from 2008 2008

"An improbable fiction": The marriage of history and romance in Shakespeare's Henriad , Marcia Eppich-Harris

Bearing the Mark of the Social: Notes Towards a Cosmopolitan Bildungsroman , Megan M. Muthupandiyan

The Gothic Novel and the Invention of the Middle-Class Reader: Northanger Abbey As Case Study , Tenille Nowak

Not Just a Novel of Epic Proportions: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man As Modern American Epic , Dana Edwards Prodoehl

Recovering the Radicals: Women Writers, Reform, and Nationalist Modes of Revolutionary Discourse , Mark J. Zunac

Theses/Dissertations from 2007 2007

"The Sweet and the Bitter": Death and Dying in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings , Amy M. Amendt-Raduege

The Games Men Play: Madness and Masculinity in Post-World War II American Fiction, 1946-1964 , Thomas P. Durkin

Denise Levertov: Through An Ecofeminist Lens , Katherine A. Hanson

The Wit of Wrestling: Devotional-Aesthetic Tradition in Christina Rossetti's Poetry , Maria M.E. Keaton

Genderless Bodies: Stigma and the Myth of Womanhood , Ellen M. Letizia

Envy and Jealousy in the Novels of the Brontës: A Synoptic Discernment , Margaret Ann McCann

Technologies of the Late Medieval Self: Ineffability, Distance, and Subjectivity in the Book of Margery Kempe , Crystal L. Mueller

"Finding-- a Map-- to That Place Called Home": The Journey from Silence to Recovery in Patrick McCabe's Carn and Breakfast on Pluto , Valerie A. Murrenus Pilmaier

Emily Dickinson's Ecocentric Pastoralism , Moon-ju Shin

The American Jeremiad in Civil War Literature , Jacob Hadley Stratman

Theses/Dissertations from 2006 2006

Literary Art in Times of Crisis: The Proto-Totalitarian Anxiety of Melville, James, and Twain , Matthew J. Darling

(Re) Writing Genre: Narrative Conventions and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison , Jennifer Lee Jordan Heinert

"Amsolookly Kersse": Clothing in Finnegan's Wake , Catherine Simpson Kalish

"Do Your Will": Shakespeare's Use of the Rhetoric of Seduction in Four Plays , Jason James Nado

Woman in Emblem: Locating Authority in the Work and Identity of Katherine Philips (1632-1664) , Susan L. Stafinbil

When the Bough Breaks: Poetry on Abortion , Wendy A. Weaver

Theses/Dissertations from 2005 2005

Heroic Destruction: Shame and Guilt Cultures in Medieval Heroic Poetry , Karl E. Boehler

Poe and Early (Un)American Drama , Amy C. Branam

Grammars of Assent: Constructing Poetic Authority in An Age of Science , William Myles Carroll III

This Place is Not a Place: The Constructed Scene in the Works of Sir Walter Scott , Colin J. Marlaire

Cognitive Narratology: A Practical Approach to the Reader-Writer Relationship , Debra Ann Ripley

Theses/Dissertations from 2004 2004

Defoe and the Pirates: Function of Genre Conventions in Raiding Narratives , William J. Dezoma

Creative Discourse in the Eighteenth-Century Courtship Novel , Michelle Ruggaber Dougherty

Exclusionary Politics: Mourning and Modernism in the Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Amy Levy, and Charlotte Mew , Donna Decker Schuster

Theses/Dissertations from 2003 2003

Toward a Re-Formed Confession: Johann Gerhard's Sacred Meditations and "Repining Restlessnesse" in the Poetry of George Herbert , Erik P. Ankerberg

Idiographic Spaces: Representation, Ideology and Realism in the Postmodern British Novel , Gordon B. McConnell

Theses/Dissertations from 2002 2002

Reading into It: Wallace Stegner's Novelistic Sense of Time and Place , Colin C. Irvine

Brisbane and Beyond: Revising Social Capitalism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America , Michael C. Mattek

Theses/Dissertations from 2001 2001

Christians and Mimics in W. B. Yeats' Collected Poems , Patrick Mulrooney

Renaissance Roles and the Process of Social Change , John Wieland

'Straunge Disguize': Allegory and Its Discontents in Spenser's Faerie Queene , Galina Ivanovna Yermolenko

Theses/Dissertations from 2000 2000

Reading American Women's Autobiography: Spheres of Identity, Spheres of Influence , Amy C. Getty

"Making Strange": The Art and Science of Selfhood in the Works of John Banville , Heather Maureen Moran

Writing Guadalupe: Mediacion and (mis)translation in borderland text(o)s , Jenny T Olin-Shanahan

Writing Guadalupe: Mediacion and (Mis)Translation in Borderland Text(o)s , Jenny T. Olin-Shanahan

Theses/Dissertations from 1999 1999

Setting the Word Against the Word: The Search for Self-Understanding in Richard II , Richard J. Erable

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Collections
• Disciplines

Information about e-Pubs@MU

• General FAQ
• English Website

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

Quick links

• Make a Gift
• Directories

Honors Theses

•   Facebook
•   Instagram
•   Twitter
•   Newsletter

EWU Digital Commons

Home > College, Department, or Program > CALE > English > TESL Theses

Teaching English as a Second Language Masters Thesis Collection

Theses/dissertations from 2020 2020.

Teaching in hagwons in South Korea: a novice English teacher’s autoethnography , Brittany Courser

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

“Racism doesn’t exist anymore, so why are we talking about this?”: An action research proposal of culturally responsive teaching for critical literacy in democratic education , Natalie Marie Giles

Stylistic imitation as an English-teaching technique : pre-service teachers’ responses to training and practice , Min Yi Liang

Telling stories and contextualizing lived experiences in the Cuban heritage language and culture: an autoethnography about transculturation , Tatiana Senechal

“This is the oppressor’s language, yet I need it to talk to you”: a critical examination of translanguaging in Russian speakers at the university level , Nora Vralsted

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Multimodal Approaches to Literacy and Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the University Level , Ghader Alahmadi

Educating Saudi Women through Communicative Language Teaching: A Bi-literacy Narrative and An Autoethnography of a Saudi English Teacher , Eiman Alamri

The value of journaling on multimodal materials: a literacy narrative and autoethnography of an experienced Saudi high school English teacher , Ibrahim Alamri

Strategic Contemplation as One Saudi Mother’s Way Of Reflecting on Her Children’s Learning Only English in the United States: An Autoethnography and Multiple Case Study of Multilingual Writers at the College Level , Razan Alansari

“If you wanted me to speak your language then you should have stayed in your country”: a critical ethnography of linguistic identity and resiliency in the life of an Afghan refugee , Logan M. Amstadter

Comparing literate and oral cultures with a view to improving understanding of students from oral traditions: an autoethnographic approach , Carol Lee Anderson

Practical recommendations for composition instructors based on a review of the literature surrounding ESL and identity , Patrick Cornwall

One size does not fit all: exploring online-language-learning challenges and benefits for advanced English Language Learners , Renee Kenney

Understanding the potential effects of trauma on refugees’ language learning processes , Charis E. Ketcham

Let's enjoy teaching life: an autoethnography of a novice ESL teacher's two years of teaching English in a private girls' secondary school in Japan , Danielle Nozaka

Developing an ESP curriculum on tourism and agribusiness for a rural school in Nicaragua: a retrospective diary , Stan Pichinevskiy

A Literacy Narrative of a Female Saudi English Teacher and A Qualitative Case Study: 12 Multilingual Writers Identify Challenges and Benefits of Daily Writing in a College Composition Class , Ghassoon Rezzig

Proposed: Technical Communicators Collaborating with Educators to Develop a Better EFL Curriculum for Ecuadorian Universities , Daniel Jack Williamson

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

BELL HOOKS’ “ENACTMENT OF NON-DOMINATION” IN THE “PRACTICE OF SPEAKING IN A LOVING AND CARING MANNER”: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHY OF A SAUDI “WIDOW’S SON” , Braik Aldoshan

WHEN SPIRITUALITY AND PEDAGOGY COLLIDE: ACKNOWLEDGING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND VALUES IN THE ESL CLASSROOM , Carli T. Cumpston

HERITAGE LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE: A MEXICAN AMERICAN MOTHER’S SUCCESS WITH RAISING BILINGUAL CHILDREN , Maria E. Estrada-Loehne

TEACHING THE BIOGRAPHY OF PEARL S. BUCK: DEVELOPING COLLABORATIVE READING STRATEGIES FOR MULTILINGUAL WRITERS , Nichole S. La Torre

An Autoethnography of a Novice ESL Teacher: Plato’s Cave and English Language Teaching in Japan , Kevin Lemberger

INQUIRY-BASED PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUE FOR ESL COLLEGE COMPOSITION AND FOR CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS , Aiko Nagabuchi

A TRIPLE CASE STUDY OF TWO SAUDI AND ONE ITALIAN LANGUAGE LEARNERS' SELF-PERCEPTIONS OF TARGET LANGUAGE (TL) SPEAKING PROFICIENCY , Jena M. Robinson

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

"I am from Epifania and Tomas": an autoethnography and bi-literacy narrative of a Mexican American orchard workers' daughter , Brenda Lorena Aguilar

Technology use in young English language learners: a survey of Saudi parents studying in the United States , Hamza Aljunaidalsayed

Bilingualism of Arab children in the U.S.: a survey of parents and teachers , Omnia Alofii

College-level ELLs in two English composition courses: the transition from ESL to the mainstream , Andrew J. Copley

Increasing multimedia literacy in composition for multilingual writers: a case study of art analysis , Sony Nicole De Paula

Multilingual writers' unintentional plagiarism: action research in college composition , Jacqueline D. Gullon

Games for vocabulary enrichment: teaching multilingual writers at the college level , Jennifer Hawkins

Identifying as author: exploring the pedagogical basis for assisting diverse students to discover their identities through creatively defined literacy narratives , Amber D. Pullen

Saltine box full of dreams: one Mexican immigrant woman's journey to academic success , Adriana C. Sanchez

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Teaching the biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder: fostering a media literacy approach for multilingual writers , Kelly G. Hansen

Implementing a modified intercultural competency curriculum in an integrated English 101 classroom , Kathryn C. Hedberg

"Don't wake me, my desk is far too comfortable": an autoethnography of a novice ESL teacher's first year of teaching in Japan , Delaney Holland

ESL ABE, VESL, and bell hooks' Democratic education: a case study of four experienced ESL instructors , Michael E. Johnson

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Using Media to Teach Grammar in Context and UNESCO Values: A Case Study of Two English Teachers and Students from Saudi Arabia , Sultan Albalawi

A Double Case Study of Latino College Presidents: What Younger Generations Can Learn From Them , Sara Aymerich Leiva

WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK IN THE L2 WRITING CLASSROOM , Daniel Ducken

Academic Reading and Writing at the College Level: Action Research in a Classroom of a homogeneous Group of Male Students from Saudi Arabia , Margaret Mount

Reflections on Teaching and Host Mothering Chinese Secondary Students: A Novice ESL Teacher’s Diary Study and Autoethnography , Diane Thames

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Peer editing in composition for multilingual writers at the college level , Benjamin J. Bertrand

Educating Ana: a retrospective diary study of pre-literate refugee students , Renee Black

Social pressure to speak English and the effect of English language learning for ESL composition students in higher education , Trevor Duston

Poetry in translation to teach ESL composition at the college level , Peter M. Lacey

Using media to teach a biography of Lincoln and Douglass: a case study of teaching ESL listening & viewing in college composition , Pui Hong Leung

Learning how to learn: teaching preliterate and nonliterate learners of English , Jennifer L. Semb

Non-cognitive factors in second language acquisition and language variety: a single case study of a Saudi male English for academic purposes student in the United States , Nicholas Stephens

Teaching English in the Philippines: a diary study of a novice ESL teacher , Jeffrey Lee Svoboda

ARABIC RHETORIC: MAIN IDEA, DEVELOPMENT, PARALLELISM, AND WORD REPETITION , Melissa Van De Wege

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

Video games and interactive technology in the ESL classroom , Melody Anderson

English as a second language learners and spelling performance in university multilingual writers , Nada Yousef Asiri

The communal diary, "... " (Naljeogi), transformative education, and writing through migrations: a Korean novice ESL teacher's diary and autoethnography , S. (Sangho) Lee

The benefits of intercultural interactions: a position paper on the effects of study abroad and intercultural competence on pre-service and active teachers of ESL , Bergen Lorraine McCurdy

The development and analysis of the Global Citizen Award as a component of Asia University America Program at Eastern Washington University , Matthew Ged Miner

The benefits of art analysis in English 101: multilingual and American writers respond to artwork of their choice , Jennifer M. Ochs

A novice ESL teacher's experience of language learning in France: an autoethnographic study of anomie and the "Vulnerable Self" , Christopher Ryan

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Colleges, Departments, and Programs
• Disciplines

Author Corner

• EWU Libraries
• Contact EWU Libraries

509.359.7888 | Email

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Contact | Accessibility | EWU Libraries | EWU Home

Privacy Copyright

Home > ACADEMIC-UNITS > College of Arts and Sciences > Department of English Language and Literature > ENGLISH_ETD

MA in English Theses

Theses/dissertations from 2018 2018.

