Senior Thesis

Prerequisites

Honors candidates in Comparative Literature are required to have maintained a GPA of 3.5 in the major to qualify for submitting a thesis proposal. In addition, candidates must demonstrate a strong interest in a specific topic for which an appropriate faculty advisor will be available in the senior year.

Timing

Students wishing to pursue a thesis in Comparative Literature are strongly urged to secure an advisor by the end of the week after Spring Break in their junior year. By May 15th of their junior year, candidates must submit to the Program Advisory Committee a one- to two-page proposal and a preliminary bibliography. The Advisory Committee will inform candidates by June 1 whether they may proceed with the thesis and advise them about any changes that should be made in the focus or scope of the project. The summer before the senior year will be spent compiling a more detailed bibliography and preparing for the process of writing the thesis.

In their senior year, candidates will devote two semesters and the winter study period to their theses (493-31-494). By the end of the Fall semester, students will normally have undertaken substantial research and produced the draft of at least the first half of the project. At this point students should also have a clear sense of the work remaining for completion of the thesis. In the course of the Fall semester, students will also have chosen and met with a second reader for the project, who will provide additional guidance and read the final thesis. By the end of Winter Study, students should have completed a draft of the entire project. At that time, the Comparative Literature Advisory Committee, together with the advisor, will determine whether the project may continue as an Honors Thesis, or whether its first portions (COMP 493-COMP 31) will be graded as Independent Studies.

The second semester of independent thesis work will be spent revising as necessary. The completed thesis in its final form will be due one week before the last day of classes. The student will also give a public presentation of the thesis as part of the Senior Portfolio Symposium in the spring.

Characteristics of the Thesis, Evaluation, and Major Credit

The topic of the thesis must be comparative and/or theoretical. It is also possible to write a thesis that consists of an original translation of a significant text or texts; in this case, a theoretical apparatus must accompany the translation. The complete thesis must be at least 50 and at most 75 pages in length, excluding the bibliography. A typical analytical thesis might consist of three chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion (though other options are possible too). The advisor will assign the grades for the thesis courses (COMP 493-31-494); the Advisory Committee will determine whether a candidate will receive Honors, Highest Honors, or no honors.

For students who pursue an honors thesis, the total number of courses required for the major—including the thesis courses COMP 493-31-494—is 10, plus one winter study, i.e., one of the thesis courses may substitute for one course and the Senior Portfolio.

Past Comparative Literature Theses

From Charles Baudelaire to Paul Celan: Benjaminian Poetics and Lacanian Psychoanalysis at the Limits of the Self
Alexa Cohen
2025

Imagining an Unhealthy World: Living with Illness in Environmental Bande Dessinée
Michael Keegan
2025

History in Postmodernisms of Collapse: Trauma and Redemption in Günter Grass and Vladimir Sorokin
Julian Spiro
2025

Born Again: Feminine Coming-of-age in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Jessica Zhu
2025

Forms of Matter and Matters of Form: Structures of Cosmic Predetermination In His Dark Materials and La Divina Commedia
Jack Davis
2024

Logos, Advertisements, and Print Culture: The Decolonial Aesthetics in the Paratexts of Souffles-Anfas
Amy Lemuz-Guerra
2024

Form, Immediacy, and Affect Signification of Cinematic Fixation, Reimagined
Cindy Yanyan Ge
2023

This Phenomenal Life: Explorations of Reality in Virginia Woolf’s Critical Writings and Early Fiction
Mae Burris-Wells
2022

“All the sense of real”: Girls at Play in Natural Spaces and Imagined Places
Emily Chen 諶玥
2022

Transgressing Against the Totalitarian: The Politics of Bodily Violence in Franz Kafka, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Marina Abramović’s Representations of the State of Exception
Phillip Pyle
2022

Ban Yu’s “Gun Grave”: A New Approach to the Translation of Contemporary Chinese Fiction
Andrew Rule
2021

Abortos inducidos, espontáneos, y fantásticos: Depictions of Pregnancy Loss in Works by Amparo Dávila and Samanta Schweblin
Sophia Torres
2021

