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 2017
Songs of Change: How Music Helped Spark the Arab Spring Revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, Brendan Thabo Eprile
Rethinking Redevelopment: Neoliberalism, New Urbanism and Sustainable Urban Design in Cleveland, Ohio, Julian Geltman
Pretrial Attitudes and Their Influence on Interpretation of Case Evidence and Mock Juror Decision-Making in Insanity Defense Cases, Justine M.L. Gonzales
Towards a Relative-Pitch Neural Network System for Chorale Composition and Harmonization, Samuel P. Goree
Glaciovolcanic Megapillows of Undirhliðar, Reykjanes Peninsula, Southwestern Iceland, Rachel Heineman
Digital Morphologies: Environmentally-Influenced Generative Forms, Sage Jenson
Social Movement Unionism: Through Teachers Unions' Mobilization in Opposition to Corporate Education Reform, Peter McNeel LaFreniere
From the Circle to the Square: Symmetry and Degeneracy in Quantum Mechanics, Dahyeon Lee
Official Rebrand and the Importance of Queer Adornment, MI Leggett
Dealing with the Digital: Literary Media, Mediated Narratives, and Sketchy Politics, Amanda A. Leopold
Old Fields and New Fields: Ceramics and the Expanded Field of Sculpture, Robert J. Lewis-Nash
Artin Presentations and Closed 4-Manifolds, Jun Li
"This is DC, RIAlized:" Brookland Manor as a Site of Rebranding from Above and Resistance from Below, Clara Lincoln
E-Cigarette Use among Individuals Diagnosed with an Eating Disorder, Alexa Mary L'Insalata
I Am the Luchadora: Countering Exotification through Printed Installation, Margaret Landa Middleton
A Brisk Tour of (Enriched) Category Theory, David Jaz Myers
Remaking "Public" Space: Neoliberal Spatial Management and the Criminalization of Homelessness in San Francisco's Union Square, Sophie Newman
Experimental Biomechanics of Trinucleid Fringe Pits (Trilobita), Kirk Pearson
Codeswitching in Hiaki Conversational Discourse: An Evaluation of Myers-Scotton's Matrix Language Frame Model, Sofia Gottlieb Pierson
Does Training Enhance Entraining? Musical Ability and Neural Signatures of Beat Perception, Kira Pinard-Welyczko
“Head Start Works,” But Why? Understanding the Persistence of an American Welfare Program, Leah Rich-Awkward
Sound and Silence in the Forge: Work, Space, and Communication in Early Cistercian Monasticism, Jacob Bradley Roosa
Fearless Foreign Women: Exploring Tamar and Ruth as Characters Within a Post-Exilic Debate on Intermarriage, Rachel Sacks
Symphonies of Horror: Musical Experimentation in Howard Shore's Work with David Cronenberg, Vikram A. Shankar
Hyphenated Japan: Cross-examining the Self/Other dichotomy in Ainu-Japanese Material Culture, Jonathan Chira Shapiro
The 1973 Oil Embargo and US-Saudi Relations: An Episode in New Imperialism, Nathaniel David Sher
Infrared and Thermal-Desorption Spectroscopy of H2 and D2 in Metal Organic Frameworks, Kai Shinbrough
The Abortion Burden: Examining Abortion Access, Undue Burden and Supreme Court Rulings in the United States, Tyler E. Sloan
"This is a Closed Space for Queer Identifying Folx": Queer Spaces on Campus, Tory Adna Sparks
Metaphorically Framed Stereotypes, Victim Race, and Attitudes Toward Police: Factors Influencing Juror Cognition and Decision-Making in Police Force Cases, Aliza Jo Spruch-Feiner
Improving the Sensitivity of a Pulsar Timing Array: Correcting for Interstellar Scattering Delays, Jacob E. Turner
Crafting Wendla Bergmann in Spring Awakening, Amy R. Weintraub
Race, Ethnicity and the Legacy of Baseball in the Americas, Darren Brett Zaslau
Theses/Dissertations from 2016
Life-cycle Cost Analysis of Nutrient Reduction Technologies Employed in Municipal Wastewater Treatment, Colin Barrett Brown
Contested Land, Contested Representations: Re-visiting the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 in Palestine, Gabriel Healey Brown
Metaphor and Memory: How Metaphors Instantiate Schemas in and Influence Memory of Narrative, Sarah Elizabeth Cox
Trauma and Free Speech in Higher Education: Do Trigger Warnings Threaten First Amendment Rights?, Jordan Doll
To Come Alive in Our Experience: The Sounds of Listening in Sigurd F. Olson, Allison Fulton
The Munich Visiting Program, 1960-1972, Jesse Gamoran
Power Dynamics in Conversation : The Role of Gender, Caitlyn Grubb
"Music-making in a Joyous Sense": Democratization, Modernity, and Community at Benjamin Britten's Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts, Daniel Hautzinger
Biophilic Architecture, Connectedness to Nature, and the Importance of Environmental Issues, Sarah Michelle Kahl
Attracting Foreign Direct Investment in Pakistan: The Role of Governance, National Security and Global Investment Trends, Sakina Lavingia
Age of Immigration and Adult Labor Market Outcomes: Childhood Environment in the Country of Origin Matters, Aaron Watson McCartney
Icon of Heroic “Degeneracy”: The Journey of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Self-Portrait as a Soldier, Meghan E. Mette