Implementing Critical Analysis in the Classroom to Negate Southern Stereotypes in Multi-Media , Julie Broyhill

Fan Fiction in the English Language Arts Classroom , Kristen Finucan

Transferring the Mantle: The Voice of the Poet Prophet in the Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson , Heidi Brown Hyde

The Effects of Social Media as Low-Stakes Writing Tasks , Roxanne Loving

Student and Teacher Perceptions of Multiliterate Assignments Utilizing 21st Century Skills , Jessica Kennedy Miller

The Storytellers’ Trauma: A Place to Call Home in Caribbean Literature , Ilari Pass

Post Title IX Representations of Professional Female Athletes , Emily Shaw

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

“Not as She is” but as She is Expected to Be: Representations, Limitations, and Implications of the “Woman” and Womanhood in Selected Victorian Literature and Contemporary Chick Lit. , Amanda Ellen Bridgers

The Intrinsic Factors that Influence Successful College Writing , Kenneth Dean Carlstrom

"Where nature was most plain and pure": The Sacred Locus Amoenus and its Profane Threat in Andrew Marvell's Pastoral Poetry , James Brent King

Colorblind: How Cable News and the “Cult of Objectivity” Normalized Racism in Donald Trump’s Presidential Campaign , Amanda Leeann Shoaf

Gaming The Comic Book: Turning The Page on How Comics and Videogames Intersect as Interactive, Digital Experiences , Joseph Austin Thurmond

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

The Nature, Function, and Value of Emojis as Contemporary Tools of Digital Interpersonal Communication , Nicole L. Bliss-Carroll

Exile and Identity: Chaim Potok's Contribution to Jewish-American Literature , Sarah Anne Hamner

A Woman's Voice and Identity: Narrative Métissage as a Solution to Voicelessness in American Literature , Kali Lauren Oldacre

Pop, Hip Hop, and Empire, Study of a New Pedagogical Approach in a Developmental Reading and English Class , Karen Denise Taylor

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Abandoning the Shadows and Seizing the Stage: A Perspective on a Feminine Discourse of Resistance Theatre as Informed by the Work of Susanna Centlivre, Eliza Haywood, Frances Sheridan, Hannah Cowley, and the Sistren Theatre Collective , Brianna A. Bleymaier

Mexican Immigrants as "Other": An Interdisciplinary Analysis of U.S. Immigration Legislation and Political Cartoons , Olivia Teague Morgan

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

"I Am a Living Enigma - And You Want To Know the Right Reading of Me": Gender Anxiety in Wilkie Collins's The Haunted Hotel and The Guilty River , Hannah Allford

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Gender Performance and the Reclamation of Masculinity in Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns , John William Salyers Jr.

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

"That's a Lotta Faith We're Putting in a Word": Language, Religion, and Heteroglossia as Oppression and Resistance in Comtemporary British Dystopian Fiction , Haley Cassandra Gambrell

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

Mirroring the Madness: Caribbean Female Development in the Works of Elizabeth Nunez , Lauren Delli Santi

"Atlas Shrugged" and third-wave feminism: An unlikely alliance , Paul McMahan

"Sit back down where you belong, in the corner of my bar with your high heels on": The use of cross-dressing in order to achieve female agency in Shakespeare's transvestite comedies , Heather Lynn Wright

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Between the Way to the Cross and Emmaus: Deconstructing Identity in the 325 CE Council of Nicaea and "The Shack" , Trevar Simmons

• Collections
• Disciplines

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS

Author Corner

• Copyright and Publishing Info
• Department of English homepage
• Dover Library

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

BA in English

English majors are expected to work with their advisors to design a coherent but wide-ranging course of study. We encourage all students majoring in English to explore the full historical range of offerings; to investigate the spectrum of textual differences to be found in the study of Anglophone literatures, film, and oral traditions; and to include exposure to contemporary theoretical approaches in English studies, such as critical race theory, gender studies, environmental humanities, historical materialism, and cultural studies. With the help of their advisors, English majors should seek to create programs of study that expand their knowledge and challenge their preconceptions.  Students should take survey courses early in their academic career in order to establish the necessary foundation for more advanced classes.

Program Requirements and Policies

• Students must receive a grade of C- or higher in any course that they wish to count towards the fulfillment of English major requirements
• Only courses offered by the English Department or cross-listed with an English Department registration number can count for the English major. ExCollege courses may not be counted towards the major
• No more than four transfer courses may be applied towards the major. These must be taken in an English department.
• The English  Major Concentration Check Sheet  must be submitted with the degree sheet.

Course Requirements

Students majoring in English must take at least ten courses (above English 1, 2, 3, and 4) listed or cross-listed in the Department, according to the following guidelines:

• Students must take one survey course.
• Students must take two non-survey courses in American, British, or other Anglophone literature written before 1860, including at least one course in British literature. No more than one course used to fulfill this part of the requirement may be on Shakespeare.
• Students must also take two non-survey courses in American, British, or Anglophone literature written after 1860.
• Five remaining courses of the student's choice from the department's listings. One semester of a Senior Honors Thesis may count as one of these courses, with the other semester counting as an eleventh course for the major.

Please note the following guidelines when applying creative writing courses towards the major:

• Creative Writing courses are defined as courses numbered English 0005-0017. Fulfillment of the College Writing Requirement is a prerequisite for ENG 0005-0017.
• English majors may count up to five creative writing courses (defined as courses numbered English 0005-0017) towards the major’s required ten courses.
• A maximum of two creative writing courses at the introductory level in each of the areas offered (fiction, poetry, and journalism) may be applied to the major.
• "Writing Fiction: Intermediate" may be applied a maximum of two times.
• "Nonfiction Writing," "Intermediate Journalism," and "New Forms of Screen Narrative" may each count only once.
• "Writing Fiction: Advanced" may be applied a maximum of three times.
• There is no limit on the number of times "Writing Poetry: Advanced" may be applied, though pre-requisites should be taken into account.
• Any creative writing course (except for "Nonfiction Writing," "Intermediate Journalism," and "New Forms of Screen Narrative") may be repeated for credit and applied towards the major within the above parameters.

Senior Honors Thesis

English majors may apply to write an honors thesis in their senior year. An honors thesis, as opposed to an independent study, is a two-semester project involving an advanced level of work in an area that students have already studied as part of their major.

Learn about the English Senior Honors Thesis

Secondary Menu

• Thesis & Distinction

Students who demonstrate excellence in their major area of study may qualify for admission to the department’s or programs honors program. By successfully completing a senior honors thesis/project, the candidate will graduate with distinction in the major. Each academic department and program offering a major, as well as Program II, has established procedures and standards for determining Graduation with Distinction. 

The English department offers its majors two options for earning distinction:

• Critical Thesis option
• Creative Writing option
• Spring-to-Fall theses are due by  December 1.
• Fall-to-Spring theses are due by  March 30.

Either two Independent Studies or a "home seminar" and one Independent Study. (Fall/Spring or Spring/Fall.) Under most circumstances, a completed length of 35-70 pages. Home seminars entail enrolling in a course taught by your thesis adviser closely associated with your topic. You should first get your instructor's permission, and arrange to do extra reading and writing assignments for the class that translate the course work into the terms of your thesis. The home seminar option is only available the first semester you are working on your distinction project.

Distinction courses count toward the major. Students must complete 11 total courses to graduate with distinction in the major instead of the standard 10.

Independent Study Numbers for Thesis:

• Creative Writing Option : ENGLISH 495 and 496 Distinction Creative Writing Independent Study
• Critical Option : ENGLISH 497 and 498 Distinction Critical Research Independent Study

Application

Eligible students must have completed (no later than the beginning of their senior year) at least five 200-level English courses (old 100 level) and must have a GPA of at least 3.5 in English courses.

Eligible students must submit:

• Critical and creative writing thesis application
• one writing sample of approximately 10 pages from an English course
• one letter of recommendation from an English faculty member
• a project description 
• basic bibliography (critical applications only; one page single-spaced)

Applications must be submitted to the Director of Undergraduate Studies Offices (303AA). Applications are due November 15 for a spring-to-fall option and March 15  for a fall-to-spring option.

Evaluation Procedure

Upon approval by the instructor, the completed thesis is submitted to the Director of Undergraduate Studies Office (303AA) by December 1 (for a spring-to-fall honors project) or March 30 (for a fall-to-spring honors project) of the senior year for evaluation by a member of the DUS committee, the thesis adviser, and one other faculty member.  

Please submit an electronic .pdf of your completed thesis via email to  [email protected] .

See samples for help formatting and binding your thesis before submission: ​

Levels of Distinction

Three levels: Distinction, High Distinction, or Highest Distinction. Levels of distinction are based on the quality of the completed work. Students who have done satisfactory work in the seminar or independent study but whose theses are denied distinction will simply receive graded credit for their seminars and/or independent studies. Whereas the standard major in English asks for a total of ten courses, students pursuing honors in English will take nine courses plus either two independent studies or a home seminar to be followed by an independent study.

Class of 2023

• “Ellegua,” Nicholas Bryce Bayer
• "Bastards & Butterflies: Theorizing the Hip-Hop epic During the Woke Era,” Kyle Brandon Denis 
• "I Sailed On/Our Ocean,” Dylan Charles Haston
• “Jaywalking,” Mina Jang
• "Ceramics After Sundown: My Family’s Jewish Diaspora Grief and Resilience,” Lily Eliana Levin
• "Undoing Disneyland: Using the Judaic Cynical Hope Storytelling to Reconnect to Tradition,” Alison Rachel Rothberg
• "A Quiet Between Bombardments,” Rebecca Paige Schneid
• "Writing to Heal: The Expulsion of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Literature,” Katelyn Amy Tsai
• "The Great Blue American Novel: A Story of the Crossroads,” Akshaj Raghu Turebylu
• "Reimagining Reality: The Intersection of Black Science Fiction, Structural Violence, and Trauma on the Body and Environment,” Aiyana Villanueva

Class of 2022

• "bright force: poems,” Margot Armbruster
• “The Psychologization of Reading the Nineteenth-Century British Novel,” Sullivan Brem
• "Weaving Together Women’s Narratives, Composing a Room of My Own,” Margaret Gaw
• "Reforming Retribution: Class Systems, Capital Punishment, and Criminal Justice in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist,” Kari Larsen
• “Tracking Simulacra: Baudrillard, Morrison, Mehretu"
• “Paradise Retold: Changing Cosmologies of the Western Frontier,” Taylor Plett

Class of 2021

• "The Sky is Surely Open," James Benjamin
• "The Way Back Up: Narratives of Downfall and Restoration in Fiction of the American South," Genevieve Beske
• "Bridge and Other Stories," Anthony Cardellini
• "How Does Sciences Communication Vary Among Genres?:  Science Through the Pens of Journalists, Creative Writers, and Researchers," Lydia Goff
• "Stuck on the Spectrum:  A Queer Analysis of Male Heterosexuality in Mid-Twentieth Century American Literature," Clifford Haley
• "Noumenal Word," Joseph Haston
• "The Secret War/A New Life," Jared Junkin
• "Postcolonial Environmental Justice and the Novels of Kiran Desai," Anna Kasradze
• "Tianya Haijiao," Julie Peng
• "I Know the End," Charlotte Sununu
• "The Convergence of Nature and Culture:  Illegitimacy in Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda," Charlotte Tellefsen

