Sample Thesis Topics

Majors wishing to consult recent theses may contact the Program Director for copies.

  • Harrison Rose, “An English translation and critical introduction to Gabriele D’Annunzio’s 1901 verse drama Francesca da Rimini” (2020)
  • Isabelle Groenewegen, “The Symbiotic Relationship between Realist Literature and Photojournalism and their Role in Bringing Dignity to the Ordinary Lives of the Modern Era” (2020).
  • Manuela Tobias, “Dictatorial Testimonies: Structure, Sign and Politics in Ricardo Piglia’s Respiración artificial and Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” (2017).
  • Eunyoung Kim, “Don’t Choose Life: How Trainspotting, Arcadia, and Madre e hijo Share Postmodern Elements Despite Their Specific Local Contexts” (2017).
  • Michelle Klein, “Trauma in Haiti: Violence, Silence, and Spirituality in the Works of Yanick Lahens, Edwidge Danticat, and Marie Vieux-Chauvet” (2016).
  • Echo Weng, “Return to the Realm of Ambiguity: Uncanny and Supernatural Beliefs in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion” (2016).
  • Rachel Kawasaki, “Tragedy and Comedy as Opposites and Complements in Shakespeare and Molière” (2015).
  • Marie-Camille Negrin, “Imagism and Surrealism: The Literary Avant Garde Challenges Tradition with Technique” (2012).
  • Lisa Oberst, “Oscar Wilde’s use of Ekphrasis in The Picture of Dorian Gray; A Struggle Against Literal Boundaries to Achieve Artistic Supremacy over Nature” (2012).
  • William Tamplin, “Means of Deception: Iskandari’s Tricks in the Maqamat of Badi‘ al-Zaman al-Hamadhani” (2012)
  • Adam Díaz, “Lo real maravilloso: Baroque Representations of Latin America in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Alejo Carpenter’s El reino de este mundo” (2011).
  • Rebecca Gessler, “From Wandering to Writing: Jewish Literature in Mexico and Argentina” (2011).
  • Eleanor Warnock, “Collective Autobiography in Hayashi Fumiko’s Hōrōki and Annie Ernaux’s La Place” (2011).
  • Anna Melyakova, “Writing Without Borders, Rediscovering Creative Identity after Soviet Dissolution and German Re-unification: Chingiz Aitmatov and Christa Wolf” (2008).
  • Leonora Stevens, “Representations of Subalternity and Indigenous Identity In the Films of Jorge Sanjines and Prose of Jose Maria Arguedas” (2007).
  • Kate Bohinc, “Representations of Totalitarianism: Victor Serge’s L’affaire Toulaev and George Orwell’s 1984” (2007).
  • Oxana Miliaeva, “The Problem of Subject Recognition in Alexander Bely’s Peterburg as Conditioned by an E.T.A. Hoffmann Intertext” (2007).
  • Sara M. Lewis, “Express Yourself: The Literary Search for Identity Under Fascist Regimes” (2006).
  • Cora Weissbourd, “That Within Which Passes Show”: The Threat of Individual Consciousness in Hamlet and Phèdre” (2006).
  • Shauna Maher, “Oulipo and Oplepo: Potential Literature in France and Italy” (2006).
  • Eléonore Paule Veillet, “Transculturation in Latin America and North Africa: The Repercussions of Colonization in Carpentier, Fanon, and Yacine” (2005).
  • Anne Popolizio, “Immigrant Narratives and the Education of Integration: When I Was Puerto Rican and Le Gone du Chaaba” (2005).
  • Ashley Bishop Ahearn, “Time and Character in Virginia Woolf and Marguerite Duras” (2005).
  • Leah Price, “The Naked Masks Come Out to Play: Contradiction of Technique in Questa Sera si Recita a Soggetto” (2005).
  • Katrine Lvovskaya, “The Eternal Outcast. Queer Directions from Wilde to Haynes” (2004).
  • Glen Goodman, “Residences or Residencias: Refraction, Domestication, and Foreignization in English-Language Translations of Pablo Neruda” (2004).
  • Tom Genova, “Redefining ‘You’: Messianism, the Other, and the Irrational in Les Fleurs du Mal and La casa de Bernarda Alba” (2004).
  • Kim Gravette, “Domesticity and Creative Self-Expression: Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies by Laura Esquivel and The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan” (2003).
  • Christina Montero, “Discovering the Epic in Early 20th Century Modernism: T.S. Eliot and Pablo Neruda, a Comparative Journey of Poetic Purpose within The Waste Land and Canto General” (2003).
  • Caroline Von Althann, “Film Adaptations of Jane Austen’s Novels” (2003).
  • Briana Komar, “A Marxist Reading of Le Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens” (2003).