Inverted Quarantine: Individual Response to Collective Fear, Katherine Parker Moncure
Drawing DNA Sequence Networks, Julia Olivieri
Frequency Responsive Beam Tracing, James R.A. Quintana
Parental Advisory, Explicit Content: Music Censorship and the American Culture Wars, Gavin M. Ratcliffe
Paleoenvironmental analysis of Cretaceous mudstones at Slope Mountain, Alaska using carbon stable isotopes, Ashley Ratigan
Steiner Tree Games, Samuel Rossin
Prosperity in the On-Demand Economy: Reinvigorating the American Labor Force, Ziya Mehmet Smallens
Perceived Essentialism, Group Relative Deprivation, and Collective Action, Barbara Toizer
An Investigation of AMS in Oman Ophiolite Gabbros, Sarah D. Trutner
Storytelling, Community and Dialogue: The Making of And Yet We'll Speak at Grafton Reintegration Center, Lillian W. White
Theses/Dissertations from 2015
Selfish Routing on Dynamic Flows, Christine Marie Antonsen
The Tomb of Ny-ankh-nesut: A Contextualized Study of Looted Fragments, William L. Austin
Chaos and Learning in Discrete-Time Neural Networks, Jess M. Banks
Performance and Resilience: Performance, Storytelling, and Resilience Building in Post-Katrina New Orleans, Sophia Colette Becker
Taking Up Space: Community Formation Among Non-Urban LGBTQ Youth, Madison Bishop
The Electoral Influence of Teachers’ Unions on Democratic Education Policy Priorities, Molly Ziek Brand
Gendercomic, Anne H. Buckwalter
Healing and Belonging: Community Based Art and Community Formation in West Oakland, Pablo Miguel Cerdera
“The Whole Vexed Question”: Seamus Heaney, Old English and Language Troubles, Una A. Creedon-Carey
Living in an (Im)material World: Consuming Exhausted Narratives in New Grub Street, Emma C. Eisenberg
Into the Fray: Norman Jacobson, the Free Speech Movement and the Clash of Commitments, Kai Gardner
The Complicated Relationship Between Music and Foreign Language Learning: Nuanced Conditions Required for Cognitive Benefits Due to Music, Talia Greenberg
The Chicago Women's Liberation Union: White Socialist Feminism and Women's Health Organizing in the 1970s, Lara Griffin
La Guerra Civil Española en la memoria histórica: Una conversación continua con el pasado, Jordan C. Hensley
Rethinking the Ill Body in Phallocentric Western Culture: A Critical Engagement with Luce Irigaray, Sarah E. Kahn
Can Bình Speak?: Marginalization, Subversion, and Representation of the Subaltern in Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt, Joanne Eun Jung Lee
Pillars and Buttes: A Petrologic Comparison of Modern and Ancient Hydrocarbon Seep Rock, Erica C. Morelli
The Effects of Foreign Language Acquisition on Wages for US College Graduates, Christopher Nguyen
Partnerships and Mandates: Power Relations Between Donor and Recipient Organizations Promoting Gender Equality in Nicaragua, Alyssa Katherine Phelps
Misreading the River: Heraclitean Hope in Postmodern Texts, Nancy Lee Roane
Arrow: A Modern Reversible Programming Language, Eli Rose
A Trickster in Disguise: Reading a New Type of Satan in 2 Corinthians, Miranda Julia Rutherford
The Impact of the State Children's Health Insurance Program on Educational Outcomes in the United States: A Two-Fold Analysis, Olivia Simuoli
Reconstructing Seville: Translating Eduardo del Campo’s Capital Sur, Hannah Lynn Varadi
“La storia mia è breve”: reading Puccini’s La Bohème beyond the obvious, Parkorn Wangpaiboonkit
Effect of Water Levels and Beach Availability on Waterfront Homes, Benjamin Towson Whitener
Science and Medicine in Liudmila Ulitskaia’s Kazus Kukotskogo, William D. Wise
Tropical Linear Algebra: Notions of Rank Over the Tropical Semiring, William D. Wise
Theses/Dissertations from 2014
Minds, Bodies, and Political Selves: Embodying Pro-Choice Activism, Samantha Leah Aisen
An Arbitrary Death? Capital Punishment and the Supreme Court, Truman Braslaw
The Mechanical Aspirations of Written Things in Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Maxwell Harrison Cohn
Anomie: Concept, Theory, Research Promise, Max Coleman
La influencia de Don Quijote en la música clásica europea 1605-1935, Julia Connor
Hegemonic Masculinity and Misconceptions of Gender and Mental Health in Violent Criminality, Mina Dailami
The Accessibility of a Classical Music Education to Youth in the United States, Josie Davis
How Unusual is Tropical Storm Irene? A Case Study of Storm Deposition in Littleville Lake, Huntington, MA, Catherine Dunn
CELEBRATING EXTINCTION? The Disconnect Between Reality and Media Representation of Bluefin Tuna in Japan, Gene Fukui
"The Nurceryes for Church and Common-wealth": A Reconstruction of Childhood, Children, and the Family in Seventeenth-Century Puritan New England, William C. Gautier
Full of Hot Air: Heat Flow at the Medicine Lake Volcano Hot Spot, Modoc County, California, Katrina D. Gelwick
The Rise and Fall of Social Problems: Alcohol and Tobacco in Oberlin, Jung Han Guel