Class of 2020

• "Witnessing in African and Diaspora Narratives of Illness," Dorothy Oye Adu-Amankwah
• "Protein Binds: Decoding Factory-Farmed Meat in the American South," Arujun Arora
• "Need is Not Quite Belief:" Spritural Yearning in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton," Bailey Bogle
• "Patriarchl Physicians and Dismembered Dames: Edgar Allan Poe and Nineteeth-Century Representation of Gender," Dahlia Chacon
• "Long Way Home," Alice Dai
• "Denizens of Summer," James Flynn
• "I Would Rather Be a Man Than a God': Myth and Modern Humanity in the Einstein Intersection and American Gods," Grace Francese
• "Embodied History: An Analysis of Trauma Inflicted on Female Bodies in the Fiction of Isabelle Allende and Herta Muller," Savita Gupta
• "Bullets in the Dining Room Table': Reckoning with the South and Its Burdens in Faulkner, O'Connor, and Morrison," Megison Hancock
• "Still Life with Fruit," Rachel Hsu
• "Narrative as Search:  Computational Forms of Knowledge in the Novels of Tom McCarthy," Joel Mire
• "The Roadkill Club," Valerie Muensterman
• Conceits of Imagined Silence: Reconciling Recognition and Acknowledgment in Fiction" Brennen Neeley
• "The Eye of Arctos," Emily Otero
• "Welcome to WackoWorld," Kristen Siegel
• "As a Pidgin: A Brief Memoir on Surviving Between Worlds" Ailing Zhou

Class of 2019

• "The Art of Corporate Takeover," Glenn Huang
• "Language Matters: Exploring Language Politics in Native Speaker and Dictee," Hyun Ji Jin
• "Where's My Family," Hannah Kelly
• "If the Sutures Hold," Nadia Kimani
• The Machinations of Sensation: Stimulus, Response and the Irresistible Heroines of the Nineteenth-Century Novel," Christine Kuesel
• "Paradise in America?" Utopia and Ideology in the Godfather," Madison V. Laton
• "The Treatment Plan," Sarah Perrin
• "Historical Visions: Reinventing Historical Narrative Through Word and Image," Alexander Sim
• "Grandmotherhood: A Memoir," Nichole Trofatter Keegan
• "Lines of Crisis: William Carlos Williams, Robert Creeley and Denise Levertov," Aaron Christopher Van Steinberg 
• "Global Hybridities: Rethinking the "Woman Warrior" and the Third Space of Culture," Zhongyu Wang

Class of 2018

• "Syllabic Heirlooms" Chloe Hooks
• "In waves, tilted" Manda Hufstedler
• "Seattle: A Summer Memoir" Emily Waples
• "Litany (based on Crush, a collection of poems by Richard Siken)" Maria Carrasco
• "The Work of Being Worked (For): Intimacy, Knowledge, and Emotional Labor in the Works of Henry James" Lauren Bunce
• "Something on the Cusp of Hope: The Convent as imaginative Practice" Carolina Fernelius
• "Full of Grace and Grandeur: Theological Mystery in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins" Luke Duchemin
• "Repositioning Home: Performing and Reconstructing Identity in the Migration Narrative"  Catherine Ward
• "Within a Jail, My Mind is Still Free': The Language of Resistance from Plantation to Prison in the Works of Frederick Douglass, George Jackson, and Yasin Bey" Jackson Skeen
• "Arrowsmith as Medical and Scientific Microcosm: The Implications of Shifting Belief Systems During the Scientization of Medicine" Emery Jenson

Class of 2017

• "Full and by the Wind" Louis Garza
• "The Resurrectionist" Ryan Eichenwald
• "Delusions of Controls: The V-2 in Gravity's Rainbow" Sean McCroskey
• "Surface and Symbol: Epigram and Genre in the Works of Oscar Wilde" Sarah Atkinson
• "Woman, Nature, and Observer in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and To the Lighthouses: An Ecofeminist Approach" Elizabeth George
• "Creative Impulse in the Modern Age: The Embodiment of Anxiety in the Early Poetry of T.S. Eliot (1910-1917)" Anna Mukamal
• "Inventions of the Human: Othering Caliban and the Ethic of Recognition" Issac Rubin
• "F. Scott Fitzgerald's Women: Independence, Class, and the Superior Male" Margaret Booz

Class of 2016

• "Upon the Face of the Deep: The Voyage of the Sparkling Wave" Gwen Hawkes
• "Lelén: A Memoir for My Mother" Megan Pearson
• "The Car Wreck Album" Josephine Ramseyer
• "Bury Me at the Body Farm" Gabriel Sneed
• "Push, momentum" Isabella Kwai
• "A Cicada's Sorrow" Madeline Pron
• "He Filled the Darkness with Fantasies" Dimeji Abidoye
• "The Anamorphic ‘Figure in the Carpet’: James, Kafka, Morrison and Mitchell " Jacqueline Chipkin
• "Politics and Poetics of the Novel: Using Domesticity to Create the Nation" Katherine Coric
• "Modern Poetry: A Single Genre" JP Lucaci

Class of 2015

• "How to Run Away Without Moving" Mary Hoch 
• "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Dangers of Metaphorizing Ebola as War in the United States" Roshini Jain
• "Dear Master: A Screenplay" Jamie Kessler
• "A Hawk from a Handsaw:  "How Historical Perceptions of Madness Dictated Portrayals of Insanity in British Literature, 1300-1900" Danielle Muoio
• "Every Dram of Woman’s Flesh: "Paulina’s Role and Remedy in The Winter’s Tale" Bailey Sincox
• "The Violence of Alienation in Morrison and Faulkner: A Study in Family, Religion, and Class" Meredith Stabe

Class of 2014

• “Breaking and Entering” Audrey Adu-Appiah 
• “Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, and the Birth of Modernism” Christopher Broderick Honorable Mention:  Bascom Palmer Literary Prize
• “Forms of Femininity: A Modernist Approach to Female Psychology” Grace Chandler
• “This is the Hour of Lead: Emily Dickinson in 1862" Shibani Das
• “Presidential Persuasiveness in Justifying Use of Force In the Post 9/11-Era” Maureen Dolan
• “A Harvard Man” Amanda Egan
• “A Light in the Stairwell” Sarah Elsakr
• “Women in Medicine: What Medical Narratives Reveal About Patriarchy in the Medical System” Jennifer Hong 
• “In Your Own Bosom You Bear Your Heaven and Earth Interiority and Imagination in William Blake’s Jerusalem: The Emanation of Giant Albion” Emmie Le Marchand
• “A Shakespearean Ecology: Interconnected Nature In A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale” Paige Meier
• “It is I you Hold and Who Holds You: The Persuasive Grip of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in the Age of Slam Poetry” Haley Millner
• “Bright Grey:  an Unfinished Novel” Lindsey Osteen
• “Once Upon Our Time: Five Fairy Tale Retellings” Nicholas William Prey
• “Crumbling” Emily Schon
• “Fashion Cues: Visual Politics of Liminality in Quicksand and Quartet” Allison Shen
• “The Search for Transcendence: W.B. Yeats and His Dance Plays” Caitlin Tutterow
• “Soul Power: The Psychology and Politics of Asian American Melancholia” Katherine Zhang

Independent Study Courses

• ENGLISH 491 Independent Study - Independent projects in creative writing, under the supervision of a faculty member. Open to juniors and seniors. Consent of both the instructor and the director of undergraduate studies required.
• ENGLISH 493 Research Independent Study - Individual research in a field of special interest under the supervision of a faculty member, the central goal of which is a substantive paper or written report containing significant analysis and interpretation of a previously approved topic. Open to juniors and seniors. Consent of both the instructor and the director of undergraduate studies required.

You must apply for approval to register for independent study. The procedure, approval process and application form are posted on the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences website.

Completed applications must be submitted to the Director of Undergraduate Studies by one week prior to drop/add. Please bring to 303AA Allen. The Undergraduate Assistant will give a permission number to students whose applications have been approved by both the professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

Departmental Guidelines

The Faculty of the English Department have agreed on these desiderata: tutorial and independent study must not duplicate available course offerings the subject of study must be in the instructor's general field of professional competence the amount of work required must be approximately equivalent to that required in a regular course the student must have had 200-level course work in the general field of the proposal or otherwise have made acceptable preparation to study independently in that area. 

To maintain a high quality of independent study, the faculty member directing the study must have sufficient time to give the course careful attention. The Department has therefore decided that no faculty member shall direct more than three independent study courses in any semester. No student with an incomplete (I) in a course in independent study will be permitted to enroll in a second course. The application (one page only) must include the following information:

Name; year; mailing address, email, student ID (non English majors), and phone number; Semester of study, English courses taken and in progress (with the instructor's name) and any other courses that bear upon the proposed study; title of the independent study, including an abbreviated title of twenty five spaces (including blanks) that will appear on registration records; description of the proposed study including a tentative plan of reading and procedure; the signature of the supervising professor.

Creative Impulse in the Modern Age: The Embodiment of Anxiety in the Early Poetry of T. S. Eliot (1910-1917) – Anna Mukamal (2017)

My principal concern in this work is to investigate whether, and if so, how anxiety may be worthwhile or particularly constructive for poetic production in the modern context. I have approached this question from a variety of epistemological perspectives, including but not limited to 19 th and 20 th century philosophical theories of anxiety, formalist readings of poetry and fiction from the late Victorian and early modernist periods, and contemporary scholarship engaging with principal figures representing the “inward turn” of modernist literature. At stake is the salient and complex concept of the mental and physical state most conducive to the production of timeless art.

Evoking the fundamental tension between individual desire, predilection, and emotion and universal truth, my work “worries” over what Eliot intends to accomplish by writing worried poetry. I have chosen to focus on the verse written and published between 1910 and 1917 in part because it coincides with Eliot’s most direct engagement with the tormented, self-plagued persona whose persistent self-questioning leads to no future remedial action. In this sense, Eliot’s early verse objectifies—by its very rhetorical embodiment—a crippling array of symptoms of the physical, moral, and spiritual devolution that he observes in European society and in which he takes an ambivalent part.

Limiting my textual analysis to this early period is also a way of treading humbly in the domain of ultimate questions and taking Eliot’s own advice, since “it is easier for a young poet to understand and to profit by the work of another young poet, when it is good, than from the work of a mature poet” (MTP 217). While varying in self-proclaimed literary quality and critical reception, the poems with which I engage consistently probe the question of whether the modern person—facing rapid and seemingly irrevocable political polarization, a materially-oriented consumerist culture, and an increasing distrust of God, among other prevalent and distressing modern developments—must necessarily be sick, miserable, anxious, intellectually stunted, and spiritually vide .

Remarkably, in the first phase of his poetic enterprise Eliot creates personae embodying and refracting the ambient anxieties of an era simultaneously increasing in empirical knowledge and declining in certitude. To provide the historical context of these issues, the first chapter, “Global and Individual Anxiety pre- Waste Land ,” traces 19 th century philosophical inquiry with which Eliot would have been familiar and by which he was likely influenced. Kierkegaard’s concept of global anxiety and Nietzsche’s “man of resentment” constitute two central theories of the modern person’s intellectual and physical predicament. The transition between a faith-based and empirical proof-based society in part explains the pervasive global anxiety, as does the broader spiritual uncertainty engendered by a fomenting distrust of truths subjective, and hence necessarily objectively unverifiable. I argue that the state of mind in which Eliot writes The Waste Land in 1922 cannot be fully understood without tracing the spiritual and moral concerns pervasive in the poet’s early poetic enterprise. Is pain a prerequisite for the modernist artist’s creative impetus?

The first and second chapters demonstrate through close textual analysis that Eliot’s early verse is both generative and remedial of anxiety. The second chapter, “The Rhetorical Embodiment of Anxiety,” further explores the connection between pain and artistic production by analyzing the presence of skepticism, inaction, solipsism, and despair in Eliot’s self-lacerating and overly conscious personae. In poems such as “The Burnt Dancer” and the well-known “Portrait of a Lady,” I analyze the rhetorical means by which Eliot conveys disembodied agency, stunted volition, and seemingly irredeemable self-possession. His evocation of repetitive thought processes—mirroring self-paralysis as actions are dissociated from agents—coincides with his search for an overarching morality to transcend the banal propriety of his sociocultural milieu. Eliot writes, in other words, to discover an authentic communicative mode even while acutely aware of the inherent ineffability of subjective truth and the linguistic limitations of an arbitrary, imperfect system of language. Eliot’s self-locating within the modern petit-bourgeois cultural sensibility renders even more convincing his poetic evocation of the Faustian myth of human love and high artistry. The resonance between his ultimate questions and those of both Nietzsche and Mann indicates that aggression may be a necessary effect of persistent inner doubt and self- loathing. This helps to explain why the age’s pervasive sexual anxiety may correspond with a general decadence of communicability in the context of a transactional consumerist culture in which actions are increasingly devoid of deeper meaning.

