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 2014
Without Closets: A Queer and Feminist Re-Imagining of Narratives of Queer Experience, Julia Golda Harris
On the Genealogy of Obscenity: Naked Lunch and The Death of Obscene Literature, Luke Harrison
Polarization Analyzed Small Angle Neutron Scattering of Ferrite Nanoparticles, Kathryn Hasz
Hearing Beyond the Veil: Benjy Compson and the Acousmatic Experience, Adam Hirsch
Low-Temperature Deformation of Mixed Siliciclastic & Carbonate Fault Rocks of the Copper Creek, Hunter Valley, and McConnell Thrusts, Jack R. Hoehn
Eclogites and eclogites: Oxygen isotope evidence of a shared subduction origin for Franciscan eclogites and Moses Rock eclogite xenoliths, William F. Hoover
Traversing the Desolate Terrain: Creative Experimentation within Union Strategy, Johnnie Kallas
Planning Against Planning: Friedrich Hayek's Utopian Vision of The Good Society, Nicholas Kuipers
The one place we're trying to get to is just where we can't get: algebraic speciality and gravito-electromagnetism in Bianchi type IX, Benjamin Kurt Lemberger
Anxious Seas: Reading Affect in Dazai and Murdoch, Joseph B. Lubitz
Overtone Spectroscopy of Hydrogen in MOF-5, Jocienne N. Nelson
Aloha, Marriage Equality: Unsettling Gay Constructions of Paradise, Cuyler Otsuka
Ecotheology and the Parables of Jesus: Creative Re-readings of Parables In Light of the Environmental Crisis, Anita L. Peebles
Inverted Linear Halbach Array for Separation of Magnetic Nanoparticles, Chetan Poudel
Meaningful Play: Exploring the Possibilities of the Novel in Don DeLillo's White Noise, Steven Quam
Theses/Dissertations from 2013
A Swarm of Salesmen: Algorithmic Approaches to Multiagent Modeling, Alexandre Amlie-Wolf
Medicaid and Education: The Impact of Medicaid Coverage on Children's Educational Trajectory, Melissa Atlas
Manhattan Transference: Reader Itineraries in Modernist New York, Sophia Bamert
Relating Plant Spatial Pattern, Plant Biodiversity, and Ecosystem Function to Management Practices in Experimental Restored Wetlands, Erika C. Brandt
Sovereignty and Exceptionalism: The Case of Israel/Palestine, Aaron Braun
Unresolved Debates Over Memory and History: La Nación and the Evolving Portrayals of the Last Dictatorship in Argentina, Alexis Burdick-Will
Amateurism and Professionalism in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, Vlad A. Bursuc
An Evaluation of Mergers in the U.S. Petroleum Industry, Matthew D. Capozzi
More Than Duffle Bag Medicine: An Ethnographic Analysis of a Student Movement for Global Health, Julie A. Christensen
Controlling Factors on Bedrock River Sinuosity in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau, Lydia Curliss
Translating Chris Ware's Lint into Russian, Matthew Davis
Two-Coloring Cycles In Complete Graphs, Claire Djang
Posibilidades de la abstracción: la obsesión y la traducción en los cuentos de Julio Cortázar, Caitlin Dougherty
Reconsidering the Puebloan Languages in a Southwestern Areal Context, Michael Sklar Everdell
Payment Schemes and Moral Hazard, James Foust
TARP: Indication of a Potential Target? Evaluating Market to Book Ratios and Their Relationship to TARP, Oscar Garcia
The Content of Thought Experiments and Philosophical Context, Kevin G. Gilfether
The Performance and Perception of Social Identities in Country-Rap Music, Rachel Grandstrand
The Effects of Federal Reserve Liquidity Facilities On Inter-Bank Borrowing Rates, Isaac Green
Dubbin' the Literary Canon: Writin' and Soundin' A Transnational Caribbean Experience, Warren Harding
Drug Markets and the State: A Perspective from Political Economy, Jake M. Kosinski
Private Corrections, Public Implications: The Local Economic Effects of Private Prisons, Charlotte Landes
Strict Photo ID, Voter Turnout, and Race, Thomas La Voy
Una cárcel de cultura: secuelas de la dictadura chilena en un centro de arte comunitario, Sofia LeBlanc
A Poetics of Complicity: Translating Luis García Montero, Alice McAdams
An Investigation into Crowd Out Phenomenon in Local Churches: Combining Experimental and Survey Methodology, Matthew Moench
Parallel Pillars: How International Relations Theory Can Explicate and Rebalance the Three Pillars of the Responsibility to Protect, Lauren Muscott
Intersection Number of Plane Curves, Margaret E. Nichols
Building the Post-industrial Community: New Urbanist Development in Pittsburgh, PA, Steven Alexander Niedbala
Renegotiating a Beheading: Literary Opposition to Varna Hierarchy in Shambuka's Story, Thomas Ahlers Nunan
The School and Society: Secondary School Social Studies Education from 1945-1970, Kevin John Owens
The Presence of the Past in Three Guatemalan Classrooms: The Role of Teachers in a Post-Conflict Society, Margaret Paulin
The Jormungand Climate Model, Christopher V. Rackauckas
