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The M.A. English program includes a thesis requirement. Writing the thesis (40 to 50 pages, not including the bibliography) is a two-step process that normally takes place during the students’ last two semesters. In their second-to-last semester, students take English 7800, a preliminary research and proposal writing course. It is highly recommended that, at this point, they should be completing the last of their nine courses (see English, M.A. Degree Requirements) and ideally should have already completed the foreign language requirement.
Upon completing English 7800, students must find a professor who will supervise their thesis projects; this is pre-requisite to registering for English 7810 (Thesis). Ideally, in their last semester, students are working exclusively on the thesis projects.
The course descriptions for English 7800 and 7810 make the process clear:
To obtain permission to register for English 7810, students who have secured a thesis adviser should submit a Thesis Title Form on the Brooklyn College Portal (Student Transactions tab, then e-Services). When the thesis is complete and approved by the adviser, students should use this same portal function to submit the thesis electronically for approval by the English Department.
It is best to begin planning your thesis project early in your graduate career because you have several important decisions to make before you can successfully write a thesis. You have to identify faculty members who would be appropriate thesis advisers and you have to think about potential thesis topics. These tasks are clearly related to one another and require careful thought.
Before we begin, there are some differences among the disciplines that must be understood. In the arts, humanities, and social sciences, a thesis topic can sometimes be developed as a result of your interest in specific courses you have taken. You might begin by talking with some of your professors about potential topics and present to them your ideas for a thesis topic. Then you should develop a full proposal for a thesis topic when you take English 7800, before you register for English 7810: Thesis. In this way, your research assignments in that course can contribute to your thesis.
For the purposes of the handbook we will present the process of writing and researching a thesis in four parts:
In a proposal you tell two people, your adviser and yourself, what you have in mind. Your research adviser can help you write a good proposal, but the first step is yours. Before you approach an adviser for help, write a thesis proposal. This process is central to English 7800: Introduction to Literary Research, a pre-requisite for English 7810: Thesis.
Writing a proposal is not preliminary to research. It is a part of research. To write a good proposal, you should investigate your potential topic before you approach your adviser. One way to do that is to conduct a search for books and articles on the subject using standard bibliographies in your field and reading one or two key books or articles.
Consider your resources and time constraints while developing your initial proposal ideas. The topic you choose depends on a number of things: your own interests; whether your adviser will be on campus while you are working on the project; his or her expertise in your area of study; and the time you have available to complete the research and writing. To narrow or limit a topic usually means giving up some aspect of a topic and concentrating instead on part of it.
The proposal sketch that you write before you meet with your project adviser should explain:
A proposal is a starting point, not the finished thesis. Include ideas that you feel sure you would like to investigate as well as other related ideas that you think might be worth exploring. But get your ideas down before you approach your adviser. This will give your adviser a sense of your seriousness about doing the project and will give you both a starting point for discussing the project.
When you talk with your research adviser about your tentative proposal, work toward revising it in several specific ways. Consider the following questions:
As you try to answer these questions and develop your proposal, keep in mind that at this stage nothing is engraved in stone. You cannot possibly know in advance everything that will actually happen as you do the project. In fact, the unexpected things that happen as you work are a part of what makes writing theses exciting and rewarding.
The completed final draft of your proposal should include the following:
By the time you complete your proposal (if not before), you should consult with one or more potential thesis advisers. These will be members of the Brooklyn College graduate faculty. Although your instructor in English 7800 will evaluate your thesis proposal for the immediate purposes of that course, the document will also facilitate your discussion with potential thesis advisers as you plan for the following semester.
Be sure to file the “Thesis Title” form on BC WebCentral before the end of January if you plan to graduate in the spring semester, or before the end of May if you plan to graduate in the fall semester. The “Thesis Title” form includes your provisional thesis title and the name and email address of your thesis adviser.
Research projects differ in many ways, but most of them have at least two important things in common. One of them is the pressure of time. The other is the tendency to forget, in your natural concern to produce a final product, what you have done day to day on the project.
What you can’t be sure of before you start your project, of course, is exactly how you are going to spend your research time. You can only guess and make some plans. The calendar you draft in your proposal is a record of your guess. Set up some tentative intermediate deadlines that will remind you day to day and week to week how much you have left to do. You will probably have to adjust these intermediate deadlines as you go along, but even the process of adjusting them will help you know where you are and how far you have to go.
One way to help keep track of time is to use a monthly box-calendar. It should include major research work points during the term, major deadlines in your other courses, and any important events in your personal, family, and work life.
The way to stay on schedule is to watch your calendar and keep looking ahead as you work. If you see the project getting too large or too complex for the time you have left, ask your research advisor to help you subdivide it and subordinate pieces that you cannot treat in depth during the time you have left.
