The following list includes the names of Dickinsonians who have earned departmental honors, the thesis/project title, and the year of conferral. If there is no thesis or project title, the conferring department only will be listed. Each academic department (or program) has its own criteria for awarding departmental honors. Please see the Advising Guide or elsewhere on the department’s main website for details.
Julia MacRae Kelly (2024)
Ambivalence, Detachment, Abortion: Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays
Long Dinh Ta (2022)
Literary Form and Violence: A Queer Viet(namese) American Poetics of Fragmentation
Gracyn Danielle Bird (2021)
Bodies With (out) Boundaries: Affective Ambiguity in "Boundless"
Caitlin Kayo Kirchberg (2021)
"We Were Japanese Too": The Liminality of the Nisei Identity Told Through Three Memoirs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II
Kira Louise Ousey (2021)
"From A Certain Point of View:" Star Wars, Revision, and Textual Criticism
Audrey Devon Schlimm (2020)
"I must laugh or die": The Satirical Feminism of Katherine Mansfield's "Bliss" and Other Stories
Janel Pineda (2018)
"The War Is or Isn't Over, But Coffee Still Brews": The Salvadoran Civil War, Transnational Migration, and Navigating Legacies of Trauma in Javier Zamora's "Unaccompanied"
Anna Dempsey Robinette (2017)
Bilingual and Bimodal Expression: The Creolization in Edwidge Danticat's Oeuvre
John Anderson Kneisley (2016)
"A Shadow of a Magnitude": The Condition of Artwork in John Keats's Ekphrastic Poetry
Samantha Rae Moyer (2015)
"Fit to govern?" Charismatic and Traditional Kingship in Richard III, Richard II, and Macbeth
Mary Katherine Naydan (2015)
Modernist Mythmaking: A Comparative Study of J.R.R. Tolkien and Ezra Pound
Leah Judith Shafer (2014)
A Day When It Was Dangerous to Play: War and Gender in Stein's Children's Books
Christina Michele Socci (2013)
"Learn My Language": Exploring Translation as a Critique of National Identity in Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy"
Elizabeth Evelyn Campbell (2012)
Finding Austen: The Covert Gender Politics in Emma's Marriage Plots
Julia Grace Feerrar (2012)
H.D., Epistolary Poet: Bridging "Schism(s) in Consciousness" in Trilogy
Rachel Faith Chesley (2011)
"Tainted with the Blood of the Oppressor": Womanism, Black Power, and the Treatment of the Mulatto in Alice Walker's "The Color Purple"
Megan Natoli Liberty (2011)
But the Return to the Pictures: The Forgotten Photograph of Gertrude Stein's "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas"
Eliza Rose Park (2011)
"Become as Little Children": A Study of the Subversion of the Cult of Domesticity in Two Sentimental Texts
Emily Mae Stokes-Hallett (2011)
Steinbeck's Subversive Cultural Capital: The Grapes of Wrath and the Problematic Canonization of the Lower Classes
Caroline Anne Peri (2010)
"The Taint of Effeminacy": Questioning Normative Masculinity in E.M. Forster's "The Other Boat" and Youssef Idris' "Leader of Men"
Jessie Paton Strasbaugh (2010)
What She's "Supposed to Do": The Lunar Erotic Poetics of Elizabeth Bishop and Brenda Shaughnessy
Christopher Michael Gross (2009)
Historicizing Gender: Masculine Dissolution and Female Dominance in Chris Ware's "Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest Kid on Earth"
Amanda Ruth Lagji (2009)
"Willing Liberates": Nietzschean Heroism in Tsitsi Dangarembga's "Nervous Conditions"
Kaitlyn Marie Plummer (2009)
"Who Wants Cocoanut?": The Construction of Desire and the Demise of Empire in E.M. Forster's "The Other Boat"
Marissa Leigh Calfe (2008)
