The Honors Thesis is a research project for which eligible students apply during their junior year and complete in their senior year. Colby departments and programs that have an honors program establish the requirements for the project and its final format. Each student, upon completion of the thesis, is asked to archive his or her project in Digital Commons so that it may be made available to the Colby community and to the world at large.

All theses in this collection are available for review and research purposes at no cost. This open access policy in no way diminishes the copyright responsibility of those viewing or downloading the documents. The authors of these documents retain the copyright to the intellectual property these works represent in their current form.

Honors Theses from 2009

Keys and Orchards: Memory and the Palestinian Diaspora, 1948-Present, Daniela Andreevska

The Effect of Religious Participation and Permanent Income on Suicide Risk: Micro--Level Analysis, Ivan Balbuzanov

Breaking the Cycle: The Rise of Contentiousness in Judicial Nominations, Patrick Morrow Boland

Estimation of Population Reduction and Gene Flow in the Rare Orchid Isotria medeoloides, Philip Crystal

Reading Joycean Comedy and Faulknerian Tragedy: Exploring the Significance of Location, Literary Influence and the Possibilities of Heroism with Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s Ulysses and Quentin Compson in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!, Colin Cummings

Gendering the Counterinsurgency: Violence Against Women During the Guatemalan Civil War, Sarah K. deLiefde

Changes in Apoptotic Gene Expression Induced by DNA Cross-Linkers, Jordanne B. Dunn

Re-Imagined Communities: Global Climbing on Local Mountains, Eitan Green

The Effects of Exogenous Insulin and Exercise on Glucose and Lactate Metabolism in the Brown Anole, Anolis sagrei, Kristen Marie Hitchcox

Mechanisms of Cytotoxicity of Diepoxybutane, Epichlorohydrin and 1-(Chloroethenyl)oxirane, Rebecca D. Kamins

The Effect of Glutamate on Neurite Outgrowth in Fiddler Crab (Uca pugilator) X-organ Cells, Ruth B. Langton

Avoiding the Fog of Crisis: A Protocol for the Proper Domestic Use of the Military, Brian Lynch

Evaluation of Nocturnal Flight Calls as a Useful Tool in the Study of Avian Migration, Andrew C. McEvoy

Gender Specific Rules in Sport are based on an Outdated Idea of Femininity, Carlie Minichino

Break the Sky: an exploration of ethics with swords and superheroes, Kris Miranda

The Long Game: Hamas, The IRA, and the Politics of Radicalization in Palestine and Northern Ireland, Dan O'Sullivan

One Generation Consuming the Next: The Racial Critique of Consumerism in George Romero’s Zombie Films, Henry Powell

Diagnostics for Ultracold Plasma Experiments, Lauren Rand

Can Parallel Exchange Rates Forecast Commodity Prices?, John F. Roberts

Learning the Lay of Their Land: Data Recording by Maine Land Trusts, Patrick John Roche

Factors Influencing Conservation Success or Failure in Tiger Range States, Megan C. Saunders

The Realization of Eisenstein's Excitation Factor: Grierson, Wiseman, and the Vietnam Documentaries of the 1960s and 1970s, Victoria A. Starr

The Second Oldest Profession: An Exploration of the Fall and Rise of Midwifery in America, Abigail K. Sussman

Negotiating Gender and Lyric Tradition in Two Nineteenth Century Cultures, Po Yin Wong

Honors Theses from 2008

Effects of prenatal choline supplementation on behavioral and neural reactions to social isolation rearing in the rat, Raven Adams

Competition or Community? Manifest and Unexpressed Functions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Sara Benjamin

Coalitions for victory: the necessity of alliance creation for progressive ballot initiative campaigns, Julie Bero

In the Absence of Family: How Ideas of the Substitute Family in Honduran Children's Homes Shape Perception of the Needs of at-risk youth, Stephanie Bowman

Moments of Strength: Iranian Women's Rights and the 1979 Revolution, Caroline M. Brooks

Effects of the anticancer agent Cloretazine on human apurinic endonuclease-1 activity, Jennifer L. Bushee

Effect of Observed Biological and Non-biological Movement on Human Action and Coordination, Walter L. Campbell

Historical Records of Stomatal Indicies in Quercus from the Southeastern U.S, Bradford M. Cantor

Diffeomorphism invariance in general relativity, John P. Chung

Designing a Green Graduation at Colby College, Alaina J. Clark

The Selective Synthesis of Oxacalix[6]arenes and the Exploration of Azacalix[n]arenes, W. Christian Crannell

Self-destructive Behaviors of Adolescent Girls and Boys, Carolyn A. Curtis

The Effect of Orientation to Growing Season Sunlight on Stomatal Parameters of Q. rubra in the Belgrade Lakes Region, Central Maine, Rachel G. Daly