Often what keeps you going when you are doing independent study research is the pressure of time: making it to a deadline in one piece. Because of the pressure of time, you are likely to forget what you did, how you did it, and what you thought and felt about it. The urge to move on to the next thing is all but irrepressible. That is the reason many researchers and scholars keep research logs. A research log is a long-term memory bank and a creativity tool. With a complete record of what you did and thought, you can go back over your work from time to time to see how your ideas have developed and discover new ideas or new directions for research. You may want to make use of a double-entry process log. Use the left-hand pages for work notes. Use the right-hand pages for personal responses to your work.
The work notes that you write on left-hand pages are dated descriptions of what you did, when and where you did it, and why. You can quote passages from your reading that seem interesting, useful, or suggestive. You can draft some sentences or paragraphs that may find a place in your proposal or final thesis. You can list books and articles you have consulted or plan to consult.
The reflection notes that you write on the right-hand pages are an on-the-spot informal record of your personal experience doing the project. This is the place to carry on a running conversation with yourself about what you are doing. Part of your personal experience is your thinking: your hunches and guesses, however wild; your off-the-wall ideas; questions that arise in your mind, however relevant or irrelevant; your plans; your doubts; your hopes; and your reflections on passages you have read or on passages you have quoted on the left-hand page.
A double-entry process log of this sort takes only a few minutes a day. But its value, as the material accumulates, soars far beyond that small investment of time.
Do some writing about the project as you go along. Even a paragraph or a page once a week written in your research log will help, restating the position you are taking as your understanding of it changes. Plan to write your first draft early enough to submit it, chapter by chapter, to your adviser and to revise on the basis of his or her comments. Set a deadline to complete a second draft for yourself well before the final due date so that your advisor has time to read it, and you have time to make any further changes that may be needed.
Talking with your adviser after you complete each chapter can help you use the time you have left more effectively. You may discover what it is that you really need to do in order to complete the project in a satisfactory way. You may decide to finish looking into the sources that you have already planned to read. You may decide not to read some of the things you planned to read, but to read something else instead. Or you may decide that you have already read enough, so that what you really need to do with the time you have left is to revise your paper carefully so that it says just exactly what you want to say.
In any case, keep in mind that revising the final product of a research project will probably involve more than just fixing up the style of an essay. You may have to do some more research, write some new sections, or even rethink the whole thing. In the end, the quality of your essay may depend on how much time you have set aside to rework your thoughts for the final draft.
Andrews, Suzette (M.A. English) After the Towers Fell: Between the African Burial Ground and Ground Zero, a Revival of the Amerieuro Narrative Adviser: Geoff Minter
Ardolic, Rizo (M.A. English) A Fatal Discord: An Adaptionist Examination of Inherent Nature in Relation to Culture in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure Adviser: Geoff Minter
Bernstein, Joshua (M.A. English) Richard Brautigan’s “Trout Fishing in America” as an Allegory for the Futile Pursuit of the American Dream Adviser: Carey Harrison
Bradley, Beatrice (M.A. English) “Defac’t, deflourd, and now to Death devote”: The Mother of Mankind and Ovidian Metamorphosis in Paradise Lost Adviser: Kathleen Haley
Brannon, Norman (M.A. English) Queering Koinéization: Polari as a Contact Language Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Continues, Michael (M.A. English) Of Arts and Minds: Towards a Cognitive Approach to Aesthetics Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Grossfield, Rebecca (M.A. English) Women and Space in 19th Century New York: Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (A Story of New York) and Henry James’s Washington Square Adviser: Martha Nadell
Gruss, Yasmin (M.A. English) The Conditions of Spectatorship in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being Adviser: Karl Steel
Hanna, Ayanni (M.A. English) “Spirit in a Plastic Package”: A Study of Womanhood and Humaneness in Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa’s “Sky Doll” Adviser: Karl Steel
Harouch, Alana (M.A. English) The Construction of Self through the Modern Poetic Image: An Evolution of Imagery from Romanticism to Symbolism Adviser: Marjorie Welish
Husband-Clarke, Sheervon (M.A. English) Women, War & Peace Adviser: Moustafa Bayoumi
