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 2007
Wired or Tired? Caffeine & Sleep in Adolescents., Bosky Patel
Our Boys: An Analysis of the American "Boy Crisis," Gender Privilege, and Academic Ethic within Higher Education, Kara M. Pipoli
Psychotropic Effects of Estrogen, Lesley Russell
You Are What You Eat: Embodying Gender and Morality in Eating, Anna Vannucci
Morphology and Taxonomy of the Kaiparowits Ornithomimid Manus, Ivan Vrcek
Vulnerability and Masculinity in Adopted Versus Non-Adopted Adolescent Boys, Laura A. Walsh
Theses from 2006
The Lady and the Two Cities: The Concept of Fortune in Ancient and Medieval Views of Roman History, Kathleen Derrig
Poland in the U.S.: Understanding the Birth of Solidarity through American Eyes, Brenna Dion
Imagined Nación: Mexican Settings and Ethnic Identity in Four Chicana/o Novels, Keridan Doyle
Collateral Source Rule: Special Interest Groups and their Effects on Jurisdictional Statutes, Andrew Feeley
Strange New Universe: A Study of Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometries, Ellen K. Gasparovic
"Enemy Aliens:" FBI Domestic Surveillance of Japanese in The World War II Era, Andrea N. Isabella
Religious Thinking and Philosophy: The Influence of Kierkegard on Heidegger's Conception of Inauthenticity in Being and Time., Timothy Jussaume
The Politics of Violence: The Impact of ETA Terrorism on Spanish Democratization, Samantha P. Kingsbury
Green Solutions to Arsenic Contamination, Suzanne E. Kulevich
A Connecticut Yankee in King Leopold's Court: Mark Twain's Congo Crusade, 1904-1906, Michael C. McLaughlin
The Constitution of Self-Development: The Jurisprudence of Anthony M. Kennedy, Timothy W. O'Brien
Women Motorcyclists: Rolling the Throttle, But Riding Under the Radar, Kimberly N. Richardson
Playing Politics with the Policy Process: The Pitfalls of Public Policy Reform, Erin B. Robert
The Oppression of Silence: Young Women Coming of Age in Poverty, Kathryn Scheinberg
A New Sense of Self: Exposing the Subject in Renaissance Sonnet Sequences, Whitney E. Schmitt
When a Reporter 'Becomes the News': Judith Miller's Contribution to the Journalists' Privilege Debate, Heidi Stack
Images of God in Postmodern Literature, Emily Sweeney
Calculating Heading from a Video Camera: A Computational Model of Motion Perception, Robert Truxler
Pubs, Swans and Leprechauns: Exploited Icons of Irish Literature, Sarah Wetherbee
The Impact of Charter Schools on Fifth Grade Student Engagement Levels, Maggie Zweiben
Theses from 2005
Effects of the Internship Experience on Recruitment of Women and Minorities at Public ccounting Firms, Bridget Anne Blazek
Daniel and Philip Berrigan: Peacemaking Priests in Times of War, Molly E. Bobek
We Wear the Mask: Unveiling the Strategy of Passing, Julie A. Brennan
Little Women and the "True Woman" Unmasked: Nineteenth-Century Ideals, Feminine Literary Recourse and the Domestic Guise of Louisa May Alcott's Subversive Fiction, Lindsay E. Degnan
Courts and the Struggle for Civil Liberties during Wartime, Matthew DelMastro
Models of the Church in Latin American and Feminist Liberation Theologies, Francesca Errante
Coincident Genetic Events in Yeast, Kate Freeman
The Road to Modernity: Security and Reform Under Catherine II of Russia, Jennifer Hughes
Forest Composition and Land-Use History at Moore State Park, Paxton, Massachusetts, Meredith Irwin
Order from Chaos: Bismark's Policy Toward the Balkans in the 1880s, Sean Kelleher
Mixing Up the Masks: Gender and Genre in Aristophanic Comedy, Katie Lamberro
Orthographic-to-Phonemic and Phonemic-to-Orthographic Consistencies Effects on Spelling and Reading, Sarah N. Liang
Rock Journalism: Critical Methods for Understanding Popular Music, Victoria McCabe
The "Authenticity" of the Speeches in Thucydides' History, James McGovern
Language for Us All, Adam D. Musser
Latinas Encounter the U.S. Medical System: Barriers to Care, Alternative Approaches, Nicole Nadeau
Green Bohemia: Absinthe & the Iconography of Intoxication, Jeanne Thérèse Normand
The "Other" East Asian Miracle: Democratization in South Korea and Taiwan, Justin Reidy
To Languish Amid Strangers: Exile at Home and Abroad in Irish Song, Deirdre Blaize Rodgers Sweeney
On the Kauffman-Harary Conjecture., Elizabeth M. Sennott
Lower Frequencies, Lindsey M. Veautour
The British Woman Beyond Boundaries: The romantic Allure of Italy, Erica Wraight
Theses from 2003
"Imagine Adam Everett" and other stories, Todd Barosky
