Many academic departments at Oberlin have honors programs which provide selected students an opportunity to pursue in-depth research under faculty supervision. Each department establishes its own requirements for the format and deposit of completed projects. In addition to undergraduate honors theses, this collection includes some graduate theses from the periods when Oberlin offered masters degrees, as far back as 1924. Some theses are only available by request.
Theses/Dissertations from 2020
Legal Consciousness and the Legal Culture of NAGPRA, Eleanor Haskin
The Oberlin Near East Study Collection in Context, Julian Hirsch
“Don't frack with us!” An Analysis of Two Anti-Pipeline Movements, Rachael Lucille Hood
Asking Questions is Easy, Asking Great Questions is Hard: Constructing Effective Stack Overflow Questions, Jane W. Hsieh
Cosmopolitan Continuities: The Re-Framing of Historic Architecture and Urban Space in Contemporary Morocco (1990-Present), Simon Fader Idelson
To Love is Human: Leonid Zorin's A Warsaw Melody Considering Concepts Love and Fate in Russian Culture Reflected in its Theatre Tradition, Christine Louise Impara
Socialist Realignment: Correctional Education in East Germany’s Youth Workhouses, 1949-1969, Milena Rae Kagel
Race, Mines and Picket Lines: The 1925-1928 Western Pennsylvania Bituminous Coal Strike, Eli Martin Kirshner
Determinants of Alumni Giving to a Private U.S. College: Evidence from Oberlin College, Kenneth Kitahata
Teaching the Narod to Listen: Nadezhda Briusova and Mass Music Education in Revolutionary Russia, Annika K. Krafcik
Assessing the Feasibility of Machine Learning to Predict Chronic Pain in Adolescence, Max A. Kramer
How Well Can We Measure Well-Being?, Lily X. Lu-Lerner
Naming Power?: Urban Development and Contestation in the Callowhill Neighborhood of Philadelphia, Rachel E. Marcus
Meaning in Apocalypse, Alexander Johan Metz
Moving Honestly - pangalay performance, national identity, and practice-as-research, Kara Elena Nepomuceno
Swimming Across the Divide: Environmental Peacebuilding in the Jordan River Valley, Antonia Offen
Justice on Trial: German Unification and the 1992 Leipzig Trial, Emily Dorothea Purvis
"Everybody Hates Us": Iraqi Women Resisting Imperialism, Repression, and Extremism (1990-Present), Thomas P. Rice
1984 and Film: Trauma and the Evolution of the Punjabi Sikh Identity, Hayley Dawn Segall
Pretraining Deep Learning Models for Natural Language Understanding, Han Shao
MAD: Conservative Mothers and the Political Transformation of the 1970s in Detroit, Michigan, William A. Taylor
"Established and Accepted": The Purim of Prague and Jewish Invention of Tradition in the Early Modern World, Yitzchak Rami Teeter
Dreaming of Abolitionist Futures, Reconceptualizing Child Welfare: Keeping Kids Safe in the Age of Abolition, Emma Peyton Williams
The Study of Parental Educational Investment in Left-behind Children in China, Zilin (Kelley) Zhong
Theses/Dissertations from 2019
General Game Playing as a Bandit-Arms Problem: A Multiagent Monte-Carlo Solution Exploiting Nash Equilibria, Brandon Mathewe Banda
The Stigmatization of Vaginal Masturbation and Its Effect on Sexual Pleasure, Hannah I. Berk
The Realness or, Liquid Smoke or, This is What the F••k Boutta Happen, Octavia M. Burgel
Agents of Soviet Decline: Mass Media Representations of Prostitution During Perestroika, Emma C. Downing
The Sound & the Surplus: Speculation as a Radical Mode, Emma B.B. Doyle
Delegate Voting at the 1787 Constitutional Convention: The Entanglement of Economic Interests and the Great Compromise, Emily Highkin
Just Punishment?: The Epistemic and Affective Investments in Carceral Feminism, Tess Joseph
Can Machine Learning on Economic Data Better Forecast the Unemployment Rate?, Aaron S. Kreiner
A Theory of Democratic Christian Appeals, Andrew MacPhail
Public Art in Outdoor Space: How Environmental Art Can Influence Notions of Place, Elsa Mark-Ng
Dedekind Sums: Properties and Applications to Number Theory and Lattice Point Enumeration, Oliver Meldrum
Individualism, Privacy, and Poverty in Determining the Best Interests of the Child, Dena Jolie Miller
Circular Inspirations: Medieval Mediterranean Influence in the Treasury of San Marco, Claire Rasmussen
A Gas Flow-Through System for Hydrogen Isotopic Separation with Metal-Organic Frameworks, Katharine Harp Rigdon
Destierro and Desengaño: The Disabled Body in Golden Age Spanish Portraiture, Colin C. Sanborn
Harrowing the Church: Gregory VII, Manasses of Reims, and the Eleventh-Century Ecclesiastical Revolution in France, John Schechtman-Marko
Nature of the Crescent: Humans and the Natural World in Genesis 1-11 and Mesopotamian Mythology, Bryton A. Smith
A Child Could Do That: Communicating Fragmented Memories Outside of Their Context, Rachel Weinstein
Carceral Camouflage: Inscribing and Obscuring Neoliberal Penality through New York City's Borough-Based Jail Plan, Katie Wilson