Hussain, Farzeen (M.A. English) Global and Transnational Trauma in Post 9/11 Fiction Adviser: Martha Nadell
Jean-Francois, Joan (M.A. English) A Man of Many Faces: Understanding Karl Marx and Frantz Fanon in Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood Adviser: Moustafa Bayoumi
Jones, Chad (M.A. English) Bridging Difference: Baseball and Cricket as Cosmopolitan Tropes Adviser: Martha Nadell
Lattanzio, Joseph (M.A. English) “The Better Fortitude” or Christian Heroism in Paradise Lost Adviser: Ana Acosta
Maher, Alyssa (M.A. English) “Dear Maid, Kind Sister, Sweet Ophelia”: The Manipulation of Ophelia in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet Adviser: Tanya Pollard
Marchiano, Marie (M.A. English) Time, Narrative, and Memory in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea Adviser: Robert Viscusi
Martin, Tanesha (M.A. English) Michelle Cliff’s Use of the Language or Resistance: Her Role in the Empowerment of Women of Color Adviser: Rosamond King
Mayer, Sari (M.A. English) Interpreting Peter Pan: A Reader-Response Approach Adviser: Geoff Minter
Mendelson, Eric (M.A. English) Status Update: Reviving the Rhetorical Canon of Memory for the Digital Age Adviser: Martin Elsky
Nassif, Farid (M.A. English) The Intimacy of Murder Adviser: Carey Harrison
Nuzzo, Natalie (M.A. English) Profiles of Intentional Exposures: The House of Mirth in the Age of Facebook Adviser: Robert Viscusi
O’Shea, Brendan (M.A. English) Orlando as Exposition of National, Racial and Sexual Mythologies Adviser: Geoff Minter
Padilla, Janine (M.A. English) (S)expression: Existentialism and Eroticism in the Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom Adviser: Carey Harrison
Rafferty, Philip (M.A. English) Flying Forward: Making the Link between Borges and the Literary Tao of Cesar Aira’s Continuum Adviser: Karl Steel
Riemer, Kristina (M.A. English) Henry James and The Awkward Age between Realism and Modernism Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Rooke, Thomas (M.A. English) Trauma and Making Sense in Post-9/11 Narrative Adviser: Martha Nadell
Rose, Elizabeth (M.A. English) The Gothic Mode in George Eliot’s Middlemarch Adviser: Rachel Brownstein
Shtein, Eva (M.A. English) Chekhov: Nastroenie in Uncle Vanya and Other Plays Adviser: Carey Harrison
Specland, Jeremy (M.A. English) The Mystery of Truth: Grace and Human Agency in Milton’s Areopagitica Adviser: Ana Acosta
Sy, Cherry Lou (M.A. English) The Plastic Colored Body in Absalom, Absalom! Adviser: Rosamond King
Thek, Katrina (M.A. English) Burning Sensations: On the Authorial Urge to Destroy One’s Work Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
Urias, Antonio (M.A. English) “Haunted Landscapes”: The Inenarrable War of Ambrose Bierce Adviser: Mac Wellman
Winslow, De’Shawn (M.A. English) Motherhood and Patriarchy in Toni Morrison’s Sula and Tar Baby Adviser: Geoff Minter
Yeasin, Rummanu (M.A. English) Middlemarch and Mr. Lydgate, Good Teachers for Contemporary Medical Students Adviser: Rachel Brownstein
Cummings, Flavia (M.A. English) Window Motif in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary Adviser: Janet Moser
Darcy, Erin (M.A. English) “That Long White Road”: New York Women, the Marriage Market, and the New Public Spaces in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth Adviser: Martha Nadell
Franklin, Daniel (M.A. English) Chaucer’s “Parson’s Tale”: Monastic Theology, “Meditacioun,” and the Lectio Divina Adviser: Martin Elsky
Gauvard, Dominique (M.A. English) Race in Young Adult Literature Adviser: Marie Rutkoski
Griffiths, Timothy (M.A. English) Nobody’s Protest Novel: James Baldwin, Gay Activism, and the Language of Queer Collectivity Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Ibrahim, Saad (M.A. English) The Phenomenology of Space in Marvell’s “Upon Appleton House”: The Poetics of Renewal Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
Ionescu, Olivia (M.A. English) Paterson: An American Epic of Ordinary Life Adviser: Robert Viscusi
Irving, Christopher (M.A. English) A Succession of Masks: Batman’s Evolving Sexuality Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Jordan, Charles (M.A. English) The Digital Writing Process: A Proposal for the Integration of Technology into the Freshman Composition Classroom Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Lefkowitz, Richard (M.A. English) Satanic Versions of History in Paradise Lost Adviser: Kathleen Haley
Maultasch, Lara (M.A. English) Genre-Building and Metafiction: Jonathan Lethem’s Coming-of-Age Stories Adviser: Martha Nadell
Miles, E. Adina (M.A. English) The Pearl-Poet’s Christian Passover in Cleanness Adviser: Karl Steel
Mulcahey, Laura (M.A. English) The Loss of Anonymity: Public Exposure from Tabloid Reporting to the Pages of Facebook Adviser: Robert Viscusi
Neville, Summer (M.A. English) Chandler and Chance Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Nocera, Melissa (M.A. English) Assigning Agency: Ecofeminist Principles and the Representation of the Nonhuman Animal in the Works of Emily Dickinson Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Ogunnika, Oluwatosin (M.A. English) Writing in the Third Space: Postcolonial Identity in Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen and Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory Adviser: Renison Gonsalves