The Over-Passing of the Bound: Analyzing the Influence of Dante's Francesca da Rimini on Milton's Revolutionary Eve
Thomas Bradley Elrod (2008)
"And All the Court Laughed Loud": Colonialism and Satire in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"
Meredith L Smith (2008)
Transexual Memoir: Breaking the Silence in Deirdre N. McCloskey's "Crossing: A Memoir" and Jennifer Finney Boylan's "She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders"
Laura Elizabeth Harbold (2007)
Reconfiguration of the Male Body in British Trench Poetry of the First World War
John Isaac Lingan (2007)
Reanimating the Store of Gold: Reason, Sentiment, and Failure in "Tristram Shandy"
Nathan Eric Fry (2006)
How the Pen Unsheathed the Sword: The Role of Russian and English Conflict Literature in Creating the First World War
Mary Alice Hartsock (2006)
Displacement and Deviance: Female Sexuality and the Double Standard in the Works of Austen, C. Bronte, and Byron
Brian Richard Sylvester (2005)
Pictorial Misunderstanding: W.G. Sebald and Photographic Uncertainty
Katherine Kelly Ginn (2004)
Reproduction in the Slave Economies of Morrison and Acker
M Roger Brubaker (2003)
A Green Barbarism turned Paradigm: Wallace Stevens' "Earthy Anecdote" and "Harmonium"
Susan Audrey Logan (2003)
Genius, Insanity, and Ignorance: Edgar Allan Poe's Aesthetic View of the Human Mind
Elizabeth Jane Rawitsch (2003)
'Saying Something' about Roosevelt's America: An Auteurist Analysis of Frank Capra's "Lost horizon" in the Context of the Great Depression
Rebecca Downey Reeves (2003)
"Because it's Superman's Book, You Moron!": Geeks, Metafiction and Feminism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Abigail Jane Watson-Popescu (2003)
The Metaphor Speaks: Aemilia Lanyer and Mary Wroth's Subversion of Power
Amanda Elizabeth Eveler (2001)
Subjectivity, Control and Transcendence through Passion in Jeanette Winterson's "Written on the Body"
Eric Frederick Bourassa (2000)
The Constraints that make a Life: The Inversion of Aztlan in Cormac McCarthy's "Border Trilogy"
Michael Marion Meagher (2000)
"All Lies Lead to the truth": Quest and conspiracy in The X-files
Janine Stumb Corbett (1999)
Magic Realism, Post-colonialism, and Hybridity: Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude, Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" and Ben Okri's "The Famished Road"
Christopher Michael Maier (1999)
The Passion to be Masculine: D. H. Lawrence and the Struggle for a Masculine Identity
Nicole M Lehman (1998)
"The Sisters' Vows, the Hours that we have Spent": Renaissance women, Shakespeare's Women, and Homosocial Bonding
Elizabeth Keller (1997)
Absurdly Logical: Mathematics, English and Language in Lewis Carroll's "Sylvie and Bruno"
Todd Brandon Weaver (1997)
Misreading the Blues: Robert Johnson, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a Theory of Vulgar music and its Authorial Powers
Jared Ross Novoseller (1996)
Sentenced to Doing Time: Stoppard Presents Time in Arcadia
Terri Ann Pawelski (1996)
The Politics and Artistic Achievement of John A. Williams and "The Man who Cried I Am"
Karen Pohlman Quill (1996)
Creating a Passion Through the Arts
Emily Ann Wylie (1994)
Eudora Welty: Writing confluence in The Golden Apples
James Calvin Davis (1992)
Departmental Honors in English
Jeffrey Scott Ramsay (1991)
Winds of Change: Shelley--A Self-acknowledged Legislator and his dynamism
Jeffrey Paul Hergan (1990)
Truth and Untruth: Heidegger and the Problematic Nature of Truth in "Heart of Darkness"
Heidi J Hormel (1985)
"Linda," A Short Story