A Thesis is Not a Diary and Other Myths, Erin Irene Wolf
Initial Coin Offerings: The Role of Subjective Information in Whitepapers, Jiahang Zhang
Killing Time: Historical Narrative and the Black Death in Western Europe, Kira Zimmerman
Theses/Dissertations from 2018
Yangzhou Latin Tombstones: A Christian Mirror of Yuan China Society, Mengtian Bai
Acute Exercise Effects on Error Processing in Adult ADHD, Mia K. Bates
Quality Journalism in the Digital Age: Strategies to Adapt and Remain Profitable, Jack Brewster
"Regularities" and "Irregularities" in Chinese Historical Phonology, Tianrang Bu
I Love Lucy, That Girl, and Changing Gender Norms On and Off Screen, Emilia Anne De Leo
The Language of Sport: Understanding Chile and Chilenidad through Marathon Races and Fútbol Games, Lilah Drafts-Johnson
Purifying the Sacred: How Hindu Nationalism Reshapes Environmentalism in Contemporary India, Owen Dunton Ellerkamp
Haunted by Solitude: Isolation and Communal Representation in Zanele Muholi's Archive, Michelle Marie Fikrig
Chopin Onscreen: Media Representations of Frederic Chopin, Monika Cecilia Franaszczuk
This Unleavened Bread: Matzot as an Insight into Iberian History, Culture, and Power Dynamics, Sadie Gelman
Horror Without End: Narratives of Fear Under Modern Capitalism, Andrés Emil González
"A Spectacle of Vice": Sex Work and Moralism in the Paris Commune of 1871, Eliza Guinn
"Overrun All This Country..." Two New Mexican Lives Through the Nineteenth Century, Isabel Hannigan
Filipino American National Democratic Activism: A Lens to Seek Historical Justice for U.S. Imperialism in the Philippines, Melissa Manlulu Harris
Madrassas: The Evolution (or Devolution?) of the Islamic Schools in South Asia (1857-Present), Samir Husain
Generative Processes for Audification, Judith Jackson
Gendering Genitals: Medical Discourse and Provider Education on Intersex Conditions, Tess Jewell
Simulating Pulsar Signal Scattering in the Interstellar Medium with Two Distinct Scattering Phenomena, Adam P. Jussila
"Forget-Me-Not": The Politics of Memory, Identity, and Community in Armenian America, Hannah Marijke Kim
Fatum ad Benedictum: Moscow-Petushki, Homo Sovieticus, Postmodernism and the Fatidic post-Soviet Irony of Venedikt Vasilevich Erofeev, Paul N. Kleiman
"Crooked" Language: Moroccan Heritage Identity and Belonging on YouTube, Radia Lyna Lahlou
Sí, me afectó: The Women of Bracero Families in Michoacán, 1942-1964, Eleanor Inez Lindberg
Patterns in Road Maintenance: An Analysis of San Diego Roads, Kendall Caitlin Alexandra Mahavier
Mapping Architecture as Archive: Stories in the Walls, Caitlin Anne McCuskey
The Terror Experts: Discourse, Discipline, and the Production of Terrorist Subjects at a University Research Center, Liam Christopher McLean
An Environmental and Cost Comparison Between Polypropylene Plastic Drinking Straws and a "Greener" Alternative: An Oberlin Case Study, Madeline Elyse Moran
Testing the Production of Scintillation Arcs with the Pulsar B1133+16, Stella Koch Ocker
De pura cepa: Seis cuentos de Puerto Rico, 1548–2017, Rita M. Pérez-Padilla
Comparing Two Thickened Cycles: A Generalization of Spectral Inequalities, Hannah E. Pieper
Gender Nonconformity and the Stereotype Content Model, Ari M. Rosenblum
Women and Children First: American Magazine Image Depictions of Japan and the Japanese, 1951-1960, Alexander Adorjan Somogyi
'At Least You're Not Neurotypical': Social Barriers to Mental Health at Oberlin College, Charis Justine Stanek
A Computational Introduction to Elliptic and Hyperelliptic Curve Cryptography, Nicholas Wilcox
The Flying Tigers: Transnational Memories of a World War II Collaboration, Kaho Yasuda
Hydrogen Isotope Separation in Metal-Organic Frameworks, Naiyuan Zhang
Does What You Do Before Class Matter?, Elayne Zhou
Theses/Dissertations from 2017
Deconstructing Hypermasculinity: Combatting the War on Black Men, Aliyah Abu-Hazeem
Average Shortest Path Length in a Novel Small-World Network, Andrea J. Allen
Negotiating Domestic and International Pressures: France and Germany on Refugees, Aditi Banerjee
At the Edges of Queer: Navigating Ambiguity in Identity, Community, and Politics, Madeline McCray Batzli
Atheists are Visualized as Untrustworthy, Maria C. Bertrand
Interrogating The "And": A Study of Environmentalism and Disability, Melissa Cabat
Regulatory Uncertainty and the Natural Gas Industry in the US, Jasper W. Clarkberg
Finding Music’s Words: Moses und Aron and Viennese Jewish Modernism, Maurice E. Cohn
"The Fountain Pen and the Typewriter": The Rise of the Homophile Press in the 1950s and 1960s, Elizabeth A. Coretto
Thomas Paine's (Un)Common Sense and the Politics of Radical Disagreement, Jordan P. Ecker
U.S. Democratization Efforts in Haiti and Iraq: Implications for Future Policy Makers, Emma R. Eisenberg
Multilevel Governance in Sea Level Rise Adaptation: An Analysis of U.S. Cities, Emma Eisendrath
