Graduates and Dissertations

Student

Dissertation Director

Dissertation Title

Date

2024

John Darowski

Dawn Heinecken (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)

“The Superhero Gothic: The Monstrous Hero to the Heroic Monster in the Twentieth Century”

05/2024

Beau Kilpatrick

S. Matthew Biberman (English)

“The Affable Raphael: Milton's Surrogate Instructor in Paradise Lost

Flora Schildknecht

Ian Stansel (English)

Ranen Omer-Sherman (Humanities)

The Impersonation Artist: A Novel, with Critical Afterword: Displacement and Dissent in Fiction and Art”

2023

Emily Denton

Deborah Lutz (English)

“The Red Deeps: A Retelling of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss

05/2023

Cody Gault

John Gibson (Philosophy)

“The Well-Tempered Android: Philosophical Posthumanism in Science Fiction Cinema”

Eduard Ghita

John Gibson (Philosophy)

“Paragons of Art and Nature in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetic Theory”

Robert Jones

Delin Lai (Art & Design)

“The Conceptual Compression of Space and Time as Intimated in the Depiction of the Horse in China, Circa 1250 BCE–CE 400”

2022

James Gregory Clark

Julie Peteet (Anthropology)

“Reaching Syrians in Need: An Analysis of Humanitarian Aid in the 21st Century”

12/2022

Christopher Rickels

Guy Dove (Philosophy)

“A New Direction for Public Understanding of Science: Toward a Participant-Centered Model of Science Engagement”

Derek Carpenter

John Gibson (Philosophy)

“Cultivating the Human Narrative: On Nietzsche, Science Fiction, and the Aesthetics of Life

08/2022

Kathryn Lafferty Danner

Ranen Omer-Sherman (Humanities)

The A-Word: Destigmatizing Abortion in American Culture

Eve Carlisle Polley

D. A. Masolo (Philosophy)

Unraveling DNA and Identity: A Humanistic Perspective on Epistemologies and Ethics of Genetic Ancestry Testing

Robert Eric Shoemaker

Alan Golding (English)

“As Above, So Below: Magical Poetics and Queer Alchemy and A Planetary Spell

05/2022

Joshua Simpson

John Gibson (Philosophy)

Aaron Jaffe (English, Florida State University)

Kurt Vonnegut, Modernity, and the Self: A Guide to the Good Life

2021

Elizabeth Glass

Paul Griner (English)

“Explosive Family Dinners: Bipolar Disorder, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy & Me”

08/2021

Kelly Hill

Deborah Lutz (English)

A Home for Friendless Women and “But What Was She Wearing?”

05/2021

2020

Darrell Johnson

Simona Bertacco (Humanities)

“White Moves First: Unearthing White Privilege in the Modern Board Game”

05/2020

Bamba Ndiaye

Dismas Masolo (Philosophy)

Tyler Fleming (Pan-African Studies)

“Contemporary Francophone West African Social Movements in the Rise of Neo Pan-Africanism: The Case Study of the Y’en a Marre Movement in Senegal”

Denise Watkins

Catherine Fosl (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)

“The Long Journey Down Market Street: An Oral History–Based Biography of Mary B. Craik”

2019

Treva Hodges

Lara Kelland (Humanities)

Susan Jarosi (Art History, Hamilton College)

“The Captivity Narratives of Cynthia Ann Parker: Settler Colonialism, Collective Memory, and Cultural Trauma”

08/2019

Erin O’Reilly

Gregory Hutcheson (Classical and Modern Languages)

“Reading the Readers: Analyses of Shakespearean and Cervantine Characters as (Dys)functional Readers”

05/2019

Carol Stewart

Ann Hall (Humanities)

Albert Harris (Theatre Arts)

“Under Construction: Acting, Creativity, Collaboration, and SITI Company”

Jennifer White

Nancy Theriot (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies)

“Vile Transgressor of the Womb: Prosecution and Persecution for Concealment in Puritan Massachusetts”

2018

David Buckner

Thomas Maloney (Philosophy)

George Shields (Philosophy)