Owens, Sarah (M.A. English) A Mythic Hybridity: Limitations of the Binary and the Subordination of Female Sexuality in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex Adviser: James Davis
Press, David (M.A. English) All-Star Grant Morrison: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Twenty-First Century Comic Books Adviser: Robert Viscusi
Prudhomme, Anne Marie (M.A. English) On the Road and Out of Peyton Place: The Franco-American Working-Class New England Voice of Jean-Louis Kerouac and Marie Grace de Repentigny Metalious Adviser: Joseph Entin
Reich, Jamie (M.A. English) “Sea-Room to Tell the Truth In”: Counter-Narrative, Non-Traditional Text, and Oceanic Borderization in Melville’s Moby Dick Adviser: Renison Gonsalves
Risner, Tiffany (M.A. English) Sovereignty and the Goodness of God: Puritans with Something to Prove Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Roe, Erica (M.A. English) Traveling with Graham Greene: A Hermeneutical Journey of Doubt of the Author and His Character in The Power and the Glory Adviser: Paul Moses
Saporov, Philip (M.A. English) The Scarlet Flower: A Comparative Analysis of the Heroine’s Journey in the “Beauty and the Beast” Story Type Adviser: Aaron Streiter
Suarez, Angel (M.A. English) Sex Lies: The Journey to Manhood through the Rejection of Homosexuality and the Subjugated Female in The Virgin Suicides Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Tajbhai, Amina (M.A. English) “Evil, be Thou My Good”: Satan’s Influence on Fertility in Paradise Lost Adviser: Kathleen Haley
Tsuei, Kam Hei (M.A. English) The National Aesthetics of George Lamming Adviser: Moustafa Bayoumi
Tumas, Robert (M.A. English) More Than Just a Bicycle: A Post-Pedal Reading of Political Allegory in Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman Adviser: Carey Harrison
Visco, Claudette (M.A. English) Albee, Authenticity and the Influence of Catholicism: Confrontations with Modernity Adviser: Tanya Pollard
Berenstein, Ari (M.A. English) A Nation of Holdens: The Relevance of Holden Caulfield as a Critical Lens of American Youth in the Twenty-First Century Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Clay, Weston (M.A. English) Material Girl-Killer: Consumerist Discourse and the Sociopathic Narrator in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho Adviser: Janet Moser
Davis, Annette (M.A. English) Isabella’s Trial and Execution in Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”: Guilty of Non-Conformance Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
De Piper, John (M.A. English) Blood Meridian and Antic Clay: Cormac McCarthy’s Violent Worldview Adviser: Carey Harrison
Dell’Aquila, Michael (M.A. English) Writing Against the Dusk: Ethnic Twilight and the Persistence of the Italian-American Sign Adviser: Robert Viscuisi
DiBerardino, Michael (M.A. English) The Impersonal Turn: Keats’s Romantic Modernism Adviser: Rachel Brownstein
Dunn, Andrew (M.A. English) Mass Perversion: Cinema, the Psyche, and the Possibility of Collective Action in The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West and The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald Adviser: Joseph Entin
Feldnov, Amy (M.A. English) The Wartime Child in Contemporary Children’s Literature: Self-Writing and Sarajevo’s Anne Frank Adviser: Marie Rutkoski
Friedman, Carly (M.A. English) Joe Orton: Gender Rebellion of Mythic Proportions Adviser: Carey Harrison
Goykadosh, Brachah (M.A. English) Lacanian Desire and Kristevan Abjection in T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Adviser: Karl Steel
Hamilton, Debbie (M.A. English) Metonymy in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories Adviser: Geri DeLuca
Janisch, Rebecca (M.A. English) Making Gold Stay Adviser: Carey Harrison
JeanBaptiste, Darise (M.A. English) Toni Morrison’s Trajectory of Death Adviser: Martha Nadell
Jennings, Rachel (M.A. English) “What Counts Counts”: Understanding How Media Inspire and Thwart Progress in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things Adviser: Jason Frydman
Johnson-Harriott, Judine (M.A. English) Fleeing an Unjust Society or Finding Themselves?: A Study of Two African-American Writers’ Quest for Social Mobility and Personal Dignity Adviser: James Davis
Katz, Nechama (Nikki) (M.A. English) Does Biphobia Exist in the Literary Criticism of Shakespeare’s Sonnets? Adviser: Carey Harrison
Klein, Tamara (M.A. English) On the Edge: Woman and Marginality in the Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield Adviser: Martha Nadell
Marquez, Patricia (M.A. English) Intentionality and the New Signification: Language Theory from Saussure, Barthes, and Searle Adviser: Mark Patkowski
McCarthy, Eileen (M.A. English) The Function of Geography in Paule Marshall’s The Chosen Place, the Timeless People Adviser: Renison J. Gonsalves
McLinden, Cameron (M.A. English) The Banks of Poverty: Lack and the Threat of Lack in Continental Drift Adviser: Joseph Entin