Chapter 3, “The Anxiety of Artistic Production,” poses the question of how the modernist artist may presume , to employ an idiom germane to Eliot, to produce art in the modern world. Is it even possible in such a chaotic environment to create ordered art, and must art necessarily denote order or must it instead evolve to fulfill another function more compatible with modern sensibilities? Preceding Chapter 4’s delineation of the physical and psychological health effects once the artist has committed himself to the actual generative process, this chapter traces anxieties with a dilatory function before the art’s conception, relying in part on Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence . Public reception of the work, the elusiveness of finding a cohesive voice, and the near-impossibility of justifying a poetic enterprise as meaningful in the face of national instability and even tragedy: these are just a few of the anxieties plaguing the modernist artist, perhaps preventing him from even attempting to reflect the neuroses of his time. Even if the artist determines that there is something new to be said , he must overcome the metaphysical reality of death—which, for Eliot, represents the ultimate inability to connect with others— believing that timeless art lends meaning to the vast expanse of time beyond his own death.

The fourth chapter extends fluidly into the relationship between sickness and poetic productivity, interrogating the physical and psychological health effects once the poet has sacrificed himself to active artistic production. Does attained artistic sublimity necessarily presuppose perverse health? In this chapter I examine Eliot’s concept of the sacrifice of the self to art, offering a reading of Mann’s Death in Venice (1912), concomitant with Eliot’s early verse, to demonstrate that the artist’s ambivalently divided self—between a bourgeois and bohemian sensibility—manifests at the level of aesthetic form. Both Eliot and Mann create personae representing the “delicate heroism suited to the times” and thus epitomizing the man of the era, for better or for worse (DV 46). I have chosen to incorporate early Mann because both writers subtly lament the modern age’s lost telos of beauty, evoking the tension between the finite body and the (perhaps) immortal mind through a tangible anxiety about mortality and a notable coupling of spiritual sublimation and physical deterioration. I argue that the artists’ depiction of sickness is a commentary on the moral, physical, and psychological downturn of Europe at the turn of the 20 th century. The feckless and sick Herr Spinell of Mann’s “Tristan” and Emma Bovary of Flaubert’s classic novel epitomize, in turn, the potential for a tragically scripted consciousness to devolve into aggression and violence as well as the loss of action and spiritual, rather than material comfort, as meaningful categories of existence.

The final chapter, “Anxiety and the Bourgeois Sensibility,” investigates the purpose or objective of interrogating anxiety through poetry, determining the “work,” in a non-material but rather intellectual and spiritual sense, that Eliot’s early verse accomplishes for his age. What is at stake in Eliot’s poetic unveiling of the volatile psychological state hidden by the placid surface of bourgeois propriety, and how may he address its unsavory effects from within that very culture? Probing the ambivalence of the bourgeois sociocultural marker, I argue that Eliot’s early verse reveals the inauthenticity of scripted communicative modes. Preventing modern people from engaging with eternal truths, moral conformism supplants independence of thought—while material success in a consumerist culture obscures the normative good—and these developments are not only detrimental for social discourse, but also for literature. The modernist artist more broadly, and Eliot in particular, aims to combat the general societal ignorance of the insidious social tyranny that engenders a widespread dissolution of the causative link between feelings and agency. Communication in the modern world, Eliot’s early verse contests, is a parody of authentic interpersonal communion. Yet ever-present in the poetry are glimpses of hope resisting the tempting idea that subjectivity of experience implies the fundamental incommunicability of human souls.

As a developing artist, Eliot relies on the poetic medium to probe the essential question— later adumbrated in Heidegger’s 1927 Being and Time— of whether boredom and anxiety are more authentic affective ways of being in the world than happiness. As a whole, my work continues and honors this question’s seeming insolubility. I hope to show that anxiety—Eliot’s individual anxiety, the ambient anxiety of his era, the accrual of global anxiety over time— constitutes an underexplored and undeniable creative impetus for Eliot and his contemporaries.

Not in the clinical sense, but rather as a quotidian force with which the thoughtful individual necessarily grapples, modern anxiety is paradoxically both inhibitive and generative. This work, in addition to demonstrating the young Eliot’s engagement with profound existential questions of meaning, affirms that anxiety is a valuable framework for analyzing the conditions of timeless artistic production in the modern world.

The Anamorphic “Figure in the Carpet”: James, Kafka, Morrison and Mitchell – Jackie Chipkin (2016)

How does fiction challenge readers to expand their definitions of human life? For my honors thesis, I want to investigate forms of fiction that approach this question from an eccentric angle. At first, these texts’ unconventional vantage points seem to defy what the reader considers “realism,” aligning his or her view with what Giorgio Agamben says of the contemporary author: those who truly “belong to their time” neither “coincide with it nor adjust themselves to its demands” (Agamben 40). Just so, rather than ignore the reality of their moment, the novels I consider in this thesis question the conventional way of looking at it. The characters whose experiences will shape my study are neither confined to the human body nor limited to its natural abilities and traditional habits of mind; they elude normative notions of form and cognitive faculty. At the same time, the reader cannot dismiss the palpable plasticity of these characters as primitive or fantastic. Alongside their parents, siblings and lovers, these characters inhabit familiar worlds shaped by the same everyday practices and socio-economic force fields that shape the human figure under realism. They exist in relation to, rather than outside of, the world as it is depicted in novels more squarely in the tradition of European realism. These characters push the envelope of realism farther than any traditional work of realism from a position within it.

My love of reading and analysis has been motivated by a desire to understand the world around me. Since childhood, I have been drawn to works that push me to examine and reimagine my environment. The characters I meet are my guides and the fulcrum of my literary experience. My world and a protagonist’s world are components of a reality I imaginatively share with that character and other readers. These characters’ thoughts, emotions, conversations, relationships and actions embody the ebb and flow of human experience across time and space. Through them I inhabit alternative worlds and, in turn, better understand my own.

As I immersed myself in the novels of Hemingway, Melville, Dickens, Austen, James, Woolf and others, I discovered how different novels produced the cultural boundaries within which readers have to live in order to imaginatively inhabit the worlds of fictional characters. Working to reconstruct the essential differences that distinguish culture from nature, I came to understand how the novel contributed to the concept of the modern individual. Once the novel had created this figure, readers understood themselves in terms of a narrative that produced a self-governing subject (Armstrong 25). For me, the novel became the paramount literary form through which I could explore fiction’s varying, shifting definitions of human life. I first encountered and was drawn into this project in a survey course of gothic fiction. From Shelley’s Frankenstein to Wilde’s Dorian Gray , gothic works drove me to question the parameters that define human life and reality.

Similarly, as an aspiring physician, I strive to make sense of my environment through the stories of those who occupy perspectives different than my own. As an avid reader and writer, I have chosen to approach medicine through narratives of illness. From Bolivia to North Carolina, from pediatric hospitals to hospice centers, I have asked the patients I have met to share their medical experiences with me. As they have entrusted me with their memories and emotions, I have strived to honor their stories with my words. Just as a character’s world is not my world, I must recognize that a patient’s experience is not my experience. As a doctor interacting with patients—like a reader interacting with characters—I must understand the “literary” rules governing the patient’s world in order to understand how the patient feels and what his or her “normal” condition is. These narratives drive me to pursue a career in medicine—to partner with patients to write stories shaped by their notions of health and recovery.

Though in strikingly different ways, all of the eccentric novels I will analyze in my thesis make the same formal variation on traditional realism; namely, they bind together two absolutely incompatible views of the same literary world. These works challenge readers to confront incompatible perspectives—that expected of the normative reality and reader and that of the eccentric character—simultaneously. These novels consequently make us see the same world as two worlds that cannot be synthesized. Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw , presenting two incompatible perspectives, models this phenomenon. From one perspective, the novella is a traditional British ghost tale, a chilling account of an unnamed governess’ fantastic delusions and psychotic demise. But from another—that of the governess—the story is factual recount of a lived experience that defies scientific explanation. James begins to layer these perspectives within the novella’s first pages. The Turn of the Screw is a story thrice told: first from the governess to Douglas, then from Douglas to the narrator, and finally from the narrator to the reader. The narrator describes these types of stories as a form of entertainment, intending to “hold” an audience and render listeners “breathless” (James 1).

James warns us that storytellers do not necessarily adhere to fact, but rather strive to elicit emotional reactions. The governess’ tale, however, is a “written” document (3), a permanent record that lays claim to archival credibility. While the narrator assures readers that “this narrative” is an “exact transcript” of that evening (3), James does not clarify whether the original story—rather than merely its repetition—is the product of empirical observation or bad affect. Holding the governess’ perspective beside that of the story’s narration, James’ novella is simultaneously a ghost tale and a “manuscript” documenting the preternatural events at the country estate where she was the chief guardian of two privileged but orphaned children (3). The author’s cues do not indicate whether we are to regard this tale as true to the facts to which it testifies, true to what the governess feels, or both.

As the novella unfolds, James’ irreconcilable perspectives continue to clash. The governess asks how she will “retrace…the strange steps of [her] obsession” (80). She frequently mentions her vivid imagination and the emotions that she allows to actively control her thoughts, admitting that she is “rather easily carried away” (31). If the spirits that once inhabit Bly can still be detected there, self-doubt and mania are reasonable responses for these extenuating circumstances. Under these conditions, readers can justify why the governess tries to discredit these apparitions by invoking “obsession” and “imagination” (80). If we take the governess’s descriptions of herself as true, then the ghosts are creations of her imagination. But can we trust the words of a woman who claims that her own words are untrustworthy? James’ protagonist is not inherently an unreliable narrator; rather, she is only unreliable in that readers cannot assess whether she is reliable or not. Thus, James’ text neither supports nor refutes the governess’s judgment by indicating what is actually there to be seen; rather, he embeds her story within a landscape of normative reality so that it not only calls the governess’ view into question but calls the normative view into question as well.

Most criticism from 1921-1970 approaches James’s text psychoanalytically. Overall, these theorists argue that the ghosts and attendant horrors are figments of the governess’ neurotic imagination. The reasoning goes that because “there is never any evidence that anybody but the governess sees the ghosts” (James, Esch and Warren 172), the ghosts must be delusional, arising from factors implied but not established by her tale. A number of readers in this tradition, such as Edna Kenton, bring Freudian analysis to bear on this account, transforming it into a case history. Kenton state that the governess is “trying to harmonize her own disharmonies by creating discords outside herself” (169). The literary critic argues that the governess’ story stems from the trauma of unrequited love; the ghosts represent the governess’ repressed sexual passion for her master. Alternatively, Harold Goddard accredits the governess’s psychosis to an unwholesome childhood, as “the young woman’s home and early environment…point to its stifling narrowness” (161).

While there is no evidence that anyone besides the governess sees the ghosts, neither is there any evidence that the children she supervises do not see or communicate with the ghosts of their former governess and groundskeeper. Given the lack of evidence to show that the governess is insane, and thus the ghosts imaginary, these critics almost uniformly begin by declaring that the ghosts are imaginary in order to classify the governess as psychotic. On the assumption that the ghosts cannot be real, they lace their arguments with diagnostic diction. They label the governess a “victim of insomnia” (161). They declare that her “overwrought condition” leads to “insanity,” “hallucinations” and “mania” (163-64). These terms and the conditions they label (for example, a manic episode) are all clearly defined by bodies of medical literature. In this context, however, criticism uses these terms rhetorically; they are technical terms that, albeit persuasive, are not substantiated by the text. Because James does not provide textual evidence for the governess’ psychosis, we cannot establish her insanity; indeed, we cannot even prove that the ghosts are “exquisite dramatizations of her little personal mystery” (170). The critics succeed in normalizing one view of the world by delegitimizing another. They apply psychoanalysis to a fictional character in order to establish the authority of modern secular realism as if to insist that there can only be one reading of reality. Any reality that resists that reading is consequently reduced to the status of ignorance or pathology, if not unreliability. This interpretive imperialism refuses to acknowledge that at any point in time, the same world may be an entirely different world for a different person bearing different cultural baggage. Through the interpolation of discrete perspectives within one another, James’ novel form works to equip readers with more flexible, critical cultural tools.