“The Emperor’s New Clothes: How the New Atheists Are Reminding the Humanities of Their Place and Purpose in Society”

12/2018

Ghina Kheir

Julie Peteet (Anthropology)

“Arab-Islamic and Folk Health Models: New Perspectives on Syrian Refugee Resettlement in the US”

William Simpson

John Gibson (Philosophy)

“Transcending the Panels: Varieties of Experience and Selfhood in Comics”

Kathryn Green

Blake Beattie (History)

“Breaking with Tradition(?): Female Representations of Heroism in Old English Literature”

05/2018

Sarah Ivens Moffett

Ranen Omer-Sherman (Humanities)

The New Elizabethans: A Novel-in-Stories, with critical afterword, “Modifying Motherhood in a New Motherland: Artistic Approaches to Communicating Change in Female and National Identity during Elizabeth II’s Reign”

2017

Lydia Kowalski

Ann Hall (Humanities)

“The Art of Silence”

12/2017

Kendra Sheehan

Patrick Pranke (Humanities)

“The Otaku Phenomenon: Pop Culture, Fandom and Religiosity in Contemporary Japan”

Nathan Gower

Annette Allen (Humanities)

Don’t Go Unless You Mean It: A Novel, with critical afterword, “Heteronormative Masculine Performance in Contemporary Fictions of the Rural American South”

05/2017

Virginia Hosono

Chris Fulton (Fine Arts)

“Lacanian Gaze, Semiotics, and the Enigma of Bosch”

Jessica Hume

Nancy Potter (Philosophy)

“Unthink Pink: Master Narratives and Counterstories of Breast Cancer”

Tiffany Hutabarat Nelson

Ann Hall (Humanities)

“Fantastical Body Narratives: Cosplay, Performance, and Gender Diversity”

Megan McDonough

Ben Hufbauer (Fine Arts)

“From Damsel in Distress to Active Agent: Female Agency in Children’s and Young Adult Fiction”

Lynda Mercer

Susan Ryan (English)

Aaron Jaffe (English, Florida State University)

“American Emergency: Catastrophe and Culture in the USA, from the Civil War to Hurricane Katrina”

Lindsey Okoroafo

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“Breaking the Cycle of Silence: The Significance of Anya Seton’s Historical Fiction”

David Orberson

Patrick Pranke (Humanities)

“Thomas Merton: Evil, Suffering, Zen, and the Purified Soul Theodicy”

Katie Wagner

John Gibson (Philosophy)

“Dead Places: American Horror, Placelessness, and Globalization”

Nadeem Zaman

Simona Bertacco (Humanities)

I. In the Time of the Others: A Novel

II. “Out of East Pakistan: Postcolonial Colony”

“Bangladesh as a Case Study of Postcolonial State and Postcolonial Nation-State from East Pakistan to Independence through the Liberation War of 1971: A Critical Analysis”

2016

Britney Broyles

Simona Bertacco (Humanities)

“Crime and Culture: A Thematic Reading of Sherlock Holmes and His Adaptations”

12/2016

Rebekah Dement

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“Patchwork: A Southern Family Portrait”

Justy Engle

Blake Beattie (History)

“To Write a Life: Three Women in History”

Jessica Cresseveur

Jong Woo Jeremy Kim (Fine Arts)

“The Queer Child and Haut-Bourgeois Domesticity: Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt”

05/2016

Jennifer Fraley

Shelley Salamensky (Humanities)

“9/11 Memorials: Contested Memory, Competing Narratives, and Healing”

2015

Lisa Shugoll

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“The Pedagogy of Medical Humanities: Using Literature and the Visual Arts to Help Future Caregivers Maintain Their Compassion and Resilience”

12/2015

Feng Yi

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“Dramatizing Trauma in Resistance to Postcolonial Hegemonic Culture: A Magic(al) Realist Reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Love and Frida Kahlo’s Selected Paintings”

08/2015

Alton Frabetti

Diane Pecknold (Women’s and Gender Studies)

