College Honors Program
The College Honors Program brings together academically accomplished and highly motivated students to pursue multidisciplinary studies in the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. This highly selective and challenging program is composed of sophomores, juniors, and seniors from any major, and incorporates special seminars, an honors colloquium and a thesis.
The College Honors Program, established in 1962, is one of the oldest programs providing distinctive educational opportunities at Holy Cross culminating in the senior honors thesis, and the intellectual excitement of a multidisciplinary classroom, where students from all majors address significant matters with faculty who are experts in integrative teaching and scholarship.
Theses from 2022
Psychological Conceptualizations and Treatments of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Kaitlyn H. Bickerton
Parental Opioid Use and Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome: Combatting Socioeconomic Barriers to Treatments and Interventions, Julie Brewer
The Syntax of Social Justice: Examining Post-Bellum Black Intellectual Thought & Classics, Mathew D. Cedeno
"Weak Women?": Plotting Women's Networks of Influence at Plimouth Colony in the Early Seventeenth Century, Helena Connell
Trickle-Down Central Banking: An Analysis of Quantitative Easing within the US Economy, Emily Curtis
Patriotism? Nicias, Alcibiades, and 1/6/21, Stephen Dierkes
Progress Towards Low Energy Charge Transfer Collision Experiments Using Pulse Sequencing, Alex DiResta
How Prison Systems Can Better Aid People with Substance Use Disorders, Avery Faires
Writing Dystopia: Zamyatin’s Writing Philosophy, Genre, and the Protagonist of We, Kelly A. Gallagher
The Witch in the Roman Imagination, Augusta Holyfield
Writing Home Beyond Domesticity: Elizabeth Bishop and Mascha Kaléko, Katie Knippler
Cornel West: Self and Community, Rachel Mallett
Performance, Theatricality, and Identity in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Nina Masin-Moyer
Labor Unions in the United States, Argentina, and the United Kingdom: A Comparative Study, Jake Mozeleski
High Glucose Has Sex-Specific Effects on Amyloid-β Accumulation in Alzheimer's C. elegans Model, Monica Nakhla
Analysis of Equations of State for Neutron Star Modeling, Joseph E. Nyhan
The 1001 Nights: How Compilation, Translation, and Adaptation Influenced a Global Work of Literature, Mary Evelyn Quinlan
Vaccine Hesitancy: A Deep-Dive into the Decision-Making Processes around Vaccination, Matthew Robertson
Family Life During Covid-19, Ellen B. Rogers
Woven Words in the Iliad: Gender, Narrative, and Textile Production in the Scholia of the Venetus A Manuscript, Anne-Catherine Schaaf
Species Delimitation in the Pseudanophthalmus robustus Species Group Using DNA Barcoding, Frank Spano
Transforming Trees, Transcending Binaries: Gender in Augustan Poetry, Kendall Swanson
The Potential for Non-Addictive Analgesics to Address the Opioid Crisis, Emily Taylor
Allumination: Inquiries into an Understanding of Power, Oppression, and Connection, Hannah Thompson
Interactive Effects of Food Availability and Salinity on Phenotypic Plasticity of Echinarachnius parma Larvae, Isabelle Q. Uong
Language and Cognition: A Comparison of Spatial and Mathematical Cognition in Visual and Auditory Languages, Lauren Vitelli
Salty Enzymes: Protein Splicing Dependence on Salt Concentrations, Diana Wall
The End of the 7: Chinese Catholic Immigrants in Flushing, Xiani Zhu
Theses from 2021
Primaried from the Left: The Role of a Progressive Campaign Network in Congressional Primary Challenges, Grace C. Burke
Doppelgängers and Doubles in Literature: A Comparison of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Meghan E. Cooper
Anti-Anarchist Legislation and the Road to the 1919 Red Hysteria, Evan Crumb
A Year in Syntropy: Exploring Syntropic Agriculture, Ajah Eills
Biomedical Ethics in the Medical School Curriculum: Lessons Learned from the Holocaust, Emma Flanagan
«Cuida tu alma y tu cuerpo por Dios y la Falange»: Women’s Education and la Sección Femenina in Franco’s Spain, Madeleine Fontenay
Inflammation, Diet, and Depression, Kareem F. Hamada
The United States and its Coercive Democratization Attempts in Japan and Iraq, Noah Shepardson
Theses from 2020
The Green Poem: An Original Play in Two Acts, Emily Arancio
Audience and Narrative in Female-Authored Diaries of the Twentieth Century: Analyzing Diaries As Modernist Texts, Rose Grosskopf
Analytic Exoplanet Transit Analysis, and Investigation into WASP, Kepler, and Qatar Systems, Colan Gulla
The Qur’ānic Doctrine of the Divine Names and the Muslim Understanding of the Divine, Sibgha Javaid
A Comparative Analysis of the Politics of Gun Control in the United States and Australia, Nicholas Leone
Matrons, Mothers, and Monsters: The Heroine in Beowulf, Grendel, and The Mere Wife, Grace Lucier
Theses from 2017
Recording Angels: Examining Female Narrators in Vampire Fiction and Film, Jacqueline T. Bashaw
Rationality vs Reality: The Dissonance between Economic Models and Experimental Data, Piotr Broda
The Demilitarization of Costa Rica, Patrick Buscone
The Convergence of Schenkerian Music Theory and Generative Linguistics: An Analysis and Composition, Michael A. Ciaramella
Concurrent Surgery and Informed Consent, Andrew M. Weller
Theses from 2016
A PCR-Based Assessment of the Etiology and Pathogenesis of Feline Chronic Rhinitis, Gabriella Motta
Talking About Aphasia: The Two Voices of Insight, Elizabeth O'Brien
Theses from 2015
Approaches to Late Victorian Poverty – A Re-Examination of the London Charity Organization, Claire S. Mahoney '15
Theses from 2014
A Reassessment of Athenian Tribute, Christine Bannan '14
Buying the Same Horse Twice: The U.S. Embassy in Moscow, 1944-1945, John Dobbins '14
A Musical Mirror: Spain's Ever-changing Political Landscape and Its Reflection in Popular Music, Vera Grek '14
Theses from 2012
Tragedy and Transcendence: Tracing Tragedy from Early Modernity to Present, William J. Giancola '12
Between Capitalism and Socialism: Religion and Distributive Justice, Nicole Guarnieri '12
Theses from 2009
The Use of a Lock-In Amplifier to Stabilize the Frequency of a Laser Diode, Jose M. Juarez