Nance, William (M.A. English) Duality in Dialectics: Uncertainty in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy Adviser: Carey Harrison
Orlando, Anthony (M.A. Fiction) The Strange Stranger: Isolation and Guilt in the Lyrical Ballads Adviser: Karl Steel
Othman, Rihab (M.A. English) “Isnad” The Islamic Chain of Narrators: Adherence to the Cultural Echo Adviser: Karl Steel
Parasram, Shoba (M.A. English) A Barbaric Civilization: A Look at Blacks and Whites in Behn’s Oroonoko and Earle’s Obi Adviser: Ana Acosta
Pazmino-Martinez, Ivette (M.A. English) Sarah Stickney Ellis: Angel and Antagonist Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Pierluigi, Melanie (M.A. English) Trauma in the Body: Memory and Dissociation in Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Pike, Stephanie (M.A. English) On the Waterfront: Modernity and Modernism in South Brooklyn Adviser: Martha Nadell
Ralph, Aubria (M.A. English) Time and Creativity: Defining the Relationship Between Time and Creativity Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
Reilly, Abby (M.A. English) Seeing and Remembering September 11th in Post-9/11 Literature Adviser: Martha Nadell
Roy, Suklima (M.A. English) Language Bytes: Linguistic Changes Arising from Electronic Communication Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Siskind, Andrew (M.A. English) Motions of Abstraction and Entropy: The Ecology of A. R. Ammons’ Garbage Adviser: Ben Lerner
Sotirakis, Sia (M.A. English) Jane Eyre: Adaptability and Ascendancy Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Spencer, Stephen (M.A. English) Matter and Metaphor, Memory and Narrative: A Study of John Milton’s Paradise Lost Adviser: Kate Haley
Tekten, Tutsak (M.A. English) “An Incurable Imperfection in the Very Essence of the Present” Adviser: Janet Moser
Telesford, Nadine (M.A. English) Whiteness in The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon Adviser: James Davis
Truscello, Joseph (M.A. English) The Commodified Self: Identity in Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and John Updike’s Rabbit, Run Adviser: Martha Nadell
Vogl, Raquel (M.A. English) An Examination of Voice, Class, and Gender in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale and The Owl and the Nightingale Adviser: Karl Steel
Waller, Samantha (M.A. English) The Construction of Sexual Identity in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Walsh, Trevor (M.A. English) Dining from His Plate: Union with God in Angela of Foligno Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
Warsager, Allegra (M.A. English) “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City”: Negotiating Race and Class in Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude and Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities Adviser: Martha Nadell
Washington, Donna-lyn (M.A. English) The Theme of Diaspora in the Edwidge Danticat Novel Adviser: Renison Gonsalves
Akyeampong, Claudia (M.F.A. Poetry) Rumblings from A Talking Drum Adviser: Lou Asekoff
Baez, John (M.A. English) Oral Otherness: Written Utterance in the Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde and Jean Genet Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Bagatourian, Bianca (M.F.A. Playwriting) Remnants of a Liquid World Adviser: Mac Wellman
Baker, Annie (M.F.A. Playwriting) Circle Mirror Transformation Adviser: Mac Wellman
Barker, Tanya (M.A. English) The Paradox of the Thing: British Imperialism and the Making of a British National Identity Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Bartnik, Catherine (M.A. English) Becoming the Grail King: Fate and Development in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival Adviser: Karl Steel
Beckim, Chad (M.F.A. Playwriting) Mercy Adviser: Mac Wellman
Brown, Donald (M.A. English) Impressionism Along the Shores of Balbec: The Practice of Impressionism in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time Adviser: Janet Moser
Brule, Michelle (M.F.A. Poetry) Where the Wind Blows Adviser: Julie Agoos
Carey, Anna (M.F.A. Fiction) The Leftovers Adviser: Fiona Maazel
Childers, Jodie (M.F.A. Poetry) Private Property Adviser: Julie Agoos
D’Alessandro, Mario David (M.A. English) Contextualizing Alisoun: A Survey and Evaluation of Competing Critical Approaches to “The Wife of Bath” and her Quest for Power and Ability to “Speak” Adviser: Karl Steel
Deal, Lance (M.F.A. Poetry) The Spine of the Snowman Adviser: Julie Agoos
DiGiacomo, Jason (M.A. English) Waugh in the 21st Century: An Examination of Evelyn Waugh’s Comedic World Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Dobran, Ryan (M.A. English) Clarity and Silence in George Oppen’s “Of Being Numerous” Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
Fraggetta, Amanda (M.A. English) Discovering America: Reimagining Nabokov’s Lolita as a Travel Narrative Adviser: Martha Nadell
Gartland, Neal (M.F.A. Poetry) The Viscous Jamboree Adviser: Julie Agoos
Ginger, Kelly (M.F.A. Poetry) Here, Now, Always Adviser: Julie Agoos
Gioe, Jamie (M.A. English) Oedipa and the Riddle of Reality in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Goettel, Diane (M.A. English) Identity in Space and Place: Perspectives on Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude Adviser: Martha Nadell
