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 2014
Buying the Same Horse Twice: The U.S. Embassy in Moscow, 1944-1945, John R. Dobbins
The Art of Time: Living and Loving as Mortals, Kathryn Droumbakis
Enhancing STEM education in high-need public schools by developing and evaluating the effectiveness of low-cost, interactive demonstrations for high school physics, William J. Geddes
Chemometric Analysis of Biodiesel Fuels using Comprehensive Two-Dimensional GC-MS, Julian Goding
A Musical Mirror: Spain's Ever-changing Political Landscape and Its Reflection in Popular Music, Vera Grek '14
On the Jurisdictional and Legal Complexities of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp and Interrogation Facility, Cosmo Karalolos
Specific Determinants of the Utilization of Dental Care Among Low-Income Children in the U.S., Jeanne Ann Kiernan
Liberation of the Papacy: La Teología de la Liberación & Pope Francis, Matthew G. King
Studies Toward the Synthesis of Lycorane and Aspidosperma Alkaloids, Joseph Frederick Kramkowski
Occidentalism without Abstraction: How Historical Events Shaped Occidentalism in the Arab World, John Macomber
Innovation and the Internet: A Cross-Country Analysis, Andrew Philip Marzo
The relationship between eating-disorder scales and breakdowns in cognitive control toward food cues in a non-clinical college population, Allison Matous
Characterizing the Human Anti-HIV Protein APOBEC3G: An Examination of Viral Domains, Meiling R. May
Inherently Human: A Study of Stories in Mainstream and American Deaf Culture, Marielle McKenna
Temporal Sequence of Stress-Induced Changes in Mouse Behavior and Physiology, Ryan O'Keefe
The Mandate of Law and Nature: Reconiling Individual Freedom and Social Order, Amanda M. Osowski
Beyond Development: A Reconsideration of the Life-Course Through the Analysis of Arnett's "Emerging Adulthood", Laura Polacek
Through the Lens of Feminist Theory and Identity Politics: A Look at the Women's Movements in Argentina from Eva Perón to Cristina Kirchner, Katherine Riley
A comparative analysis of acute exposure to 17β-estradiol: effects on the development and growth of sea urchin larvae, Elizabeth Tobey
Theses from 2013
An Epic Tradition Expanded and Condensed: The Structure and the Purpose of Silius Italicus' Italian Catalogue, Matthew P. Angiolillo
Reconstructing the Dodo: Modeling hindlimb locomotion in Raphus cucullatus, Andrew Biedlingmaier
An Analysis of Legislative and NGO Responses to Human Trafficking: Advocating for a Human Rights-Based Approach, Kelly Casey
Newly Reducible Iterates of Families of Polynomiais over Number Fields and Finite Fields, Emma Colbert
The Road to Each of Us: Character, Place, and the Writing of Contemporary Fiction, David Cotrone
The Things They Carried: Object Agency and National Crisis in Morte d'Arthur and Moby Dick, Sheila Coursey
American Political Media Bias: Past, Present, and Prospects for the Future, Daniel P. DeConinck
A Historical Diagnosis: An Analysis of the Medical Discourse Concerning Threats to Women's Health and Happiness in Late Nineteenth Century America, Kathryn Mary DeFusco
It's Only Human: A Defense of the Necessity of Theatre, Christine Freije
Charlotte Brontё's Narrators: Evident Disguise in Shirley and Villette, Katie Ann Guandalini
Determining the Cause of Primacy Effects in Memory, Nathan Guevremont
Citizenship Reform in Modern Germany: The Nationality Act of 2000 and its Effect on the Political Incorporation of Turkish Immigrants, Lauren A. Kuehn
Making Liberalism Work: Rawls, MacIntyre, and Ratzinger on Justice, Moral Disagreement, and the Good, Travis LaCouter
Margaret Fuller: The Forgotten Feminist?, Margaret Mackinson
Made in Secret, Elizabeth T. Masi
Social Security & Insurance: Exploring Insurance for Social Security and Its Effect on Political Participation, Mariah Napolitano
Out of Many, One?: The New Deal Coalition, Race, and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love, Malik Neal
Redon's Retrospection: Seeking the Past in French Symbolism, Liza Noone
The Tata Group and Indian Nationalism: One Business's Effect on the Shaping of Contemporary Indian Politics, Haley F. O'Brien
Computing the 3D Trajectory of Moving Objects Using a Neural-Based Model, Michael Pettinati
Warring with Images: The Relationship between the Flavian Building Program and War, Brigit Quirk
Catholic and Feminist: Two Studies in Negotiating Identities, Kelsey D. Russell
Rational Agency and the Foundation of Morality, Adriana M. Sarni
Molecular Recognition Using Hydrogen Bonding Catalysis: The Effectiveness of Thiourea Derivatives in Stereoselective and Regioselective Synthesis, Christopher R. Shugrue
Let My People Go? The Complex History of Slavery and the American Catholic Church, James R. Simmons, Jr.
