Image of Archived English Theses
Bilbo Baggins and a gaggle of Heathers walk hand-in-hand with first ladies. Peter Pan and Jonathan Swift are discussing queer theory and men who read Jane Austen, as Jay-Z and Robert Frost wax lyrical on capitalism and fairy tales. And Lady Bracknell may or may not be teaching a Sneech.
Such is a day in the collective life of 31 senior English majors as they discuss each other's theses as part of ENGL 404.
In place for more than 20 years now, Dickinson's senior thesis workshop, English 404, is a yearlong exercise in writing, editing and peer review not often experienced by undergraduates. When the program was created, "We wanted students to be able to synthesize everything they'd learned in the major and act as independent scholars," says Sharon O'Brien, professor of English and American studies, one of the vanguards of the class.
As it turns out, acting as an independent scholar is as rigorous as it sounds. "Writing a 50-page paper is definitely daunting," says Taylor Kobran '13, who is currently in the workshop. "The 404 process is designed to make this as stress-free an experience as possible, though. It's been a challenge, but I definitely enjoy it."
The below list reflects the final title of each paper and the titles when the papers were in their infancy.
Julia EagerEarly title: British Society's Treatment of Nature and Its Impact on British Character in Tolkien's The Hobbit
Final title: The Hobbit: J.R.R. Tolkien's Reaction to Britain's Treatment of the Environment
Taylor KobranEarly title: Fight Like a Girl: Power and Violence in The Virgin Suicides and Heathers
Emily GoodEarly title: Restrictions of Gendered Rhetoric: An Exploration of the Language of First Ladies
Final title: FLOTUS: Fixed Language of the Unspoken Stateswomen: A Study of the Restricted Rhetoric of a First Lady
Kate GoodEarly title: F. Scott Fitzgerald as Prophet of Decline
Final title: American Vitality: The Recursive Redemption of Fitzgerald's Tragic Hero
Jesse FleischnerEarly title: Money and Corruption of the American Dream in Bonfire of the Vanities and Wall Street
Final title: The American Dream and Money in Three Parts: Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick, Oliver Stone's Wall Street, and Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities
Marissa BerkleyEarly title: Remembering the House of Commons: The Convergence of Feminist Ideologies in Two of Woolf's War Pieces
Final title: Forgetting the House of Commons: The Interconnectedness of War and Feminism in Virginia Woolf's "A Society"
Tessa BowlerEarly title: Philadelphia and AIDS Activism
Final title: How to Represent a Plague: The Changing Goals of Portraying AIDS in Film and Television
Sara FowlerEarly title: Contrasting Treatments of Inter-War Aesthete and Emergent Queer Identity in Brideshead Revisited and Love in a Cold Climate
Final title: The Other in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate as an Assertion of Authorial Independence and Moral Maturity
Justin TaylorEarly title: Jay-Z and Robert Frost: The Effects of Capitalism on Two American Lyricists
Final title: Unchanged
Jeff NelsonEarly title: Visions of Victorian Childhood
Final title: Visions of Victorian Childhood: Finding Balance between Restriction and Chaotic Freedom
Adam KrosnickEarly title: Pale Fire and Nabokov's Hidden Patterns of Meaning
Final title: Pale Fire: Artistic Appropriation and the Quest for Literary Immortality
Chris StrikerEarly title: The Iconography of Bones: Relics and Legitimacy, Fiction and Reality
Final title: Saints' Bones or Sinner's Words?: Rhetorical Destabilization, Chaucer's Pardoner, and Boccaccio's Frate Cipolla
Sarah PangiaEarly title: Conrad and James Calibrate the Artistry of Agency
Final title: James and Conrad Calculate Artistic Agency
Jamie SweeneyEarly title: Lost Boys and Girls: Peter Pan and the Vampire Tradition
Final title: Unchanged
David KirkEarly title: Swift's Cannibalistic Obsession
Final title: Representations of Anglo-Irish Relations in Swift's Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal
Ariel KlatskinEarly title: Fifty Shades of Problematic Attitudes Towards BDSM and Women
Final title: Unchanged
Matthew WeddigEarly title: Can Lady Bracknell Teach a Sneech?: The Shared Educational Mechanisms of Satire and Children's Literature as Seen in Oscar Wilde and Dr. Seuss
Final title: Can Lady Bracknell Teach a Sneetch?: The Learning-Relearning Spectrum and the Shared Mechanisms of Satire and Children's Literature as Seen in Oscar Wilde and Dr. Seuss
Mary NolteEarly title: Photography and the Intersection of Fact and Fiction in Hemon's The Lazarus Project
Final title: Hopelessly Fragmented: A Psychoanalytical Analysis of Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project
Sarah GanongEarly title: Untitled environmental project
Final title: Rewriting the Apocalypse
Audrey Scott
Early title: Jane's Gentlemen: An Analysis of Jane Austen Male Readership
Final title: Jane Austen With Her Boots on: Making Meaning Through Minor Characters in Kipling's 'The Janeites'
Hannah LevinEarly title: In 1995, a Protagonist Is Born
Final title: The Great American Fairytale: The Wizard of Oz and Wicked as Representations of Gender Inequality in America
Chloe GolodEarly title: The Unspoken Language of Sports: A Literary Comparison of Twelfth Night, She's the Man and the Effects of Title IX
Final title: Separate but Unequal: A Contemporary Comparison on Shakespearean Cross-Dress, Women in Sport and the Existing Hegemonic Structure in Athletics
Christina SocciEarly title: A Suitable Tongue: Examining Language and Identity in Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy
Final title: "Learn My Language": Exploring Translation as a Critique of National Identity in Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy
Elizabeth HarveyEarly title: Untitled cancer poetry project
Final title: Writing Towards Connection in Contemporary Cancer Poetry
Joseph O'NeillEarly title: Silence Speaks for the Ashes: The National Language of Mourning in the Poetry of September 11th
Final title: "A Vision Through the Smoke"; The Recovery of Poetry in Rowan Ricardo Phillips' The Ground
Kaitlyn JurewiczEarly title: Dredged up From the Unconscious: Stream of Consciousness and the Reception of Patrick White
Final title: "The Solitary Land of Individual Experience"; Landscape and Psychology in The Aunt's Story
Kristen ChampagneEarly title: A Comparison of Beloved and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Morality, Canon Formation and the Black Female Identity
Final title: A Commentary on the Melancholia of Slavery in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Toni Morrison's Beloved
Jessica CooperEarly title: Once Upon a Time: The Evolution of Femininity Through Fairy Tales
Final title: Holding Out for a Heroine: Brave's Failure as a Feminist Film
Helen HopperEarly title: The Formulation of Queer Identity: E.M. Forster's Maurice and Alison Bechdel's Fun House
Final title: First We Look in Mirrors. Later We Use Each Other": Uses of the Mirror in the Queer Archive in E.M. Forster's Maurice and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home
Emily ArndtEarly title: It Will Shock You How Much This Never Happened: Mad Men, Memory and Myths of the 1960s
Final title: The Personal, the Political, and Peggy Olson: Mad Men's Misrepresentation of 1960s Feminism
Alison PogustEarly title: Untitled Edith Wharton/House of Mirth project
Final title: Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth: The Futility of Society
Read more about student-driven research:
All Coming Together
https://www.dickinson.edu/news-and-events/news/2012-13/Student-research-symposium-bio/
Getting Personal
Published March 20, 2013