In order to develop such an approach, I use the figure of anamorphosis as a way of explaining how novels such as The Turn of the Screw employ eccentric characters to revise the novel form. Anamorphosis is an image that appears distorted when viewed from a normative perspective, requiring specific viewpoints or tools to reconstitute its true form. This true form is not one of a single, stable reality. Rather, it is a composition of multiple frameworks and embedded perspectives—the artist’s interpolative machinery. Hanneke Grootenboer, art historian and author of The Rhetoric of Perspective, stresses the paradoxical etymology of anamorphosis. In classical Greek, anamorphosis literally translates as “distortion,” while in Modern Greek, ana- functions both as the English prefixes dis - , as in “distortion,” and re- , as in “reformation” (Grootenboer 101). Anamorphosis can thus be understood as “that which lacks a proper shape” and the “restoring of that which has been out of shape” (101). Its meaning refers to the actual image in addition to the process of its reshaping—that is, the viewer’s search for the right point of view.

Anamorphism began as a series of perspective experiments in the 1500s and 1600s (Castillo), and its appearance as a consciously applied technique in art history corresponds to the invention of linear perspective (Collins). As Renaissance artists began to master traditional methods of perspective, they also learned to manipulate those methods and distort the object they produced accordingly. The geometry of anamorphic images was considered revolutionary in the sense that it did not strictly conform to the Cartesian coordinate system, which localizes points in space through their relative distances from perpendicular intersecting lines (Collins). It is easy to see how the Cartesian system alone is inadequate to capture the multiple perspectives that simultaneously occupy a common reality. In anamorphic art, artists interpolate an image that is not oriented according to the normatively positioned spectator within an image that is indeed oriented according toward the ideal spectator in a Cartesian system. Undermining the orthodox principles of perspective upon which it depends, anamorphic art can be considered a counterpart of both Cartesian rationalism and doubt. By challenging the Cartesian system from within it, artists who produce anamorphic art challenge the notion of a single, normative reality. I will demonstrate that novelists as well as visual artists think in terms of the figure of anamorphosis when they embed an eccentric perspective within a normative one. These writers strive to honor multiple, legitimate perspectives that coexist at any moment within a shared reality.

Anamorphic art pushes readers to linger in the uncomfortable intersection of incompatible perspectives. Donald Preziosi, art historian, states that in anamorphic art, “relationships among units in the archive are visible (that is, legible) only from certain prefabricated stances, positions, or attitudes toward the system” (119). Anamorphic images are the product of carefully calculated angles; their forms and desired effects are rooted in the experimentation of mathematics as well as art. Typically, in drawings and paintings, viewers would be required to physically shift their positions in order to see an alternate image within the portrait or scene, usually rendered along an alternate geometrical plane. In addition to anamorphic images created on two-dimensional surfaces, artists also employ tools such as mirrors and conical surfaces to guide viewers to the desired images. Regardless of the medium, an artist’s craftsmanship and ingenuity stem from his or her ability to engineer the interpolation of conflicting perspectives.

The perceptual doubling of anamorphosis produces a rupture in the viewer’s gaze, as Hans Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors famously demonstrates. As viewers move to the right, glancing back at the portrait, they glimpse not the iconic representation of the two ambassadors they saw from the front view, but rather, a skull (Holbein). Holbein’s painting appears to look back at the viewer, to demand that the spectator actively engage the artwork’s virtual affects. Viewers must move from the center of the image to the margins in order to understand the image in front of them. The gymnastics necessary for the successful apprehension of the anamorphic image casts observers in active roles. A crucial aspect of the anamorphic experience in art, therefore, is the way in which it requires that the experience be performed by the body. Unmoored from its perceptual anchors, the body must practice a form of spectatorship beyond that of the normative perspective. Stephen Greenblatt, American scholar of Renaissance and Shakespearean studies, argues that in demanding this movement, Holbein’s portrait threatens to undermine “the very concept of locatable reality upon which we conventionally rely in our mappings of the world, to subordinate the sign systems we so confidently use to a larger doubt” (20-21). How does literature accomplish this same subordination of the sign systems on which we conventionally rely as readers of “a larger doubt” (20-21)?

Ernest Gilman first applied the concept of anamorphosis to literature. In his book on seventeenth-century English literature, Gilman proposes that displays of wit in poetry are like displays of “visual wit in what the seventeenth century called the 'curious perspective,' pictures or devices which manipulate the conventions of linear perspective to achieve ingenious effects” (248). In Shakespeare’s Richard II , Gilman interprets Bushy's witty speech of comfort to the queen (qtd. in Gilman 248), which plays on terms of perspective vision, and by analogy with Holbein's double portrait, The Ambassadors . Gilman argues that the play must be interpreted from two places, “one facing straight, the other oblique,” and states that anamorphic texts challenge “multiple conceptual and perspective registers at once” (249). Gilman finds, in conclusion, that

Two modes of explanation in the same historical event…The play neither endorses nor denies the Tudor myth but builds on its premises to show that the providential theory of the king's double nature necessarily requires a complex kind of doublethink for which the curious perspective is the visual model. (249)

Beyond Gilman’s Shakespearean criticisms, anamorphosis is rarely referenced in literary analysis.

However, as I researched this project, I became convinced that anamorphosis should be applied to literary analysis. Indeed, I discovered that principles of anamorphosis resonated with the very novels featuring eccentric perspectives that I have always found compelling. I asked myself: what form does anamorphosis assume in prose? How does literature examine two conflicting realities? Wielding words in place of paintbrushes, authors, too, interpolate one viewpoint within a normative framework with which it is incompatible. Through the voices of their characters, novels produce readings that can challenge readers to stand at the crossroads of two conflicting perspectives and consider an order of things and events that is off-center in relation to their own. Most interpretive systems attempt to produce a unity which subordinates the minority point of view, such as critics who aim to silence the governess’ perspective through diagnoses of insanity. These systems aim to render culturally variant views of the world illegitimate by classifying them as either delusional or merely fictional. Novels that have been so marginalized, for whatever reason, actually belong to a tradition that deliberately inserts eccentric viewpoints within a normative world so as to naturalize the abnormal and broaden the conceptual boundaries of realism. These works require readers to struggle with conflicting definitions of human life. To argue that anamorphosis identifies an important tradition of fiction, I will show how select novels use what we dismiss as “magic,” if not “delusion,” to challenge us to redefine boundaries of realism, our capacity for sympathetic identification and parameters of human life itself.

To test this hypothesis, I will investigate Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis , Toni Morrison’s Beloved and David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten. Kafka’s novella insists that Gregor Samsa is physiologically—not allegorically, metaphorically, or symbolically—transformed into an insect. Yet despite his revolting antennae and cravings for rotten food, Gregor maintains the cognitive and intellectual depth he possessed in typical human form. In Morrison’s novel, Beloved is neither an intangible memory nor a translucent ghost; she is a corporeal figure waiting on the steps of 124. Finally, in Mitchell’s Ghostwritten , a disembodied character called the noncorpum transmigrates from one specifically located host to another, crossing the span of humanity from a psychotic terrorist in Tokyo to a late-night DJ in New York. Gregor is typically human in cognitive faculty but not in biological form.

Beloved possesses a typical human form but an extra-human cognitive faculty. The noncorpum remaps the brain’s codification as it moves from body to body. By looking closely at these novels—which feature a broad range of character forms and cognitive abilities—in relation to one another, my purpose is to show how each novel remodels the formula of one mind to one body that defines the modern individual.

• Duke English Administration
• Learning Objectives
• Resources for Faculty
• Best Practices
• English Minor
• Creative Writing Minor
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Student Spotlight
• Global Education
• Creative Writing Contest
• 2024 Award Winners
• Critical Essay Contest
• Scholarships & Awards
• Past Winners
• Resources & Forms
• 2023-2024 English Department Ambassadors
• Undergraduate Alumni
• Collective Standards of Conduct and Values
• Timeline and Deadlines
• Statement of Expectations for Advising
• Best Practices Exams & Reading Lists
• Graduate Courses
• Graduate Placements
• Stephen Horne Award for Excellence in Teaching
• Professional Development
• Student Handbook
• Ph.D. Alumni
• Spring 2024 Courses
• Fall 2023 Courses
• Spring 2023 Courses
• Fall 2022 Courses
• 2020-21 Courses and Requirement
• Gateway Courses
• Area I: Medieval & Early Modern
• Area II: 18th & 19th Century
• Area III: Modern & Contemporary
• Criticism, Theory or Methodology Courses
• Creative Writing Courses
• Primary Faculty
• Joint Faculty
• Secondary Faculty
• Instructors and Affiliated Faculty
• Graduate Students
• David L. Paletz Creative Writing Guest Series
• Faculty Books
• Recent Work Online
• Faculty Works-in-Progress Series
• Novel Dialogue Podcast
• The Wellian Magazine
• Master of English Alumni
• J.D./M.A. Alumni
• All Alumni Profiles
• Alumni Profiles
• Assisting Duke Students

English Major

Jaredd Craig  

How did literature evolve from Chaucer to Toni Morrison, from a time before the printing press to our modern digital landscape?

Stanford’s English curriculum features a team-taught, yearlong core sequence that traces the big picture of literature’s development from the Middle Ages to the present. Each class offers a lively exploration of key literary themes, movements, and innovations. English majors also learn critical tools for analyzing literature through three broad course requirements, in poetry, narrative, and methodology. Students gain a contextual framework and are prepared to take the department’s wide range of electives.

Courses for the 2023-2024 academic year are available now! Find them here .

English Major Core Requirements

The English Department’s required core courses introduce you to a body of knowledge and fundamental skills that are essential for you to master if you are to flourish as a reader, writer, and critic. After taking a basic set of courses with your classmates, you should find yourself able to reflect in common with them on the enterprise of interpretation and expression, even as you pursue your particular interests and passions through elective course work.

ALL ENGLISH MAJORS ARE REQUIRED TO TAKE THE FOLLOWING CLASSES: 

• ENGLISH 160: Poetry and Poetics 
• ENGLISH 161: Narrative and Narrative Theory 
• One WISE class (ENG 5 Series) 
• 10 series 
• 11 series 
• 12 series 
• One pre-1800 historical literature class

JOSHUA COLEMAN

Emphases and Electives

The English major offers a number of emphases, which help you to focus your literary study in a particular area, whether you’re seeking to learn the art of creative writing, or to understand the philosophical power of literature.  Your chosen emphasis will help you to select a group of electives or cross-listed courses in other departments that give a coherent shape to your interests.

This field of study is not declared in Axess. It does not appear on either the official transcript or the diploma. This program provides for the interests of students who wish to understand the range and historical development of British, American and Anglophone literatures and a variety of critical methods by which their texts can be interpreted. The major emphasizes the study of literary forms and genres and theories of textual analysis. In addition to the degree requirements required of all majors and listed above, students must complete at least 35 additional units of courses consisting of:

• Seven additional approved elective courses, only one of which may be a creative writing course, chosen from among those offered by the Department of English. In place of one of these seven elective courses, students may choose one upper-division course in a foreign literature read in the original language.

This subplan is printed on the transcript and diploma and is elected in Axess. Students should meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies, awoloch [at] stanford.edu (Alex Woloch) , concerning the Literature and Philosophy focus. This track is for students who wish to explore interdisciplinary studies at the intersection of literature and philosophy while acquiring knowledge of the English language literary tradition as a whole. In addition to the degree requirements required of all majors and listed above, students must complete at least 40-50 additional units of approved courses including:

• PHIL 80 Mind, Matter, and Meaning (WIM): Prerequisite: introductory philosophy course.
• Gateway course: ENGLISH 81 Philosophy and Literature. This course should be taken as early as possible in the student's career, normally in the sophomore year.
• Aesthetics, Ethics, Political Philosophy: one course from PHIL 170 Ethical Theory series.
• Language, Mind, Metaphysics, and Epistemology: one course from PHIL 180 Metaphysics series.
• History of Philosophy: one course in the history of Philosophy, numbered above PHIL 100 Greek Philosophy.
• Two upper division courses of special relevance to the study of Philosophy and Literature. Both of these courses must be in the English department. A list of  approved courses  is available on the Philosophy and Literature web site.
• Two additional elective courses in the English department.
• One  capstone seminar  of relevance to the study of Philosophy and Literature.