Grushkin, Daniel (M.F.A. Fiction) Stories of the Hour Adviser: Jenny Offill
Harte, Erin (M.F.A. Fiction) Don’t Scare Her Off Before She Starts: A Short Story Collection Adviser: Fiona Maazel
Hauser, Christina (M.F.A. Fiction) Coast is Clear: A Novel Adviser: Jenny Offill
Herceg, Jozeph (M.A. English) Live Through This: J.G. Ballard’s Crash, Martin Amis’s London Fields, and the New Necropolis Adviser: James Davis
Holland, Timothy (M.A. English) The Troubles in Joyce’s Dublin: Political, Religious, and Literary Hegemony in Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Adviser: Moustafa Bayoumi
Hopes, Adrianne (M.F.A. Fiction) Dirty Little Animals Adviser: Ernesto Mestre
Islam, Tanwi (M.F.A. Fiction) Bright Lines Adviser: Fiona Maazel
Kikoler, Jennifer (M.F.A. Fiction) On the Head of a Thief Burns His Hat: Stories Adviser: Amy Hempel
Krywicki, Jarad (M.A. English) Hamlet Goes Whaling: Suspension and Interpretive Deferment in Hamlet and Moby-Dick Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Ladjache, Siobhan (M.A. English) Derrida’s Hostile Hospitality: Re-imagining Belonging Adviser: Moustafa Bayoumi
Lemkowitz, Jake (M.F.A. Fiction) Alante! Adviser: Catherine Texier
Lewington, Robert (M.A. English) The Alchemist in Performance: Staging Ben Jonson for the Contemporary Audience Adviser: Martin Elsky
Lioce, Michael (M.A. English) An Introduction to Flashman Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Lucadamo, Elizabeth (M.A. English) The Struggle for Identity: Individual Identity as defined by Individual Trial and Experience versus Identity as a Function of Societal Enforced Roles Adviser: Carey Harrison
Macrides, Kalle (M.F.A. Playwriting) NOIR Adviser: Mac Wellman
Mantia, Cheryl (M.A. English) The Gothic Catholic: A Study of How Catholicism is Presented in Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian, or The Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797) Adviser: Carey Harrison
Marschall, Wythe (M.F.A. Fiction) The Gyrosphyrinx; or, L’Incroyable Pouvoir Des Filature Harpie: A Novel Adviser: Jenny Offill
McQuibban, Samantha (M.F.A. Poetry) Split Tongue Adviser: Julie Agoos
Miller, David (M.F.A. Poetry) Field Recordings Adviser: Marjorie Welish
Murtha, Megan (M.A. English) “Time Passes” in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse as a Framed Work of Post-Impressionism Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Neale, Julia (M.A. Liberal Studies) Conscious Identity: An Introductory Analysis of the Components of Personal Identity Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Olga Pester (M.F.A. Poetry) window open/window closed Adviser: Julie Agoos
Ostrowski, Julie (M.A. English) How Joyce Carol Oates Explores Urban Crises in Them and The Falls Adviser: Julia Hirsch
Oyola, Osvaldo (M.A. English) Collection, Identity and the Narratives of Brooklyn in Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude Adviser: Martha Nadell
Parfrey, Ian (M.F.A. Poetry) Brain Surgery with Fork Adviser: Richard Pearse
Plaunt, Chloe (M.F.A. Fiction) New Moon: Stories Adviser: Josh Henkin
Price, Jeffrey (M.F.A. Fiction) Brothers in Time Adviser: Fiona Maazel
Quartuccio, Peter (M.A. English) The Analyst and the Unknown: Objective and Subjective Detective Fiction in Poe and Joyce Adviser: Geoff Minter
Russo, Joseph (M.A. English) Queer Shamanism: Genet’s Thresholds of Becoming Adviser: Karl Steel
Sande, Melissa (M.A. English) Double Entendre: Hybrid Culture as the Psychological Equivalent of Sexual Trauma in Jean Rhys’s Postcolonial Novels Adviser: Moustafa Bayoumi
Sherwood, Normandy (M.F.A. Playwriting) Switch Blade Girls Adviser: Mac Wellman
Skinner, Deborah (M.A. English) The Issue of Women and Voice in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady and Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome Adviser: James Davis
Stevens, Elizabeth (M.F.A. Fiction) The Crony: A Novel Adviser: Jenny Offill
Tandy, Catherine (M.A. English) My Soul is a Pawn Shop: Consumerism and Numinism in Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
Tucker, Lindsey (M.A. English) Lisette Model: Obscuring the Identities of Art and Documentary in Photography Adviser: Joseph Entin
Wolff, Ian (M.A. English) Nonquest of Nonidentity in Nonplace: Postotherness in Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives Adviser: Joseph Entin
Workman, Emily (M.A. English) Gender Binaries and Imperialism: Milton’s Paradise Lost Adviser: Kathleen Haley
Abrahim, Anastasia “Jane Austen: The Realistic Romance Writer” Adviser: Geraldine De Luca
Acloque, Serene “Wandering Women of Turn-of–the Century American Literature: Situating Prostitution in The House of Mirth” Adviser: Martha Nadell
Ali, Yasmin I. “Disillusioned Mothers: Portraits of Mothers and Motherhood in Postcolonial Literature” Adviser: Moustafa Bayoumi
Bethge, John “The Informed Citizen: The Manchurian Candidate, Catch-22, and the Struggle for Individuality” Adviser: Thomas Boyle
Bose, Sharbari “Giving the Moment Whole: Female Narrative Silence in Bloomsbury’s Anti-Imperial Dialogue” Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Callahan, Clare “‘After’ Theory” Adviser: Joseph Entin