Tracy Patterson Cunningham (1984)
Words as Things: The Diminutive Vision of Jonathan Swift's "A Tale of a Tub"
Martha A Dalrymple (1984)
Nature Imagery and the Poetry of the First World War: From Chivalry to the Machine
Kristina K Groover (1983)
Beyond the Adamic Myth: Harriette Arnow's "Kentucky Trilogy"
Stephen E Klinge (1982)
"An Experienced Eye of Earthly Sharpness": The Poetry of Stevie Smith
Sherry Kravetz Wampler (1982)
The Gavain Canon: Poems and the Poet
Tracey Hoffman (1981)
John Barth: Structure, Myth and Identity
Linda B VandeVrede (1981)
Time and Mutability in Tennyson, Housman and Brooke
Robert Frank (1980)
Crabbe, Cowper, and Johnson: The English tradition from 1780 to 1820
Gail R Huganir (1980)
The Poetry of Sir John Betjeman
John A Macdonald (1979)
Blindman
Alan N Escott (1978)
Patterns of Imagery in the Novels of Thomas Hardy
William W McAllister (1977)
Dos Passos: From Young Radical to Aged Conservative - The Plight of the Individual in Society
Anne S K Turkos (1977)
Robert Browning and the Dramatic Monologue -- An Exploration of his Poetry
Nancy Ferris Engle (1975)
Departmental Honors in English
Susan L Duffield (1974)
D.H. Lawrence and Neoprimitivism: The Literal and Fictional Quest for the Good Life in the Good Place
Timothy Ruth (1974)
The Mystic Poetry of Dylan Thomas
John Daniel Wrigley (1974)
The Novels of William Golding - Thematic Progression
Susan A Stewart (1973)
The Briar Beneath the Rose: Women in American Folklore
Allan R Chavkin (1972)
The Duality Metaphysic: Its Influence on the Theme and Form of the Art of D. H. Lawrence
Mary J Gaskin (1971)
Beyond the Moment
Jane M Hunter (1969)
Liturgy and Drama as a Continual Tradition
Joyce Payne Johnston (1969)
Haiku: The Spirit of Japan
Burton S Weiss (1969)
The Dramatic Expression of Alienation
Ruth Anne Baumgartner (1968)
Dylan Thomas: The Journey to Acceptance: The Situation of Man in the Universe, an Evolving View
John E Hill (1968)
Bernard Shaw: The Dramatist as Critic 1895 - 1989
David B Bedick (1967)
"The Wave of the Future is Blue": A Novel
Leslie Dixon Cook (1967)
The State and the Theatre: Drama in Russia - 1860-1940
Leslie Micklewright Devine (1967)
Technical Innovations in Ezra Pound's Poetry
Susan Johnson Dowds (1966)
The Mirror, the Garden, and Dame Fortuna: A Study of the Emblematic English Renaissance Stage
Patricia Casserly Kelly (1966)
Reportless Measure: A Study of Transcendence in Emily Dickinson's poetry
Mark Moscowitz Moss (1966)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Vision of Love
R Jon Paugh (1966)
Myth and Ritual in the Works of Ernest Hemingway
David Richman (1966)
The Superman Motif in the Nineteenth Century
Elisabeth Rachel Virnstein (1966)
The Progression of Character in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Josie Campbell (1965)
The influence of Greek tragedy upon Eugene O'Neill's "Mourning Becomes Electra"
Jonathan M Cross (1965)
The Wave, the River, and the Sea: Patterns of Symbolic Image in the Novels of Virginia Woolf
Peter W Marshall (1965)
The Problem of the Self in the Novels of Elizabeth Madox Roberts
Carol Nuetzman Weber (1965)
Innocence and Experience: A Study of Children in Modern Literature
Sonia Raysor Carringer (1964)
Wit, Whimsey, Wickedness, and Wisdom: The paradox of Oscar Wilde
Hilma Forsberg Cooper (1964)
Conrad and the Deadly Sin of Pride
Roberta Williams Francis (1964)
A Defense of Shelley
Dona E Houseal (1964)
The Creative Urge in D. H. Lawrence's Fiction
Constance Courtright Rockman (1964)
The Literary Fairy Tale in Nineteenth Century English Literature