This subplan is printed on the transcript and diploma and is elected in Axess. This track provides a focus in British and American literature with additional work in French literature; German literature; Italian literature; or Spanish literature. These subplans appear on the diploma as follows: English & French Literature, English & German Literature, English & Italian Literature, and English & Spanish Literature. In addition to the degree requirements required of all majors and listed above, students must complete at least 40 additional units of approved courses including:

• Four elective courses chosen from among those offered by the Department of English, one of which may be a creative writing course.
• A coherent program of four courses in the foreign language literature, read in the original language, approved by the Director of Undergraduate Studies in English and by the relevant foreign language department.

This subplan is printed on the transcript and diploma and is elected in Axess. This program is intended for students who wish to combine the study of one broadly defined literary topic, period, genre, theme or problem with an interdisciplinary program of courses (generally chosen from one other discipline) relevant to that inquiry. These courses should form a coherent program and must be relevant to the focus of the courses chosen by the student to meet the requirement. Each of these courses must be approved in advance by the Interdisciplinary Program Director. In addition to the degree requirements required of all majors and listed above, students must complete at least 40 additional units of approved courses including:

• Five elective literature courses chosen from among those offered by the Department of English. Students must select two of these courses in relation to their interdisciplinary focus.
• Three courses related to the area of inquiry. These courses may be chosen from disciplines such as anthropology, the arts (including the practice of one of the arts), classics, comparative literature, European or other literature, feminist studies, history, modern thought and literature, political science, and African American studies.
• In addition, students in this program must write at least one interdisciplinary paper. This may be ENGLISH 197, Senior Honors Essay; ENGLISH 199, Senior Independent Essay; ENGLISH 194 or 198, Individual Research; or a paper integrating the material in two courses the student is taking in two different disciplines.

For more information about the interdisciplinary emphasis,  please read these guidelines. 

This subplan is printed on the transcript and diploma and is elected in Axess.This program is designed for students who want a sound basic knowledge of the English literary tradition as a whole and at the same time want to develop skills in writing poetry or prose. In addition to the degree requirements required of all majors and listed above, students must complete at least 40 additional units of approved courses, in either the prose or poetry concentration:

English and Creative Writing (Prose)

• One beginning prose course: ENGLISH 90 series, Fiction Writing or ENGLISH 91 series, Creative Nonfiction
• One short story literature seminar
• One intermediate prose course: any ENGLISH 190 series or 191 series
• One beginning poetry course: ENGLISH 92 series, Reading and Writing Poetry 
• 20 units of elective literature courses (One of the courses may be fulfilled with a creative writing workshop)

English and Creative Writing (Poetry)

• One beginning poetry course: ENGLISH 92 series, Reading and Writing Poetry
• One literature course in poetry approved by a Creative Writing Professor
• One intermediate poetry course: any ENGLISH 192 series
• One beginning prose course: ENGLISH 90 series, Fiction Writing or ENGLISH 91 series, Creative Nonfiction (Can be fulfilled with a prose literature seminar)

Thought Catalog

Honors in English

Are you getting beyond the two-week, 6-8 page English paper? Have you wanted to challenge yourself to think deeply and to write at length? Are you curious about what it means to produce knowledge in English studies? Have you wondered what extended supervised research in English entails? Would you like to earn a capstone achievement to your degree?

If so, consider pursuing Honors.

What is the Honors Program?

The Honors Program in English is open to all undergraduate English majors regardless of career aspiration or post-graduation plans. Honors students have entered a wide variety of careers: medicine, law, business, marketing, journalism, industry, doctoral programs in English and other disciplines, teaching, and arts administration, to name a few. Students who complete the Honors Program are awarded the degree BAH (Bachelor of Arts with Honors).

The program involves intensive study of a research topic of your choosing supervised throughout your senior year by a faculty member and a graduate student mentor. With these one-on-one mentorships, you will produce a 40-60 page honors thesis and will develop supportive peer friendships with others in the Honors cohort. The Honors Program aims to be both an inspirational and aspirational forum for advanced literary study. It cultivates a lively intellectual environment within which you can test your ideas, germinate sophisticated critical approaches to historical and/or contemporary texts, and build interpretative, analytical and compositional skills that will have a lasting impact on your intellectual and professional life wherever the future takes you.

Interested students are invited to attend the English Honors Info Session on Thursday, February 29 at 12:00pm in the Terrace Room.

How do I apply?

Admission to the Honors Program is selective; the deadline for 2024-25 admission is  Friday, April 19th, 2024 at 4pm . 

Application Form

Application form must contain the following items:

• A one-to-two page proposal (see below)
• A writing sample from an English course
• A brief letter or email from one faculty member who has agreed to serve as thesis advisor
• The name of an additional faculty referee who could comment if necessary on your writing abilities
• An unofficial transcript (a cumulative 3.7 GPA in English is required, although the Honors Director will look at all compelling aspects of a candidate’s application) If you are unable to access your transcript, please email Alice Staveley, staveley [at] stanford.edu (staveley[at]stanford[dot]edu) .

What is a thesis proposal?

The thesis proposal should give your reader a strong sense of the intellectual merits of your project. What author(s) and text(s) do you wish to study? What particular critical arguments do you foresee interrogating by means of these texts? What historical period(s) will inform your research? What have you discovered already about this topic? What further questions or research avenues might you need to pursue to refine your approach?

Curriculum Details

• Once applicants are selected for admission to Honors in early May of their junior year, a more detailed prospectus with bibliography is due at the end of Spring quarter.
• Students accepted into the Honors Program may participate in the voluntary, fully funded Bing Honors College , a residential boot camp held every September for thesis writers across the university. Confirmed Honors students are invited to register online for Bing Honors College in May-June of their junior year.
• Honors students take 15 units of Honors in their senior year: 5 units (English 196A. Senior Honors Seminar) in Autumn + 10 thesis units (English 197. Senior Honors Essay) distributed over the Winter and Spring.
• Theses are due in early May . In mid-May, students present their research at a year-end department Colloquium open to friends, family, faculty, mentors, and the wider Stanford community. Plan to invite those who have supported you throughout your undergraduate years!

Recent Thesis Titles

• Spools, Hats, and Handbags: Narrative Entropy in the Plays of Samuel Beckett
• “I Have a Story to Share”: The Personalization of the National Epic in  Moby-Dick  and  Heart of Darkness
• Spatial Setting, Malleable Maps: Los Angeles in Yamashita’s  Tropic of Orange
• “Instant Nostalgia”, or, Longing under Late Capitalism in Thomas Pynchon’s  Bleeding Edge
• Utterance in Exile: Monstrous Aesthetics in Old English Verse
• “by whyche they came to honour”: Reputation in Malory’s  Le Morte d"Arthur
• How Milton’s Rhythms Work
• Graced By Another: Gabriel Marcel and the Experience of Intersubjectivity In Flannery O’Connor’s  A Good Man Is Hard to Find
• Books vs. Bombs: Reading Objects in Michael Ondaatje’s  The English Patient
• Kincaid’s Carnival: Performance, Identity, and the Reader in  A Small Place
• Masks, Origins, and Copies in Chang-Rae Lee’s  Native Speaker
• The “African” Novel at Bookshelf’s Edge (and the Online Afterlife of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
• Magical Orality in Tess Uriza Holthe’s  When the Elephants Dance

Testimonials

Read what former honors students say about their experience:

“I look back on writing my thesis as one of my best Stanford experiences.” --Bhavya Mohan (‘06), Doctoral Student in Marketing at Harvard University

“Great program. The critical thinking skills I gained from the honors English program are surprisingly very useful in medical school.” --Anne Ritchie (‘08), Medical Student at UCSF

“I believe participating in honors absolutely helped me in my job search (even in a completely different field). Having it on my resume gave me confidence and usually made an impression on people I interviewed with. […] To anyone considering the honors program: Do it, do it, do it!” --Melinda Kilner (‘10), Process Designer at Inkling

“…students learn ways of thinking and self-confidence that stay with them throughout their life, beginning with the challenges of the first job searches and first job experiences. Still 6 years into my work, I consciously apply the skills I learned, and these have been vital to my ability to succeed.” --Edward Boenig-Liptsin (‘06), Program Manager at Google

“I remain immensely grateful for my experience in the honors program. I am currently pursuing a doctorate in another field after spending several years working as an art critic and editor—positions I no doubt would have been reluctant to assume, if not for the confidence I gained through writing a thesis.” --Joanna Fiduccia (‘06), Doctoral Student in Art History at UCLA

“I would wholeheartedly recommend the English honors program to anyone considering it. It enhanced my critical writing skills, taught me how to tackle a large research project, but more importantly, it was FUN.” --Aysha Pamukcu (‘07), Public Interest Lawyer & Editor

“[Honors] substantially influenced my ability to write, to consolidate a very large amount of information, to work with self-discipline, and to engage with a territory of critical writers and [their] works. Best of all, it gave me confidence that I CAN write coherently and with purpose at length!” --Rachel Kolb (‘12), Rhodes Scholar, Masters Student in Literature at Oxford University

“I think that participating in the honors program and being able to discuss a major independent research project made an impression on my post-graduate employers in the publishing industry.” --Alison Law (‘10), Production Editor at No Starch Press

How to think about Honors

Although students apply for honors in their junior year, if you are interested in the possibility of eventually applying, talk to your individual professors or the Honors Director, Alice Staveley, at any time during your undergraduate career from first year and beyond. Thesis topics are vast and various and can take many different forms. Think about what courses, writers, or ideas have most animated your imagination; what connections keep coming back for you across multiple platforms, inside or outside the classroom; what writers you have sampled and enjoyed, but whose lives and careers you wish to investigate more fully; parse the literary history or critical methods core courses to follow up with seminar courses that broaden your study of a particular theory, writer, theme, or historical period; take courses outside the department that might compliment your literary interests (for instance, a course on 19th century British history if you’re interested in the 19th century British novel, etc.). Drop by professors’ office hours! They are there waiting, eager, and willing to talk about any number of topics with you that, over time, may well become your thesis.

Literary texts do not live in a vacuum

They emerge from particular historical circumstances, they are influenced by earlier texts, and, if they are sufficiently strong, they change the literary tradition in which they are produced. That’s why our sequence of Historical Courses (English 10, 11, and 12) introduces you to some of the most important developments of English and American literature from its origins to the present.

A history of representing the self in words

Historical watersheds such as the invention of printing, the Protestant Reformation, the expansion of the British Empire, the Great War, and the creation of the internet; the rise and fall of genres such as romance, the epic, and the novel; the genesis of literary movements such as Humanism, Romanticism and Modernism -- all this and more is part of the story of English and American literature. By the time you have finished the historical sequence, you should have a good sense of what questions to ask yourself–and what contexts to research–when you read any text, from a Renaissance sonnet to a contemporary science fiction novel.

Harry Cunningham

Literary history in the big picture

In addition to our historical sequence, a pre-1800 course will offer indepth attention to a particular writer or historical question, or else will trace fundamental literary questions across a wide expanse of time, to highlight the nature and importance of historical change and the nature of literary development.  How has the idea of a theater changed from the York Corpus Christi play (15th c.) to Arthur Miller’s  Death of a Salesman  (1949)?  By encountering these and other topics, you should learn how the histories we tell depend on the questions we ask, the assumptions we bring to the historical record, and the archive we establish. You should also learn how much is at stake when we declare what is pre-modern, what is modern, and what is post-modern.

Mastering interpretive methods

Our methodology requirements, Poetry and Poetics and Narrative and Narrative Theory, introduce you to some of the most important interpretive methods we use to bring literary texts to life. In the first, you learn about poems as formal artifacts that tell their own history of human expression. In the second, you learn to think about story telling from a technical perspective. What is it? How does it work? How has it changed over time? In addition, a "Writing Intensive Seminar in English" (WISE) course will introduce you to a range of critical methods, while offering a writing-intensive experience in a small seminar environment. WISE courses also satisfy our Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.