Chin, Sarah “Mirrors and Memories: Dystopian Science Fiction and Empowerment in Young Adult Literature” Adviser: James Davis
Dance Jr., Alphonso “Symbolism and Imagery of Denial and Acceptance in Richard Wright’s Native Son: Bigger Thomas’s Struggle to Express His Humanity” Adviser: Marie Buncombe
Dougherty, Nivia “History and Memory in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: The Conflict of Remembering and Forgetting the Past” Adviser: Martha Nadell
Durka, Agnieszka “The Art of Portraiture in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady” Adviser: Geoff Minter
Fairall, Holly “Gnomon’s Land: The Colonial Voids of Dubliners’ ‘Childhood Trilogy’” Adviser: Thomas Boyle
Fayerberg, Daniel “Surviving Austen: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Textual Survival of Jane Austen’s Novels During the Twentieth Century” Adviser: William Reeves
Flippin, Lakiska “The African American Feminine Gothic” Adviser: Martha Nadell
Fuks, Yevgenya “Hyperreality Revealed: The Function and Significance of Hyperreality” Adviser: Joseph Entin
Georgianna, Don “Truman Capote and the Nonfiction Novel” Adviser: Carey Harrison
Gersch, Jason “Creating the Preface-Lens: Interpreting the Underlying Sociopolitical Dichotomies of Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time” Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Gjoni, Iva “Time in Wonderland” Adviser: Robert Viscusi
Gore, Catherine “Representing Animals: Animals in Human Consciousness in Romantic Poetry” Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
Heffner, Rachel “Divine Imagination: ‘Words About God’ in the Children’s Fantasy Fiction of Madeline L’Engle” Adviser: Geraldine DeLuca
Hogan, William “Funny Bones: Black Comedy and the Body in The Revenger’s Tragedy” Adviser: Ellen Belton
Infortunio Jr.,Thomas “The Re-Makynge of Gawain: Artifice, Nature and Redemption in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
Lenahan, Holly “Anglo-Norman vs. Parisian Influence on Chancery English” Adviser: John Roy
Leotaud, Crystal Joanne “The People Could Fly: An Examination of the Negro Spirit” Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Lewis, Shell “An Elevated State of Mind: Woolf’s Androgyny and Anzaldua’s Mestiza Consciousness” Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Mitchell, Kean “On the Use of Creole in Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain” Adviser: John Roy
Mondano, Nicole “A Study of Transnational Women Writers, Their Female Protagonists, and the Criticism That Surrounds Their Work” Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Nicholson, Charlene “Sexuality in The House of Mirth and The Awakening” Adviser: James Davis
Rutman, Sharon “Twentieth Century Hell and the Possible Utopian Alternative Through the Novels of Upton Sinclair” Adviser: Geoff Minter
Ryan, Sheila “Adolescent Girls and the Scarlet Letter” Adviser: Prof. Viscusi
Sadykov, Leah “Prisoners of Language: Revisiting the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Scanson, Thomas “Marketing Manhood: Langston Hughes’s Queer Passing on The Big Sea” Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Simmons, Paulanne “The Musical as Literature: Notes on the Creative Process” Adviser: Cary Harrison
Stein, Roberta “The Key Factors Influencing the Depictions of Male-Female Relationships in the Novels of E.M. Foster and Virginia Woolf” Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Suszynski, Christina “If I Am a Woman of My Word, What Words Do I Use?” Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
Tavares, Frank “Complicity and Rebelliousness in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” Adviser: George Cunningham
Tepas, Simon “Hunter S. Thompson and the New Journalism: Fear and Loathing for the Daily News” Adviser: Geoff Minter
Ucciardino, Jack “Questions of Identity in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, and Playback” Adviser: Robert Viscusi
Uzzilia, Suzanne “The Language of Political Estrangement in Three West Indian Novels” Adviser: Rennie Gonsalves
Wallach, Miriam “Stand By Me: Defending Lois Lowry’s The Giver Against Censorship” Adviser: Nancy Vighetti
Wilson, Constance “Gender and Education in the Works of Ama Ata Aidoo and Tsitsi Dangarembga” Adviser: James Davis
Agius, Ryan “Narrative Voice and Authorial Presence in Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ and Kafka’s ‘A Hunger Artist’” Adviser: Thomas Boyle
Arts, George “Reference as a Text Construction Agent with a Focus on Anaphora” Adviser: John Roy
Beharry, Anjinie “What Explains Milton’s God in Paradise Lost?” Adviser: Ana Acosta
Berardi, Diane “An Evaluation and Case Study of E-Learning” Adviser: Geri DeLuca
Carosone, Michael “The Marginalization of Italian-American Writers and Italian-American Literature” Adviser: Geri DeLuca
Chwala, Gregory “Byron in Missolonghi: Greek Love and The Private Gone Public” Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Cohen, Diane “The Female Bildungsroman During Colonialism and Dictatorship” Adviser: Rennison Gonsalves