“Youth Graffiti Vandalism: Liminal Perspectives in the Light of Masculinity, Social Contract Theory, and Transformative Process”

Adam Noland

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“The Being of Art and the Art of Being: Hermeneutic Ontology in Gadamer and Woolf”

Quintin Chipley

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“William Faulkner and Alcoholism: Distilling Facts and Fiction”

05/2015

Brandon Harwood

Annette Allen (Humanities)

Patrick Pranke (Humanities)

“Do-Something Zen: Creative, Holistic, and Socially Engaged Mysticism of Hakuin Ekaku”

Monica Krupinski

Mark Blum (History)

“Building Castles in the Air: A Discussion of the Architectonic Language of Thought”

2014

James Leary

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“A Magical Country: Stories from Appalachia”

12/2014

Brian Barnes

Osborne Wiggins (Philosophy)

“Critical Thinking Structures for Business Ethics”

08/2014

Leslie Harper

Suzette Henke (English)

“‘They Had No Key That Would Fit My Mouth’: Women’s Struggles with Cultural Constructions of Madness in Victorian and Modern England and America”

05/2014

Lin Wenshuang

Mark Blum (History)

“The Rise of Bulgarian Nationalism and Russia’s Influence upon It”

Steve Watkins

Mary Ann Stenger (Humanities)

“An Analysis of the Creation Museum: Hermeneutics, Language, and Information Theory”

2013

Wang Heng

Osborne Wiggins (Philosophy)

“Cultural Interpretations of Socratic and Confucian Education Philosophy”

12/2013

Ke Jing

Mark Blum (History)

“The Four Others in Ismail Kadare’s Works: A Study of Albanian National Identity”

08/2013

Jeremy Killian

John Gibson (Philosophy)

“A Paradox of American Tragedy: Long Day’s Journey into Night and the Problem of Negative Emotion in Theatre”

Anna Jo Paul

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“An Examination and Comparison of the Themes in the Antilynching Dramas of Black and White Women Authors of the Early Twentieth Century (1916–1936)”

Sara Shafer

Mark Blum (History)

“Gesture and Silence in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century German and Jewish Literature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Focusing on the Works of Franz Kafka and His Writings on Abraham”

John Dryden

Robert Kimball (Philosophy)

“The Feeling of Faith: A Thomistic Approach to Religious Emotions”

05/2013

Erin McCoy

Mary Makris (Classical and Modern Languages)

“The Historical and Cultural Meanings of American Music Lyrics from the Vietnam War”

Elijah Pritchett

Aaron Jaffe (English)

“The Autodidact: Constantine Samuel Rafinesque and the Limits of the Posthumanities”

2012

Jennifer Goldberg

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“The Art of Natality: Virginia Woolf’s and Kathe Kollwitz’s Aesthetics of Becoming”

12/2012

Su Lezhou

Li Zeng (Classical and Modern Languages)

“Narrative of Modern Chinese Masculinity in Ha Jin’s Fiction”

08/2012

Julie Wade

Catherine Fosl (Women’s and Gender Studies)

“Queering the Bildungsroman: The Missing Sister and Other Stories”

Wang Zhenping

Osborne Wiggins (Philosophy)

“A Sartrean Reading of American Artists: Walker Percy, Edward Hopper, and Mike Nichols, 1940–1970”

Huang Hong

Annette Allen (Humanities)

Fusheng liu ji: Gaps, Literati Identity, and Meaning of Artistic Creation”

05/2012

Janna Tajibaeva

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“Consumer Culture, Material Desires, and the Images of Women in American Novels and Art at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century”

2011

Yalonda Green

Karen Chandler (English)

“That Terrifying Center: Poetry, Language, and Embodied Subjectivities”

12/2011

Kathryn Jacobi

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“Embodied Consciousness in Nonfiction Illness Narratives: A Phenomenological and Sociological Approach”

Shi Tongyun

Robert St. Clair (Communications)

“Working Class in British Films, 1950s–2000s: Identity, Culture, and Ideology”

Anna Stamp

Suzette Henke (English)