International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research

• Announcements
• Editorial Board
• Submit a Paper
• Publication Ethics
• ##PAPER TEMPLATE##
• ##Retraction Policy##

Comprehensive Academic Thesis Writing Module for English Major Undergraduates in a Public University in China

In response to the challenges in enhancing English major undergraduates’ academic thesis writing and research capabilities, particularly in writing empirical research-based theses, this study addresses the current deficiencies in English academic thesis writing instruction. The current course in Chinese universities cannot offer sufficient information for Chinese graduates to participate in international graduate programs and publication. This study aimed to develop the English Academic Thesis Writing Module (EATWM) for English major undergraduates of a public university in China and to determine the participants’ performance after completing it. The theoretical foundation of this study was based on Dewey’s learning by doing theory and Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle. The study employed a mixed-methods design involving three stages: module development, validity and reliability assessment, and performance analysis. The prototype EATWM was designed and developed using the ADDIE model. Through the pilot study, the content validity and reliability of the EATWM were verified, and 20 participants’ theses were marked by 3 inter-raters to calculate the inter-rater reliability. In the main study, 70 participants’ academic thesis writing performance and interview responses were analyzed. The analysis of the participants’ feedback highlights benefits gained by using the module, challenges faced in academic thesis writing, solutions to address challenges using the module, and suggestions for module improvement. These results indicate that the module succeeds in facilitating students to write an English academic thesis. The EATWM benefits teachers by including sections that are not in the current syllabus and helps students better adapt to the international education system and publication context.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.22.10.22

Abdurrahman, A., Saregar, A., & Umam, R. (2018). The effect of feedback as soft scaffolding on ongoing assessment toward the quantum physics concept mastery of the prospective physics teachers. Indonesian Journal of Science Education, 7(1), 34–40. https://doi.org/10.15294/jpii.v6i2.7239

APA (American Psychological Association). (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). American Psychological Association. https://apastyle.apa.org/products/publication-manual-7th-edition

Andika, A., Tahrun, T., & Firdaus, M. (2023). Developing English grammar instructional materials oriented to constructivism theory. Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, 11(2), 286–296. https://doi.org/10.33394/jollt.v%vi%i.6838

Beres, J. L., & Woloshyn, V. E. (2017). Instructional insights gained from teaching a research methods course to Chinese international graduate students studying in Canada. Journal of International Undergraduates, 7(3), 728–743. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.570030

Cao, L. M. (2020). Ying yu zhuan ye ben ke bi ye lun wen xian cun wen ti, cheng yin yu dui ce: yi shanghai cai jing da xue zhejiang xue yuan wei li [The existing problems, causes and countermeasures of graduation theses for English majors: A case study of Zhejiang College of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics]. Journal of Guangxi College of Education, (03), 43–45. https://kns.cnki.net/kcms2/article/abstract?v=JhhVyKSVrEjjqDQP6QYc_6fxv8WeOOMZEPjwcfazE6ofpLZ8iUt3l-sr3ZwldXbiaWUSaEg-g_7imhbh-3KBVHdPfMoeAvGO4Sqngt2FJ03IDqI-aG80HJLwX_jVfYyhy1GPfeKhw_B0avcUoIRpl_gRCdxueFtl&uniplatform=NZKPT&language=CHS

Chandrasekhar, R. (2008). How to Write a thesis: A Working Guide. The University of Western Australia. https://www.student.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/1919239/How-to-write-a-thesis-A-working-guide.pdf

Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2017). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). Sage. https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/qualitative-inquiry-and-research-design/book246896

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). Sage. https://www.google.com.my/books/edition/Research_Design/335ZDwAAQBAJ

Creswell, J. W., & Guetterman, T. C. (2019). Educational research: Planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (6th ed.). Pearson. https://www.google.com.my/books/edition/Educational_Research/s7rNtAEACAAJ

Dewey, J. (1915). Schools of tomorrow. E. P. Dutton and Co. https://www.google.com.my/books/edition/Schools_of_Tomorrow/mdI0nwEACAAJ

Fitria, T. N. (2022). Analysis of EFL students’ difficulties in writing and completing English thesis. LLT Journal: A Journal on Language and Language Teaching, 25(1), 295–309. https://doi.org/10.24071/llt.v25i1.3607

Gustafson, K. L., & Branch, R. M. (2002). Survey of Instructional Development Models (4th ed.). Syracuse University: Eric Clearinghouse on Information and Technology. https://www.google.com.my/books/edition/Survey_of_Instructional_Development_Mode/QTW9AAAACAAJ

Husin, M. S., & Nurbayani, E. (2017). The ability of Indonesian EFL learners in writing academic papers. Dinamika Ilmu, 17(2), 237–250. https://dx.doi.org/10.21.93/di.v17i2.725

Jiang, Z. Y., & Wu, Q. H. (2021). Ben ke bi ye lun wen cun yu fei yan jiu ping shu [A discussion on the continuation or abolition of the undergraduate thesis]. Modern Business Trade Industry, 42(18), 158–160. https://doi.org/10.19311/j.cnki.1672-3198.2021.18.075

Kebede, Y., Andargie, G., Feleku, A., & Awoke, T. (2015). Module on research methods. The University of Gondar. http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/78889/1/Full%20module%20on%20research%20methods.pdf

Kolb, D. A., Boyatzis, R. E., & Mainemelis, C. (2014). Experiential learning theory: Previous research and new directions. In R. J. Sternberg and L. F. Zhang (Eds.), Perspectives on cognitive, learning, and thinking styles (pp. 227–248). Routledge. http://secondarycontent.pbworks.com/f/experiential-learning-theory.pdf

Kothari, C. R. (2019). Research methodology: Methods and techniques (4th ed.). New Age International. http://103.42.87.14:8080/jspui/bitstream/123456789/2471/1/Research-Methodology-CR-Kothari.pdf

Kumar, R. (2019). Research methodology: A step-by-step guide for beginners (5th ed.). Sage. http://nuir.nkumbauniversity.ac.ug/bitstream/handle/20.500.12383/924/Ranjit_Kumar-Research_Methodology_A_Step-by-Step_G.pdf

Kurt, S. (2017). ADDIE model: Instructional design. https://educationaltechnology.net/the-addie-model-instructional-design/

Liu, J. (2021). Ji yu duo yuan shi du li lun de ying yu xue shu lun wen xie zuo jiao xue yan jiu [Research on the teaching of English academic writing based on the multiliteracies pedagogy]. Journal of Tongling Vocational & Technical College, 20(01), 92–95. https://doi.org/10.16789/j.cnki.1671-752x.2021.01.020

Liu, L. (2015). A study of graduate thesis writing course for English undergraduates. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 6(4), 836. http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0604.17

Marulanda Ángel, N. L., & Martínez García, J. M. (2017). Improving English language learners’ academic writing: A multi-strategy approach to a multi-dimensional challenge. Gist Education and Learning Research Journal, 14, 49–67. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1146679

Morgan, D. L. (2014). Pragmatism as a paradigm for social research. Qualitative inquiry, 20(8), 1045-1053. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800413513733

Morris, T. H. (2020). Experiential learning: A systematic review and revision of Kolb’s model. Interactive Learning Environments, 28(8), 1064–1077. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2019.1570279

Mu, S. X. (2012). An introduction to thesis writing for English majors (2nd ed.). Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. https://www.abebooks.com/9787513522908/English-majors-textbook-series-Professional-7513522901/plp

National Administry Committee on Teaching English Language to Majors in Higher Education under the Ministry of Education. (2000). Syllabus for English Majors. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

Novitri, S. (2021). Developing narrative text-based module for teaching reading comprehension: Focus on practicality. J-SHMIC: Journal of English for Academic, 8(2), 132–139. https://doi.org/10.25299/jshmic.2021.vol8(2).7198

Oliver, P. (2014). Writing your thesis (3rd ed). Sage. https://www.google.com.my/books/edition/_/o5mFnAEACAAJ

Parcon, R. E. (2016). Task-based instruction in oral English: Basis for an instructional module enhancement. International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture and Education (ICLLCE), 45. http://icsai.org/procarch/6icllce/6icllce-045.pdf

Samuels, B., & Garbati, J. (2018). Mastering academic writing. Sage. https://www.google.com.my/books/edition/Mastering_Academic_Writing/lqR5DwAAQBAJ

Sikandar, A. (2015). John Dewey and his philosophy of education. Journal of Education and Educational Development, 2(2), 191–201. http://jmsnew.iobmresearch.com/index.php/joeed/article/download/214/321

Sun, X. G., & Jin, P. (2021). Ben ke sheng xue shu lun wen xie zuo pei xun de shi jian yu fan si [Practice and reflection of undergraduate academic writing training]. Education and Teaching Forum, (33), 5–8. https://kns.cnki.net/kcms2/article/abstract?v=3uoqIhG8C44YLTlOAiTRKibYlV5Vjs7iy_Rpms2pqwbFRRUtoUImHQHb4AtRm8wJkd2lSGpwqTveJplLbO_y2HWayh4t3cqY&uniplatform=NZKPT

Swales, J. M. & Feak, C, B. (2012). Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills. (3rd ed). University of Michigan Press. http://eli.johogo.com/Class/AWFGS.pdf

University of Wollongong. (2001). Research and thesis writing. https://documents.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@raid/documents/doc/uow060982.pdf

Wang, G. F., & Ming, B. S. (2018). Ying yu zhuan ye ben ke bi ye lun wen xie zuo de xue sheng fan kui shi zheng diao cha [A survey of English major students’ feedback on graduation thesis writing]. Journal of Wuhan Business University, (05), 90–93. https://doi.org/10.16199/j.cnki.jwbu.2018.05.023

Wæraas, A. (2022). Thematic analysis: Making values emerge from texts. In G. Espedal, B. Jelstad Løvaas, S. Sirris, & A. Wæraas (Eds.), Researching values (pp. 153–170). Palgrave Macmillan. https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/53343/1/978-3-030-90769-3.pdf#page=163

Wu, H. B., Huang, X. J., & Zhao, H. B. (2023). Ren wen she ke lei ben ke bi ye lun wen zhi gong xing wen ti ji po jie ce lue [Undergraduate thesis of humanities and social sciences: Basic requirements, common problems and cracking strategies]. Journal of YuZhang Normal University, (04), 46–50. https://kns.cnki.net/kcms2/article/abstract?v=JhhVyKSVrEif7Eoiyaq6YyG1YOON_aOp_3nktjaBm2dBeE261BPyJ1V2S_DOkgRo9MyyhBnlteHkq5zG-NW756BOZK_sjB1v0GyWl4_GbQOjQUXzSh47dZqnKWVNy3c0_-tSiX3pglE=&uniplatform=NZKPT&language=CHS

Wu, L. Z., Zeng, X. Y., Chen X. L., Li, L. J., & Zhang, W. J. (2022). Bi ye lun wen xie zuo yu da bian [Graduation thesis writing and defense module]. South China Normal University. https://www.icourse163.org/course/scnu-1206357801

Xue, L. (2021). Preparing Chinese international undergraduates for graduate studies in a U.S. university through a pathway program: A case study [Master’s thesis]. California State Polytechnic University. https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/concern/theses/n009w724d

Xu, F. (2014). Fei ying yu guo jia xue zhe guo ji fa biao wen ti yan jiu shu ping [Review of studies on EAL researchers’ international publishing]. Foreign Language World, 1, 27–33. https://kns.cnki.net/kcms2/article/abstract?v=3uoqIhG8C44YLTlOAiTRKgchrJ08w1e7M8Tu7YZds89dAAxe5qzazF0rOpydlNbjTo_zF3FW67hczsKNZIJ-6UEXtcUIiRn2&uniplatform=NZKPT

Yang, C. (2017). Problems Chinese international undergraduates face during academic adaptation in English-speaking higher institutions [Master’s thesis]. University of Victoria. http://dspace.library.uvic.ca/bitstream/handle/1828/8086/Yang_Chunling_MEd_2017.pdf

Yusof, R., Yin, K. Y., Norwani, N. M., Ismail, Z., Ahmad, A. S., & Salleh, S. (2020). Teaching through experiential learning cycle to enhance student engagement in principles of accounting. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 19(10), 323–337. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.19.10.18

Zahrin, S. N. A., Mahmud, M. I., & Azman, N. (2022). Development of the Love for Writing and Publishing Journal (LWPJ) Module for Higher Education. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 21(3), 434–447. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.21.3.23

