Honors Research in English
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