An Honors Research project in English requires in-depth research incorporated into a substantive academic or creative work, capped by an Oral Defense. Students who successfully complete such a project will graduate with Honors in English.

(CW = Creative Writing project; CR NF = Creative Nonfiction project)

Spring 2015

Leah Mayo: “The Scene of Our Childhood Dreams” (CR NF)
Faculty adviser: Dr. Terry Barr

Paul Rice: “A Legend of the New Frontier: The Transformed Figure of the American Hero in Douglas Fairbanks’ Silent Films”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Dean Thompson

Fall 2014

Chris Byrd: “ ‘Now begin the terrors: now begin the marvels’: The Sacred and the Secular Grain in the Twentieth Century”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Justin Brent

Danielle Jolly: “Robert Browning’s Exploration of Truth in The Ring and The Book”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Jerry Alexander

MaryBeth Schaffner: “A Voice from Above: The Development of the Loudspeaker Presence in the Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspapers”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Emily Taylor

Spring 2013

Grace Aldridge, “Mother Dearest to Mother Monstrous: The Intersection between Motherhood, Region, and Monstrosity in Southern Women’s Writing”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Molly McGehee

Spring 2012

Cameron B. Cook, “Roebuck” (CW / A two-semester project)
Faculty adviser: Mr. Robert E. Stutts

Fall 2011

Mary Ellis Glymph, “England versus France: Unearthing Linguistic Identity through Early Modern Lexicography”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Justin Brent

Spring 2011

Christine Mahoney, “The Ties that Bind: Race, Adolescence, and the Familial Guide in Twentieth-Century Passing Narratives”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Molly McGehee

Fall 2010

Allen Butt, “Life at the Expense of Other Life: A Schopenhauerian Reading of Frank Bidart’s ‘The War of Vaslav Nijinsky’”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Terry Barr

Fall 2009

Taylor Newton, “‘Is this real, Ben? Or some strange and twisted dream?’: The Uncanny in House of Leaves and Twin Peaks
Faculty adviser: Dr. Terry Barr

Michelle Thilges, “In Defense of Domestic Tragedy: The Common Man in Modern and Contemporary American Drama”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Lynne Simpson

Spring 2009

Lori Garvin, “The Last World of El Quijote” (CW)
Faculty adviser: Mr. Robert Stutts

Charlie Johnson, “Visions of the Frontera / Sueños de la Border” (CW)
Faculty adviser: Mr. Robert Stutts

Micah Mallory, “Pas de Quatre” (CW)
Faculty adviser: Mr. Robert Stutts

Fall 2008

Sarah Maley, “The Idea of Power in the American South: Established in Tradition, Maintained Through Violence”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Terry Barr

Spring 2008

Nichole Rowe, “Rescued from Lifeboats: Female Adolescent Depression in Fiction” (CW)
Faculty adviser: Mr. Robert Stutts

Spring 2007

Emily Davenport, “My Life is Not a Soap Opera” (CW / A two-semester project)
Faculty adviser: Mr. Robert Stutts

Amanda Rossie, “Six Ways to Sunday” (CW / A two-semester project)
Faculty adviser: Mr. Robert Stutts

Richard Parmer, “‘The Pleasures of Opium’ and the ‘Pains of Sleep’: Detecting the Mysterious Effects of Opium on Romantic and Victorian English Literature”
Faculty adviser: Mr. Jerry Alexander

Polly Spangler, “The Scots-Irish of Appalachia: The Immigrant Experience and Its Linguistic Results”
Faculty advisers: Dr. Justin Brent and Dr. Anita Gustafson

Fall 2006

Laura Cline, “Convenants, Colonels, and Crazies: Is This America?”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Terry Barr

Andy Mayo, “Match Point and the Modern Reinvention of Raskolnikov’s Will to Power”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Terry Barr

Spring 2006

Brian Barnwell, “The Life and Works of Ben Jonson: Johnson to Jonson”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Lynne Simpson

Katy Falk, “Faith is the Journey” (CW)
Faculty adviser: Mr. Robert Stutts

Fall 2005

Laura Knowles, “Picturing My Papai: A Granddaughter’s Snapshot View of Her Grandfather” (CR NF)
Faculty adviser: Dr. Terry Barr

Spring 2004

Marion Jackson, “The Angel and the Fairy: Reconstructing Arthurian Women”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Justin Brent

Sarah Prince, “The Weight of Southern Womanhood in the Contemporary South: Middle-Aged Women Reflect on an Inheritance of Tradition and Guilt”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Lea Williams

Spring 2003

Paige Ellisor, “Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse: The Isolation of Women—A Forced Status and a Necessary Choice”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Lynne Simpson

Fall 2002

Jessica Ulstad, “A Proper Atonement: The ‘Eye’ of the Past in Contemporary British Fiction”
Faculty adviser: Dr. Terry Barr

Jill Walker, “Flying Lessons” (CR NF)
Faculty adviser: Dr. Terry Barr