“An(Other) Gender: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of War-Torn France and Great Britain in Which Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf Redefine ‘Woman’”

08/2011

Todd Edmondson

Annette Allen (Humanities)

Mary Ann Stenger (Humanities)

“Priest, Prophet, Pilgrim: Types and Distortions of Spiritual Vocation in the Fiction of Wendell Berry and Cormac McCarthy”

05/2011

Song Nan

Mark Blum (History)

“An Analysis of the Shift in the Understanding of Liberty in 1930s America”

2010

He Jing

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“Seeking a Spiritual Home for Women: A Comparative Study of Chen Ran’s and Amy Tan’s Fiction”

12/2010

Jiang Chun

Robert St. Clair (Communications)

“The Content and Critical Metaphor Analysis of Illustrated Print Advertisements in China”

Ma Qin

Robert St. Clair (Communications)

“The Social and Cultural Constructions of the Self-Identity of White American Corporate Businesswomen in Historiography, Literature, and Popular Culture (1963–1985)”

Ma Yingxin

Mark Blum (History)

“Developing Chinese Students’ Critical Thinking in English Education, Based on Analysis of Critical-Thinking Theories and Their Application”

Sara Northerner

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“From Edmund Husserl’s Image Consciousness to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Flesh and Chiasm: The Phenomenological Essence of Image”

Derek Penwell

Nancy Potter (Philosophy)

“The Manifestation of All Life: Intersections of Virtue Ethics, Philosophy of Emotion, and Philosophy of Literature”

Sun Xiujie

Robert St. Clair (Communications)

“Intercultural Encounters between the Chinese Dynasties and European Missionaries: Study of Conflict and Understanding in the Visual Arts”

Heather Thiessen

Mary Ann Stenger (Humanities)

“Utopian Discourse in the Work of Theodor W. Adorno, Luce Irigaray, and Giorgio Agamben”

Amy Tudor

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“More Real than Real: An Anthropological and Phenomenological Exploration of Imagistic Sacred Space”

Jia Ning

Osborne Wiggins (Philosophy)

“Freedom in Middle French Enlightenment: Interpreted through a Picturesque Garden”

08/2010

Caroline Ma

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“Female Gothic, Chinese and American Styles: Zhang Ailing’s Chuanqi in Comparison with Stories by Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers”

Ma Lin

Nancy Potter (Philosophy)

“Postmodern Advertising and Its Reception: A Cross-Cultural Perspective”

2009

Sue Bentley

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“Friedrich Schiller’s Play: A Theory of Human Nature in the Context of the Eighteenth-Century Study of Life”

12/2009

Wu Lihong

Robert St. Clair (Communications)

“Comparative Study of Female Archetypes between East and West from Six Folk Narratives”

Ding Yajuan

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“Cultural Identity of Hong Kong Reflected in Jackie Chan’s Performances and Movies”

08/2009

Michael Hagan

Mary Ann Stenger (Humanities)

“The Creative Non-essential Self: An Argument for the Self as a Radical Creative Act through Explication, Comparison, and Synthesis of Self and World Ontology in Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy, Kyoto Zen Buddhism, and G. H. Mead’s Social Theory”

2008

Becky Meadows

Glynis Ridley (English)

“The Consciousness of Damnation: A Hermeneutical Phenomenology of the Fall of the Self in Matthew Lewis’s The Monk

12/2008

Kerri Horine

Robert St. Clair (Communications)

“The Tyranny of the Spectacle: Tattooed Bodies in Contemporary Visual Culture”

08/2008

Tara Tuttle

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“‘Biting Temptation’: An Examination of the Eden Myth in the Southern Fiction of William Faulkner, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison”

05/2008

2007

Michael Williams

Annette Allen (Humanities)

Trajan’s Arch

08/2007

Allan McGuffey

Mark Blum (History)

“The Concept of Peace: Tracing Its Development through Three Historical Periods in the West, Using Artistic and Literary Evidence”

05/2007

2006

Dale Golden

Annette Allen (Humanities)

“The Burghers of Calais: A Chamber Ballet”

12/2006