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 2003
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
The Role of Forgivesness in Health: A Systematic Review, Charlotte Isabel Sinclair
Epiphany in Short Stories for Young Adults, Frances M. Stone
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
True Believers, Skeptics and Others: Uncovering the Mysteries of Jerusalem through Generations of Primary Accounts, Marianne S. Bellino
Providing the Muses: An Inquiry Into Creativity and Creation, Erica Buswell
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
A Fool's Challenge: Folklore's Ivan-the-Fool in the Poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Elizabeth Hume
The Third Policeman, John-David Johnson
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
Roman Dining Ritual and the Christian Response, Kristin A. Zampell
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
Photographic Cultures: The West and the Maasai, Casey Marie Fisher
Promise of Progress and Freedom: Analysis of Abraham Lincoln's Republicanism, 1858-1860, Elizabeth Fitton
Actions Speak Louder than Doctrine: The Faith and Criticisms of the Contemporary Catholic Woman, Kelly Gillespie
Marxist Ideology and Feminism: Tensions Between Theory and Practice in Revolutionary Russia, Lynne M. Koch
Bedbaiting and the Blacklist in One Massachusetts ACWA Local: My Family's Struggle, Brian Richard Le Blanc
Pursuing the Elixir of Life: The Seeker's Journey for Scientific Knowledge in the Fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gareth M. Lema
"Comrades, Please Stand Up!" The History and Resistance of Gays, Lesbians, and Bisexuals in Hong Kong, Adrian Leung
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
An Analysis of Black-Scholes Options Pricing Theory, Douglas J. Ormond
War and the Childhood Self: Woundedness, Disintegration, Resilience, and Hope, Emily Susan Rauer
Feminism and the Press: Hillary Rodham Clinton's Press Coverage and Its Impact on Images of American Feminism, Allison Schultz
An Economic Analysis of the National Football League, Paul Sullivan
Theses from 1998
The Sleep and Mood of First-Time Mothers: The last trimester through four months postpartum, Jennifer L. Bassett
Of Labor Wars and Astronomical Salaries: Free Agency and Our Changing National Pastime, William Benedict
Beethoven's Essay on Transcendence: A Study of Op. 111, Yves C. E. Calderone
Towards a New Paradigm: Female Revisions of the Readitional Love Story, Melissa J. Carrick
Articulating Joyce..., Gavin P. Clancy
Potential Pharmacological Treatment for Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia: Prenatal Clucocorticoids and Vitamin E in the Nitrofen-Rat Model, Gregory M. Coté
From Crisis to Crisis: The Gaullist Challenge to the Viability of the European Economic Community, 1963-1965, Joseph-Allodin L. Cruz
The Question of History in James Joyce's Ulysses, Timothy C. E. Doherty, Jr.
Op. 21 "Thank You", Elizabeth Dunn
The Impact of Managed Care on Hospital Quality, Joseph Forget
A Synthesis of 7-norbornadienol and Anti-7-norbornenol for a 13C-13C Coupling Constant Study, Peter Furmonavicius
The Decline of Democratic Statesmanship: Polling and Policy Making in Modern America, Kathleen M. Grammatico
Building the Federal Branch: An Instututional History of the Federal Judiciary, 1789-1842, Robert J. Hume
How Were Her Sentiments to Be Read?: Examining Subjectivity and Questioning Narrative Authority in Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion, Tricia E. Hurley
Out of Mozart's Shadow: Re-Envisioning Beethoven's Fidelio, Vanessa Lynn Kabash
Revolutionaries in Conspiracy with History: Leaders of the Easter Rising, 1916, Nicholas A. Kenney
A study of the non-English-speaking patient-physician-interpreter triad, Maryanne Makredes
The Presence of A Cultural Agenda in the Writings of Louisa May Alcott and Judy Blume, Elizabeth McCusker-Concannon
Modulation of the Chromosome Damaging Effects of Bleomycin in Human Lymphocytes, Miriam S. Merz
Creating the Female Self through Diary-Keeping, Andrea Nicolay
Imperfect Justice: An Analysis of the American Jury System, Aimee J. O'Rourke
Power to the People: Economic Reform in Post-Soviet Russia, Damian S. Schaible
"My labor will sustain me": Radical Christian-Heroism in John Milton's Paradise Lost, Brian Lucas Spadora
The Forest or The Trees? Public Management of our National Forest Lands, Stacy Strongarone
Using Control to Explain a Loss of Control: A Look Into the Class Differences in Child Abuse, Heather Grace Zierak
Theses from 1997
Muscle Bound: The Weight of Cultural Fictions of Maculinity On America's Young Men, Darrin R. Berard
Part Time Work Options: Are They Mutually Beneficial to Both Large Public Accounting Firms and Professionals?, Erin Carberry
"The Strip:" A Search for Place in Modern Day America, Susan M. Coddaire
"Truthtellers": Journalists From the War in th Former Yugoslavia, Margaret Katherine Collins
The relationship between level of feminist identity and power in heterosexual dating relationships., Ellen G. Connell
"Equal" Education for All? The Influence of School Environment on Children's School-Related Beliefs and Academic Performance, Rebecca C. Fauth
"This Fair Conjunction": The Historiography of Shakespeare's History Plays from Richard II to Richard III, Brian Fodera
Amide Acylolysis: Steric Effects, Michael Charles Hewitt
The Ascent of a Poet: Place, Poet, and State in the Works of Joseph Bradsky, Catherine M. Hobbs
To Honor and Obey: Gender Ideals and the Normalization of Marital Violence in America, 1600-1900, Sharon Karg
Study of Electron Attatchment to C6F8Cl2 and C6F8Cl2 in the Gas Phase Using the FALP Technique, Donna M. Kerr
Morality, Politics, and History: Coming to Terms with the Past in West Germany and Austria during the 1980s, Sarah A. Maney
Behind the Group Facade: A Study of Friendship and Gender at Holy Cross, Laurel Molloy
John Michael Montias's Perspective of Art in Seventeenth Century Holland: On the Integration of Economics and Art History, Julie A. Moran
Hyacinth Girl, Catherine A. Mulligan
Total Quality Management: A Case Study of its Place in the Construction Industry, Tom Oneglia
Consuming the Body: Female Literary Representations of dis-Empowerment, Angela Marie Quaranta
The Differentiation of C2C12 Myoblasts and the Expression of the Gap Junction Protein, Connexin-43, at the Level of the mRNA, Jennifer J. Schneider
The Effects of Ouabain and Gap Junctional Communication in Mouse BALB/3T3 Fibroblasts, Stacey L. Valentine
John F. Kennedy and the Rhetoric of Optimism, Thomas L. Weber