An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of Networking And Other Factors On Job Attainment, Jonathan W. Stepsis
Man Up: Representing Masculinity in Contemporary British Fiction and Film, Luke Sullivan
Cyclization of Glutamine or Asparagine Residues Coupled to Peptide Bond Cleavage in an Intein and a Model Peptide, Laura Urbanski
A Poetic Exploration of Hindu and Buddhist Tantra, Caroline Voldstad
Health Literacy and Its Role in the Recovery from Substance Addiction, Kevin Wall
The Role of Syndecan-1 and the microenvironment in Breast Cancer Tumorigenesis, Jonathan Ye
Theses from 2012
Medical Tourism in a Global World: Neoliberalism, Place, and Inequality, Julia Bandini
Measure Theory and Fourier Series, Elizabeth Bolduc
An Unplublished Manuscript of the Illiad with Scholia: the Marcianus Graecus 2.458 (=841) (Allen U4), Melissa Browne
The "Power" of Declaration: The War Powers Resolution and the 2011 Libyan Intervention, Joseph J. Cavanaugh
Market Authoritarianism and the Internet: Fortifying Authoritarian Rule in China, Joshua Chang
Tragedy and Transcendence: Tracing Tragedy from Early Modernity to Present, William Ciancola
The Superwoman Syndrome: A Comparative Study of Women Faculty and Administrators in a Liberal Arts College, Lauren D'Abrosca
Applying cognitive theory to real-world problems in learning and education, Chad Desharnais
An Exploration of Syndecan-1 in Relation to Merlin in Neurofibromatosis Type II, Catherine Flynn
Unequal Citizenship: Civic Education in Massachusetts Public High Schools, Caroline B. Galiatsos
Antiquity in the Political Aesthetics of Greek Governments from 1936 to 1980, Eliza J. Gettel
Tragedy and Transcendence: Tracing Tragedy from Early Modernity to Present, William J. Giancola '12
Breakdowns in Cognitive Control as a Predictor of Prelapse in Opiate-Addicted Emerging Adults, Sean Gillespie
Between Capitalism and Socialism: Religion and Distributive Justice, Nicole Guarnieri '12
Songs after James Joyce's "Chamber Music", Christopher N. Hart
For Amber Waves of Grain: Agricultural Subsidies and America's Farm Legislation, Katelyn Henmueller
Inside the Madhouse: Using first-hand Asylum Narratives to Reconsider Louisa May Alcott's "A Whisper in the Dark", Elyse Kaplan
Freud, Flowers, and the Fourteenth Dalai Lama: Perspectives on Finding Happiness by Finding the Sources of Suffering, Jaeyeon Lee
From Chat Rooms to Voting Booths? The Evolution of ICT and its Effects Upon Representative Government in China, Robert N. LiCalzi
Cicero, Quintilian, and the Science of Persuasion: An Examination of the Role of Arguments from Ethos in Roman Oratory of the Late Republic, George M. Matthews, Jr.
Three Short Stories, Brendan R. Murray
An Exploration of Protein Aggregation with Chemical Models, Rio S. Nomoto
Contemplation and Enjoyment in Renaissance Literature, Emily Petersell
The Aggregation of Glutamine Based Tetrapeptides and Pentapeptides, Cristiana Pineda
Fear and Identity in the Synthetic: The Rise of the Posthuman, Peter Renehan
Through a Camera Darkly: An analysis of mental illness in film, Robert J. Sevenich
Manipulating Taxes to Influence Economic Growth: An Effective Public Policy?, Daniel Sheehan
Examining Marie Antoinette: A Comparative Historiography Based on Visual Depictions of an Outsider Queen, Mark Charles Gregory Weyland
The Car Craze in China's Booming Economy, Thomas Wilde
Theses from 2011
Identity Status of Obese Adolescent Females: The Role of Stigma and Social Interaction, Julianna R. Aguilar
What Are the Main Impediments to Democracy in the Middle East?: An Analysis of Democratic Theory and History in Egypt, Iran, and Jordan, Katherine Andrew
Chilean Protected Democracy: An Analysis of the 1980 Constitution as an Impediment to the Democratic Transition of the 1990's., Christopher Bergan
For It Will Stop Tormenting Me as It Has Done and Otherwise Will Do": Women's Ghost Stories, Erin Carpenter
The Promise and Curse of Oil: An Analysis of State Transitions to Oil Dependency, Selina E. Carter
The Modern Achoress: Exploring The Presence of Julian of Norwich in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction, Collen M. Curran
Embodied Social Coordination in Autism, Rachel Diorio
The role of syndecan-1 and E-cadherin in Breast Cancer: An Investigation of Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT), Kerry Elizabeth Drury
Spanish Bullfighting: Perspectives on the Ban of a Cultural Tradition, Wan-Yi Fang
Finding the Balance: The Challenge of The Merchant of Venice in Performance Today, Danny Goodman
Meal, Metaphore, and More: Food in the Old Testament, William A. Grebe
Beyond a Sunset Ending: the Social and Political Propagandist Nature of Fairy Tales, Margaret A. Kelly
Conflict Economics: A Wealth Perspective, Christopher F. Kopp, Jr.
Remembering Jack and Jackie: Unpacking the Camelot Myth, Katherine M. McLean
APOBEC3G: a Characterization of its anti-HIV Function, Sarah Lingjie Meng
A Conceptual and Methodological Analysis of Hydrogen Bonding Catalysis and its Application in Organic Synthesis, Anthony J. Metrano
Imagining Oxbridge, Margaret Molloy
Making sense of medical uncertainty: clinical accounts of mild cognitive impairment, Tara M. Neary
Mapping Yoknapatawpha: Imagination and Cartography in Selected Works of William Faulkner, Colin Poranski