The Role of Syndecans in the Attatchment of the Neurofibromatosis Tyle II Protein Merlin to the Cell Membrane, Katherine A. Beckwith
Forgive Us Our Debts: A History and Analysis of Third World Debt Relief, Charles J. Boulier, IV
Negotiating with Patriarchy: Contrasting Strategies of Three Nineteenth-Century Feminists, Amy J. Brundage
A screening system for protein trans-splicing in Synechocystis sp. PCC6803, Alicia M. Garcia
Rewriting Shakespeare in Contemporary Contexts: the verse drama, Right on Time, Christine Mae Hanson
The Effects of the WTO on the Relationship Between China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, Sean Harrington
La Survivance and the Franco-Americans of Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850-1910, Timothy Holahan
Wound and Cure: Creativity and Depression, Emily R. Hunter
"Backward, Forward, Outward, Inward, Bottom to the Top:" Somethings of Fiction, Suzanne M. Kelley
The Bard of Newark: Philip Roth and the Fiction of Place, Justin J. Kiczek
The Development of Muscle Memory in a Fine Motor Task, Timothy Levine
Constructing Gabriel, J. J. Mammi
Towards a Common Foreign and Security Policy for the European Union, Marina Moriarty
Synthesis of Chiral Ligands for Use in Asymmetric Catalysis of Carbon-Carbon Bond Formation Reactions, Danielle M. Nihan
The History of American Immigration Policy and the Willingness to Assert Soverignty on the Borders: 1891-1996, Jeffery Nathan Nunez
Half Measure: Imitation as Art, Katie Perry
Le Donne Fasciste del Duce: Women, Corporatism and Charisma in Mussolini's Italy, Inez Cristina Russo
Time Propogation and Scattering of a Guassian Wave Packet, Bradley W. Schuller
A Violent Mind? A Multi-method study of the Association between Schizophrenia and Violent Behavior, Alisha R. Taylor
The Voices of the Beatles: An Examination of the Aesthetics of Voice in Rock, Tara Trudel
Theses from 2002
Getting Married and Staying Married: What's Love Got to Do With It? College students' general schemas and idealistic expectations of marriage., Bethany Abbate
America Strikes Out: Jackie Robinson, Racism, and the Limits of Integration, 1945-1947, Thomas Cadigan
Development of a Screening Method for Mutanats Affecting Fe (III) Reduction in Thermotoga maritima, Carolynn Cavicchio
Are Prescription Drug Producers Greedy Money-Makers?, Gregory Dadekian
Finite Reflection Groups in Two and Three Dimensions, Thomas J. Emmerling
Investigation of Laser Cooled Atoms, Kendy Hall
A Comparative Study of mechanisms and Strategies For Hypoxia Resistance in the Animal Kingdom, Emily K. Hogan
Understanding the Water/Acetonitrile Interface Using Molecular Dynamics Simulations, Daniel D. Kirchoff
The United States Constitution in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Emi S. Lizama
Coloratura as Drama: The Function of Vocal Virtuosity in Mozart, Rossini, and Donizetti, Julia Dorothy Madden
Kinetic and Mechanistic Investigations of Thermal Electron Attatchment Reactions in the Gas Phase, Cindy Magee
"I am a Gentleman's Daughter": Paternal Authority and Matrimonial Choice in Jane Austen's Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility, Andrea C. Marino
The Problem of Consciousness, Aleksander Kristian Mehrle
Determining Sctructural Characteristics of Cycle Peptides via Spectroscopic Methods, Heidi E. O'Donnell
Exodus, Ryan Anderson O'Donnell
Polis Tyrannos': A New Interpretation of The Athenian Tribute System, Amanda Regan
Historical Apotheosis: Narrative and Narcissism in The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!, Allison K. Welch
Theses from 1999
Island Dreams: The Tempest as a Model for the Genre, Elena Araoz
Debtors to Homer: Studies in the Ancient Novel, Denis Brogan
Literary Memory: The Role of Deep Memory in the Literature of Atrocity, Daina E. Casling
"Yes Mom, It Is Thought Provoking": Children's Books for Adults and Their Call for Peace, Kathryn D. Eagen
A Second Language, Damian Fallon
Promise of Progress and Freedom: Analysis of Abraham Lincoln's Republicanism, 1858-1860, Elizabeth Fitton
Marxist Ideology and Feminism: Tensions Between Theory and Practice in Revolutionary Russia, Lynne M. Koch
A Non Issue (The Yellow Monkey), Timothy D. Lyons
Removing Authority: Experience and Authorship in the Travel Narratives of Margery Kempe, Mary Rowlandson, and Zilpha Elaw, Catherine E. McCorkle
The Boy Scouts as a Progressive Era Response to the Problem of Urban Youth, Matthew J. McDonough
Interaction of L-type voltage-gated calcium channels with syntrophin in mammalian skeletal muscle, Kitty O'Hare