Coiffe, Dorothea “The Alphabet is Never a Neutral Technology: A History of Writing Systems in Twentieth-Century Turkmenistan and Other Areas of Central Asia” Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Cox, Margaret “Evolution of the African American Woman’s Psyche” Adviser: Geoffrey Minter
Cucaj, Xhenete “Re-Positioning the Feminine Role: A Study of Assia Djebar’s Quartet” Adviser: Moustafa Bayoumi
Davis, Maudelin “Henry James and His Feminine Influences” Adviser: William F. Browne
DePasquale, Elizabeth “A Lady’s ‘Verily’ is as Potent as a Lord’s: A Search for Non-Binary Female Subject Positions in Antony and Cleopatra and The Winter’s Tale” Adviser: Ellen Belton
English, Bridget “The Splendid Mirage: Bohemian New York and the Search for a Modern American Identity in Fitzgerald and Cather” Adviser: Martha Nadell
Esdaille, Elroy “Race as a Social Construction in the Works of Charles Chestnutt and James Weldon Johnson” Adviser: James Davis
Everitt, Ryan “The Connotative Denaturalization of Bleak House” Adviser: Ellen Tremper
Fogarty, Patrick “Exodic or Hybrid Literature? A Post-Colonial Analysis of Swift’s Drapier’s Letters and Joyce’s Ulysses” Adviser: Patricia Laurence
Gaske, Jaime “Realizing Myths and Symbols in Contemporary Literature” Adviser: Nancy Vighetti
Gutman, Emilya “To Be or Not to Be ‘Black No More’: The Essential Dilemma of the Harlem Renaissance” Adviser: Martha Nadell
Hoffman, Rabecca “Gender Differences in Cinematic Storytelling Styles: Bound vs. High Art” Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Holmes, Renee “Charles Chestnutt’s Paul Marchand, FMC and Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson: The Reconstruction of Race and the Revision of Slavery” Adviser: George Cunningham
Huliaris, Eugenia “The Paradigm Shift from New Criticism to Feminism in Daisy Miller and The Age of Innocence” Adviser: James Davis
Jones, Tashara “An Investigation Through the Thinking of Bigger Thomas: In Richard Wright’s Native Son” Adviser: Joseph Entin
Korbl, Angela “Out of the House of Arabic into the House of Latin” Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
Lemma, Erica “The Battle for Equality: Huck Finn and the Color Line” Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Lukszo, Ursula “Geography of the Ordinary: Locating BioPolitics in ‘The Time Before’ and the Time Now in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale” Adviser: Rowena Lee Quinby
Maharaj, Nira “Mule/Muse: Women in Jean Toomer’s Cane and Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men” Adviser: Martha Nadell
McCabe, Matthew “An Examination of January in Chaucer’s ‘Merchant’s Tale’” Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
McGee, Kristi “Oedipa Maas in Pursuit of Signs” Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Murphy-Wedlock, Kristine “Female Empowerment in a Time of Crisis: Fierce and Forceful Females in The Grapes of Wrath” Adviser: Joseph Entin
Moss, Tinamarie “Children’s Literature: An Archetypal Journey” Adviser: Geri DeLuca
Navarro, Lauren “Jane’s Mission of Agency: An Ethos of Domestic Happiness” Adviser: Ellen Tremper
Nemtsin, Karina “The Demystification of Female Sexuality and Identity in Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood” Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Nugent, Patrick “Gifts for the Great Potluck: Metaphor and Form in Danger on Peaks” Adviser: Matthew Burgess
Plunkett, Michael “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds and the Horizontal Use of Literary Reference” Adviser: Robert Viscusi
Polenski, Michael “Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams: In the Woodlands of the Ojibway” Adviser: Robert Viscusi
Porter, Julia “‘There Be Soul-Artists’: The Effects of the Spiritualism Movement on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s The Minister’s Wooing” Adviser: Patricia Laurence
Roslyn, Rey “Empowering Women Through African Literature” Adviser: Geri DeLuca
Shetty, Shilpa “Globalization and Tourism in A Small Place, The God of Small Things and Transmission” Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Shury, Donna “African Guyanese Folk Music: A Cultural Heritage” Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Starr, Jessica “The Shadow Heroics of Social Masochism in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre” Adviser: Wendy Fairey
Teitel, Michael “The Imperial Smile: Notes on the Face of Imperialism” Adviser: Dillon Brown
Tescher, Jeremy “Words are Things: The Significance of Language in Blood Meridian” Adviser: James Davis
Thame, Nicola “Ideologies Challenged and Then Reaffirmed: Wide Sargasso Sea’s Assumption of Colonial Power” Adviser: Dillon Brown
Vella, Tinamarie “The Forgotten Blemish: Remembering Filipino History Through Literature” Adviser: Renison Gonsalves
Washington, Phyllis “Ebonics – A Legitimate Language” Adviser: Mark Patkowski
Wei, Zhaoxia “Nineteenth-Century New York City in Washington Square and The House of Mirth” Adviser: Martha Nadell
Willis, Karen “Black Women Writers and Virginia Woolf’s Androgynous Mind” Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
John Yi “Identity and Chinese Aesthetics in Ezra Pound’s The Cantos” Adviser: Nicola Masciandaro