Activating Community to Enable Residential Energy Efficiency, David Roswell
Doppler-Free Saturated Fluorescence Spectroscopy of Lithium Using a Stabilized Frequency Comb, Michael E. Rowan
Hybrid Rhythms, Antithetical Echoes, and Autopoiesis: Intersections Between Sound, Self, and Nation in the Poetry of Yeats, Connor Stratton
Unfree Labor and American Capitalism: From Slavery to the Neoliberal-Penal State, David Tisel
Thermobarometric Modeling of the Catalina Amphibolite Unit: Implications for Tectonic and Metasomatic Models, Henry W. Towbin
Palynology and Megafaunal Extinction in Southern Westchester County, NY, Alexander L. Yorke
Theses/Dissertations from 2012
Giving Meaning to Martyrdom: What Presidential Assassinations Can Teach Us About American Political Culture, Aliza Alperin-Sheriff
Two-Photon Direct Frequency Comb Spectroscopy of Rubidium, Sophia Lee Chen
Agricultural Terracing and Landscape History at Monte Pallano, Abruzzo, Italy, James R. Countryman
"And the Light Flood Over the Land": Reading Region in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, Joshua Davidson
Yellow, in Peril: How Public Health Discourse on Tuberculosis (TB) Reveals, Refines, and Reinforces the Racial Stigmatization of Asian Americans, Laura Dellplain
Japanese Nuclear Power Policy: Forty Years of Construction, Confusion, and Conflict, Sarah Fries
Model of the One-Dimensional Molecular Hydrogen Cation, Joseph Galamba
Archaeometric Characterization of Roman Tile Fabrics from the Sangro Valley, Italy, Aaron Eli Goldberg
Scribbling Women: Female Historians in the Early American Republic, 1790-1814, Jennifer H. Graham
Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Political Action, Charlie Hartford
"Twitter Diplomacy": Engagement through Social Media in 21st Century Statecraft, Owen Henry
Jazz Meets East: Cultural Dimensions of Asynchronous Jazz Music Development in Modern China, Terence Hsieh
The Sino-Tibetan Dialogue: Talk Shop or Path to Resolution?, Rene Kamm
Reinventing Britain: British National Identity and the European Economic Community, 1967-1975, James Meade Klingensmith Jr.
An Analysis of Ohio's Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard, Joshua A. Laufer
Evangelical Protestants and Political Trust, Fei-ran Lee
Shades of Cato and Brutus: Classical References in the Révolutions de Paris and the Rise of Republicanism, June-October 1791, Suzanne Michelle Levin
Rustbelt Theater: Children's Environmental Justice Narratives from South Elyria, OH, Lissette Lorenz
The Effects of Formal Group and Extracurricular Involvement on College Students’ Self-Esteem, Ramona Catherine Negroponte
Virtuous Empire: The Jeffersonian Vision for America, Gavin Palmer
A Poetics of Space: Opening Up a World Through Vessel Metaphors in Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Lili Pariser
One Nation, Many Borders: Language and Identity in Mayan Guatemala and Mexico, Anna Caroline Peckham
Education, Citizenship, Political Participation: Defining Variables for Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sonia Roubini
Re-Writing the Frontier Myth: Gender, Race, and Changing Conceptions of American Identity in Little House on the Prairie, Kristin M. Sargeant
The Spatial Properties of Music Perception: Differences in Visuo-spatial Performance According to Musicianship and Interference of Musical Structure, Christa Theresa Vassillière
We Are Not These Bodies: Identity and Transcendence Among American Devotees of Krishna, Rachel Lynn Williams
Theses/Dissertations from 2011
Community Perceptions of the Barriers and Benefits to Local Food Access in Northeast Ohio, Gabriela Rosalie Baker
Optimal Summer Camp Layout, Anthony Bonifonte
Getting Ahead or Left Behind? The Politics and Policy of Education Reform in the United States, Anna Elisabeth Brown
Divergent Discourses: Medical and Cultural Understandings of Latina Reproductive Health in the Era of Gardasil, Cindy Camacho
Strategic Competition Over School Inputs and Outputs, Gary Richard Cohen
Educate, Inspire, Change: A Musical Ethnography of World Camp, Inc, Ian R. Copeland
Fin de rêve: Reactions in the British, French, and American Press to the 1900 Exposition Universelle, Patrick Donovan Doherty
Battling for History: Divisive and Unifying Figures of the Salvadoran Civil War, Raquel Farah-Robison
The Hothouse and Dynamic Equilibrium in the Works of Harold Pinter, Ben Ferber
The Accessibility of Adulthood, Hilary Finedore
Female Genital Cutting, The Veil, and Democracy: Navigating Cultural Politics in Human Rights Discourse, Andrew Flachs
"Spending the day in front of the mirror", Lauren Friedlander
Negotiating Comedy and Rape Culture in Gina Gionfriddo’s After Ashley, Jenny Gaeng
Mieko Gavia: The Dog Project, Mieko Gavia
Community Engagement in Sustainable Design: A Case Study of the Oberlin Project, Amanda L. Goldstein
