Senior Honors Thesis

Independent work under the guidance of a faculty member resulting in a year-long scholarly or creative project.

The Senior Honors Thesis is the result of participation in the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program, which serves as an integrative and fulfilling capstone for student participants, as well as a vehicle for creating a distinguished scholarly and creative undergraduate student community.

Students in the Department of English who wish to participate in the Senior Honors Program and produce a Senior Honors Thesis can learn more about the process, eligibility, and application here.

Previous Senior Honors Thesis Projects

Project topics have included traditional research studies, analytical syntheses of research trends in a discipline, or such creative works as poetry or essay collections, full-length novels, and original screenplays. Here are some previous Senior Honors Thesis projects from students in the Department of English:

2021-2022 Academic Year

• Our Wasteland: a novella by Leila Jordan Berger - a dystopian magical realist novel about two Native American sisters from North Carolina who discover a story written by their late mother in a family book of fables that may be a map guiding them to save the world.
• The Alchemist and the Apprentice by Matilda McDougall - a television screenplay set in a fantasy world where a young girl must save alchemy, but in order to do so, she must go through a coming-of-age-style journey.
• A Musical Interpretation of COVID-19 by Shambhavi Mishra - Using Joel Sternheimer’s
  technique of protein-based DNA music, data analytics tools, and visualization tools, this project
  dives into understanding the biological characteristics of COVID-19 through the creative
  humanities. This project publishes an interactive data story representing what the
  Coronavirus sounds like and how the musical interpretation can help us better understand the
  virus on a micro-level. The incorporation of data analytics to interpret statistical trends found in
  the RNA sequences will influence creative musical decisions when orchestrating and composing.

 2020-2021 Academic Year

• Myself in Him by Anna Anderson - a collection of short stories that explores body horror, adolescence, romantic love, obsession, and friendship
• Quartz by Zeja Copes - a collection of short stories that centers Black and queer characters in horror narratives. Thesis Advisor: Professor Jason England
• The Autistic Spectacle by Lindsay Glick - a collection of essays critiquing fictional representations of autism through a literary, cultural, and rhetorical lens. Thesis Advisor: Professor Jim Daniels