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 2005
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
Anagnoris and the Tragic Hero: A Study of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Modern American Playwrights, Conor Devine
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
Old Buildings, New Uses: Adaptive Reuse of Timber Frame Barns, Kathryn Mahoney
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
Bickering in Geneva: How International Relations Theory Explains the Role of International Institutions & Effects on the Transatlantic Relationship, Shelley A. Venus
Dying to be Heard: A Diagnosis of Cause and Purpose in Illness Narratives, Victoria Winn
The British Woman Beyond Boundaries: The romantic Allure of Italy, Erica Wraight
Theses from 2003
Critique of an Art Form: Adorno's Philosophy of Jazz, William Andersen
"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
Realistic Fiction for Children: Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume in Text and Memory, Regina D'Addario
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
The Role of Tourism in the Ethnic Identity of Irish-Americans, Colleen E. Higgins
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
The Role of Forgiveness 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
Tobacco and Caner: A Cultural, Health Pyschological and Epidemiological Comparison of Spain and the United States, Meghan McBreen
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
The Shiga Toxins Produced by E. coli 0157:H7 and the Ethics of Anial Testing, Melissa L. Pelesz
Feminist Consumption: Women, Cooking & Food, Kelly Pereira
Resurrection of the Underground Soul: Redemptive Suffering in the Later Works of Dostoevsky, Joseph A. Petriello
Polis Tyrannos': A New Interpretation of The Athenian Tribute System, Amanda Regan
The Tragic Heroine Jocasta and her evolution as seen through three French Oedipus plays, Christine M. Teuber
And Who Should Speak for Science? Representing Research to the Masses, Amy B. Vashlishan
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
Baskets of Palm: Confronting Contradictions in Mexico's Political and Religious Life, Jaime Grande
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, Bryan 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