Voices of the Labyrinth: The Parameters of Body and World in Kurahashi Yumiko’s short stories and Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Panalee Maskati
2020

Questions of Comparison in Literature and Comparative Literature: Bolaño, Genet and the Discipline
Joseph Moore
2020

From Poesaka to Pastiche: Max Havelaar in Retelling and Translation
Anne-Sophie van Wingerden
2020

Shooting for the Heavens: Examining the Accessibility of the Spiritual Renewal in Journey to the West
Jenny Wheeler
2018

From Practicing Place to Practicing Space: The Development of Spatial Narrative in the Map and Novel
Hannah Benson
2017

Three Case Studies on the Death of the Author: How a Ghost, a Vampire, and a SNOOT Manipulate Author-Reader Intimacy from Beyond the Grave
Meghan Collins
2017

Abstract Cultures and Edible Bodies: The Power of French and American Paratexts Over the Works of Tahar Ben Jelloun and Calixthe Beyala
Margaret B. Richardson
2016

Transition as treatment: the making of narrative in transgender medicine
Elizabeth A. Dietz
2015

Wondrous Monsters and Monstrous Wonders: Technology in Ancient Greek Literature
Sam O’Donnell
2015

Exiles of memory: a comparison of writing by Jorge Semprún and W.G. Sebald
Haley A. Stewart
2015

We are not Superheroes, Others are not Villains: Identity and Body Politics in Japanese and Korean War Films
Min-joo Lee
2014

Victorian Reflection and Diffraction of Ovid’s Narcissus
Hannah Wang
2013

Trames, or; Threads Translating the Gap in a Contemporary Caribbean Play
Holly Crane
2012

Finding-and Leaving-Neverland: Reading J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan with the Psychoanalytic Theories of D.W. Winnicott and Jacques Lacan
Hannah Mangham
2012

Out of Body: Tahar Benjelloun’s L’enfant de Sable and the Politics of Queer Postcoloniality
Sayantan Mukhopadhyay
2012

Problem Children: Searching for Female Agency in Erotic Japanese Comics
Kimberlee Sanders
2012

Illegible desires?: “reading” non-heteronormative pregnancies and desires in Rumi’s Mathnawi
Ceyhun C. Arslan
2011

David’s companions: Jonathan and Joab
Chloe Blackshear
2010

Métis/métisse cou-coupé: history, violence and métissage in the works of Aimé Césaire and Maryse Condé
Annette N. Quarcoopome
2009

On Eloísa Cartonera and Cesar Aira: much more than just a translation of El cerebro musical
Stephanie Reist
2009

Exposing “fictive ethnicities”: engagement of Dominican identities in the works of Blas Jiménez, Junot Díaz, and Julia Álarez
Morgan Anne Simpson
2009

Reflections on migratory subjectivity: Caribbean women writers and a plural conception of identity
Anisha N. Warner
2009

“Devuélveme mi cuerpo”: race, repetition and redress in Peruvian narrative
Melissa J. Bota
2007

On Mitkiness: satire and performance in a transitioning Russia
Casey Drosehn
2007

From the banlieues of literature to a decentered canon: writing the urban periphery in the Beur novel
Laura D. Wagner
2007

Smoke and Ashes: Lacan and the 9/11 Real
Sarah R. Hack
2006

Fulfilling forbidden desire: liberating spaces, diseased bodies, and Greek loves in Andre Gide’s L’Immoraliste and Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig
Joseph Arthur Hutchinson
2006

Veracious tongues: a study of Nuyorican poetics and performance
Lisha Perez
2006

Ambiguity, marginalization, and silence: examining the metaphors of sickness and healing in La Celestina
Anna K. Schlechter
2006

Stream of revolutionary consciousness: Marxism and the postmodern in Jesús Díaz’s Las iniciales de la tierra
Ashley Roome Brock
2005

Literary representations of good and evil: man’s evil impulse and self-gratifying redemption in Voltaire’s Zadig, Goethe’s Faust, and Bulgakov’s The Master and Margerita
Anastasia Gilman
2003

Telling stories: discontinuous narratives of women and history in Assia Djebar’s L’amour, la fantasia and Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma
David Goodman
2003