Zhang, H., & Chen S. S. (2018). Zhong shi yan jiu fang fa pei yang ti gao wai yu jiao shi de guo ji fa biao yi shi [Value the training of research methods and increase foreign language teachers’ awareness in international publishing]. Foreign Languages and Their Teaching, 3, 13–21. https://doi.org/10.13458/j.cnki.flatt.004487

Zhang, L. (2020). Gong gong ying yu ESP/EGP ke cheng mo kuai she ji yan jiu: yi donghua da xue EAP xue shu ying yu xie zuo ke cheng wei li [ESP/EGP course modules design: A case study of EAP-integrated writing in Donghua University]. Northeast Asia Foreign Languages Symposium (NAFLS), 9. https://doi.org/10.26914/c.cnkihy.2020.006751

Zhang, Z. (2018). Academic writing difficulty of Chinese undergraduates: The cultural issue behind Chinese and British academic writing styles. Studies in Literature and Language, 17(2), 118–124. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/236304431.pdf

Zhao, X. (2019). Gao xiao ying yu zhuan ye xue shu lun wen xie zuo ke cheng jiao xue gai ge tan xi [Teaching reform of academic thesis writing in English majors of higher educational institutions]. Journal of Jiamusi Vocational Institute, (05), 119–120. https://kns.cnki.net/kcms2/article/abstract?v=3uoqIhG8C44YLTlOAiTRKibYlV5Vjs7iLik5jEcCI09uHa3oBxtWoK0YTmtr_7g4Ik_D5hJ1Oqh1JUeXRmxW69msosMmeeBE&uniplatform=NZKPT

Zhu, L. (2019). Zhuan ke he ben ke bi ye lun wen cun fei bian xi [Reservation and termination of graduation thesis of junior college and undergraduate]. Education Modernization, 6(95), 140–142. https://doi.org/10.16541/j.cnki.2095-8420.2019.95.064

• There are currently no refbacks.

e-ISSN: 1694-2116

p-ISSN: 1694-2493

Haverford College

English major.

• Curriculum and Courses
• Research and Outreach

After Graduation

Haverford College’s English major offers students the opportunity to engage with a vast range of literature and culture—British, American and global—that reflects the diversity of our world.

Our program is distinguished by its theoretical and global breadth—of subject matter as well as disciplinary and methodological approaches, and every member of our faculty is committed to nurturing in students the ability to respond thoughtfully and critically to any text. Students emerge from the major as discerning readers, powerful writers, and incisive and intensely human thinkers.

The academic rigor that marks our major goes hand-in-hand with a strong sense of community. Student collaboration, close faculty mentorship, as well as a rich array of learning opportunities outside the classroom are additional hallmarks of our vibrant program.

Curriculum & Courses

Majors pursue a demanding curriculum that progresses from introductory courses in literature, critical theory, and writing to advanced courses to independent research. Our requirements, which include course work across time periods, genres, and geography, and theoretical fields and at a range of levels, reflect that commitment.

The crux of our programming occurs in junior and senior years, when our majors are involved in especially rigorous and rewarding work. Junior Seminar, our two semester-long tutorial course, introduces majors to key texts in British, American and global literatures and a broad range of critical theory. Junior Seminar is followed by Senior Conference . In this year-long course, seniors work closely with faculty to develop and write their theses. They also prepare for and take oral exams covering a range of coursework for the major.

Major Requirements

Admission to the major requires completion of at least two courses, WRPR H150 or a 100-level English course and one course at the 200-level, by the end of the sophomore year..

In total the major requires eleven credits, including a .5 credit tutorial ( ENGL H298J ) as part of Junior Seminar. Note: ENGL H399F and ENGL H399B   comprises a 1.5 credit course taken over the full senior year.

• at least two must be in literature written before 1800;
• at least two in literature written after 1800;
• at least one but no more than two courses at the 100 level, which can include WRPR H150 ; two to three courses at the 200-level; and at least two courses at the 300-level.
• ENGL H298 and ENGL H299 , the two-semester Junior Seminar in English
• ENGL H298J , the .5 credit yearlong Junior Seminar tutorial
• ENGL H399F (fall) and ENGL H399B (spring) for a total 1.5 credit Senior Conference

Note: The department will give major credit for one semester course in a foreign literature in the original language or for Comparative Literature 200. No more than four major credits will be awarded for work done beyond the Tri- College Consortium, whether abroad or in the U.S. Courses taken in the Bryn Mawr English Department, the Swarthmore English Department, and the U. Penn English Department may also be counted towards the major at Haverford.

Senior Project

The culminating research experience for our majors is Senior Seminar, ENGL H399. The course carries 1.5 credits and involves two parts: a critical essay based on independent research and reading guided by a faculty mentor; and a comprehensive oral examination that covers the thesis and the coursework the student has done towards the major. Creative Writing concentrators produce, instead of the critical essay, a portfolio of poems or short stories, a novella, or a screenplay accompanied by a foreword or afterword that reflects on their artistic choices and offers an analytic framework within which the work may be understood.

Preparatory Work

English majors take Junior Seminar, a year-long course that considers both major works in the field and critical and theoretical materials in the discipline. This methodological focus, along with an oral exam at the end of the first semester and comprehensive assessment at the end of the second, prepares students for the extended research and oral expectations of Senior Conference. More information on Junior Seminar is available on the department’s website. Students also participate in a workshop conducted by the Writing Program during the spring preceding the senior year: this meeting encourages junior majors to draw upon the coursework they have already undertaken both to identify areas, topics, authors, and critical questions and to begin reading widely in preparation for their thesis.

Senior Conference

Fall Semester Senior Year:

Students in the Senior Conference propose research topics to faculty consultants and are assigned to a faculty advisor by the middle of the fall semester. Students mark out an area of interest focused on an author, text, genre, theme, or formal feature, familiarize themselves with the major critical voices and debates pertaining to this field, and identify a set of issues that they investigate and analyze in their essays. Students meet each week in groups before moving to individualized meetings with their thesis advisor.

Spring Semester Senior Year:

Students have individual tutorials as they work towards submission of a draft and final thesis. At the end of the spring semester, eight students give presentations of their work over the course of two evenings. One-hour oral examinations are administered during the following week by the thesis advisor, a second reader, and a third examiner over a three- to four-day period.

Additional information about Senior Conference and the Senior Thesis can be found on the department’s website.

Senior Project Learning Goals

The Senior Conference will encourage students to:

• mark out productive and independent lines of intellectual inquiry.
• understand theoretical and critical works in the discipline.
• engage with primary and secondary literature.
• develop a critical writing voice for article-length work.
• prepare a bibliography of works for oral examination.
• hone oral skills of synthesis and dialogue in presentation and exams.
• reflect in writing and speech about the thesis process.
• experience scholarship as collaboration: work closely with a faculty advisor and peers on developing the project.
• define scholarship as process: work through the stages of a research project.

Senior Project Assessment

The department seeks well-written, persuasive essays that advance independent and original arguments about texts. Theses will be based on insightful close readings and deep engagement with relevant critical and background material. The creative thesis option is assayed for the imagination with which particular projects are conceived, control over the medium, inventive play with generic conventions, insight, clarity and beauty of expression, and the capacity for self-reflection as demonstrated in the critical foreword/afterword.

Students are assessed at various stages of the process, described below, both by individual advisors and department faculty as a whole. Final letter grades are decided upon by the full department in careful discussion and consideration of student performance at each stage. Students receive extensive written comments from first reader (faculty mentor) and second reader at the end of the process.

The faculty mentor provides feedback on the following elements prior to the student examination:

• Preliminary proposal
• 4-5 pages of preliminary draft
• Annotated bibliography

The faculty mentor and department assess the following dimensions of the project as a full group:

• Quality of Senior Essay
• Quality of Oral Examination
• Student Reflective Statement

Requirements for Honors

The department awards honors in English on the basis of performance in coursework within the Tri-College departments, the senior essay and the oral examination conducted at the end of the senior year. The department reserves honors and high honors for distinguished achievement in all three of these areas.

Associated Programs and Concentrations

• Creative Writing Concentration

Research & Outreach

All English majors produce a thesis, a critical essay 25-30 pages long based on independent research and reading. Work on the thesis occurs throughout senior year as Senior Conference, in which students work closely with faculty advisors on the development of their research, conceptual frameworks, and writing strategies.

Seniors also participate in oral comprehensive exams. The exam, which occurs at the close of senior year, requires each student to participate in a dynamic conversation with several faculty members. The exchange focuses on the student’s thesis as well as a selection of works studied over the course of the major. For students as well as faculty, the thesis and oral exam represent the major at its most powerful and inspiring.

Nick Lasinsky ’23

For his thesis, the double major in history and English examined the effect of built space upon a mining community.

Leonard Gadicke ’21

The English major explored the religious references in J.D. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey.”

Claire Nicholas '21

The English major and visual studies minor’s thesis investigates what makes Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric such a formative reading experience and temporally distinctive work of poetry.

Drew Cunningham '20

The English major and German and philosophy minor received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Grant and will return to Germany, where he studied abroad last year, to enhance his teaching and language skills.

Becca Richie '20

Richie hopes to teach after gradution, before pursuing law study in graduate school to expand modern conceptions of civil rights.

Majors graduate from our program exceptionally prepared to enter graduate programs in English as well as a range of disciplines. Many also pursue other paths, applying the analytical acumen, communication skills, and creative insight that they developed in the major to fields that include law, business, non-profit arts, publishing, government service, and social work, as well as many others.

Lourdes Taylor '21

Taylor is continuing her studies in a Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago.

Emily Chazen ’18

The English and Religion major will begin pursuing a law degree and her master’s in theological studies through a joint program at Harvard University.

Christian DuComb '01

DuComb returned to Haverford as a Visiting Lecturer while completing graduate studies and is now an Assistant Professor of Theater at Colgate University. 

Rakia Clark '01

The English major works as a senior editor at Beacon Press, a publisher based in Boston.

Daniel Kramer '84

The English major works for the Chester Theatre Company and Smith College.

Jessica McDonald '06

McDonald found a way to combine her interests in English, science, and music through science radio journalism.

Keep Exploring

More programs.

Check out our other academic offerings:

Get in Touch

Join the Mailing List or search for events in your area .

You can find detailed instructions and information on the Application Instructions page. If you need to contact us directly, please send an email to [email protected] .

Websites & Resources

• English Department website
• Why Haverford?
• About Haverford

Get Social with Haverford

Search form.

• Admission & Aid
• Campus Life

Information For

• Prospective Students
• Current Students
• Faculty & Staff
• Family & Friends

Admission Info

• Join Mailing List

Social Networks

Welcome, friend..

Hit enter to Search all of Haverford for search .

Black Squirrel Search Suggestions *

* We have a very tiny magic 8 ball.

English Department Senior Thesis

Rising senior English majors who would like to write a thesis next year should submit a proposal to the English department by Friday, April 12, 2024. Please send your proposal to the chair in an email attachment. With special permission, a junior may submit a proposal in mid-November to complete a calendar year thesis in the event of early graduation or study abroad program.

We recommend a proposal of 400-500 words that should do the following:

• Identify a problem that you would like to study or a set of questions you would like to ask.
• Identify a work of literature or an author or an archive that will be the focus of your research.
• If you have discussed your thesis idea with a faculty member, please include that information.
• Compile and include a short bibliography.
• Finally, list the courses that have prepared you with background for the thesis, and explain how they have laid the ground for your study.

Proposals are discussed and approved by English department faculty and first readers are assigned based on alignment of interest and availability.

Often, proposals will be too broad. This is okay. You will have a chance to hone and formally revise the proposal later in your thesis course(s).

Good theses vary in length depending on the topic. A typical thesis consists of an introduction, two to three chapters, and is 60-75 pages in length. For fiction thesis, a project excerpt should fall between 50-80 pages and a typical poetry thesis is between 30-50 pages, or approximately 20 to 30 poems. Students will work out the appropriate length in consultation with your first reader. English majors seeking to do a poetry or fiction thesis must have completed a course in Advanced Creative Writing.

Presentation

All senior English majors will give a 15 minute presentation or reading at the senior symposium. If you are writing a thesis, this is a thesis presentation; if you are not, this is a presentation of capstone work you did in connection with a 170 seminar.

For specific details about course requirements, please visit the Pomona College Catalog .

Mailing Address

Pomona College 333 N. College Way Claremont , CA 91711

Get in touch

Give back to pomona.

Part of   The Claremont Colleges