Hamiltonian constraint analysis of vector field theories with spontaneous Lorentz symmetry breaking, Nolan L. Gagne

Decisions to abrogate personal liberty: ethics of conscription in the United States, Jacqueline Shuttleworth Grady

Language of Sex: Moral Socialization and Reproductive Education in Public Schools, Melyn Heckelman

State Political Action Committee Financing and the 2008 Presidential Election: A Detailed Look at Mitt Romney and the Commonwealth PACs, Melyn Heckelman

Reactions of Atomic Carbon with Acid Chlorides, Daniel B. Herrick

Foundations and interpretations of quantum mechanics, Cory Johnson

Separating People and Wildlife: Zoning as a Conservation Strategy for Large Carnivores, Courtney L. Larson

Temperature and magnetic field dependence of the electronic excitations in the nickel chain compound NINO, Lucas LaViolet

Movement patterns and feeding behavior of the limpet tectura testudinalis (Müller) along the mid-Maine Coast, Joshua Lord

Microhabitat Selection by the Tortoiseshell Limpet, Tectura testudinalis (Müller), in Tide Pools on the mid-Maine Coast, Emily R. Lyczkowski

Pressure Perturbation Calorimetry and Guest-Host Chemistry ofNDMG and N-MAP with p-Sulfonatocalix[6]arene, Cassandra Newel

Pressure Perturbation Calorimetry and Guest-Host Chemsitry of NDMG and N-MAP with p-Sulfonatocalix[6]arene, Cassandra Newell

Carbon Neutrality at Colby College, Jamie K. O’Connell

Phosphorus Primer for Maine’s lakes, Lindsay B. Philips

Inhibition of cellular thioredoxin reductase by the anticancer prodrug cloretazine, Tyler R. Schleicher

Representations of Grief in Akhmatova’s Requiem and Pushkin’s the Bronze Horseman, Hillary Smith

"System of Silence": Philadelphia Orphanages and the Limits of Benevolence, 1780s-1830s, Brian Sweeney

Advocating at the margins: women’s NGOs in China, Ling U

Effects of context of natural and artifactual objects on categorization, Linsey Walker

Cytotoxicity of Diepoxybutane and Epichlorohydrin in Relation to Stages of the Cell Cycle, Megan L. Watts

Using Variable Stomatal Sensitivity to CO₂ in Relict Conifers to Reconstruct Ancient Atmospheres and Predict Future Implications of Climate Change, Kerry A. Whittaker

Honors Theses from 2007

Can the business cycle be used to create predictable mutual fund outperformance?, Michael Aquino

Where did all these books come from? The Publishing Industry and American Intellectual Life, Maro N. Asadoorian

Agent of Change: Trickster in Ojibwa Oral Narratives and in the Works of Louise Erdrich, Patrick B. Benton

Towards the Synthesis of Biomimetic Tungsten Complexes, Eric Paul Bergh

Influence of juvenile hormone on territorial and aggressive behavior in the Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) and Eastern Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes), Tara Bergin

Biogeochemical model for the eutrophication of East Pond, Maine, Bernadette Bibber

The Determinants of Recovery Rates on Defaulted Corporate Securities: Why do Fallen Angels recover more than Original High Yield Issues?, Adler Carolyn

Rawls and Health Care, Elizabeth H. Coogan

Gauguin : Generating Art Using Genetic Algorithms & User Input Naturally, Thomas E. Cook

“Nothing that is so, is so”: Indeterminate Language in Shakespeare, Matthew K. Crane

Geographic distribution of genetic Variation in the Rare Orchid Isotria medeoloides , Emily Devlin

Divergent effect of social cohesion on economic growth in East Asia and Latin America, Horacio Diaz Adda

Demographic and Religious Changes in Sixth and Seventh Century Romano-Byzantine Edessa, Merle Eisenberg

Exploring opportunity in America -- immigrant entrepreneurship and rags to riches success, Anna Erdheim

Messy Love: Collection of Short Stories, Mindy Favreau

Apple and The Tree: Shakespeare’s Use of Father-child Relationships in Character Construction, Elizabeth Finn

Women Making Progress?: a Study of Wide Sargasso Sea as a Response to Jane Eyre, Kaitlin M. Gangl

Concomitant polymorphism in 1,2-bis(9-anthryl)acetylene, Rebecca Goldstein

Complex Adaptive Systems Approach for Investigating Genetic Epistasis, Thomas A. Goth

Anhedonia and depression: Anticipatory, Consummatory, and Recall Deficits, Kaitlin Hanley

Demon Rum, Devious Politics: the Lessons of Neal Dow’s Crusade for the Maine Prohibition Law, Andrew J. Herrmann

Developing a Tool to Assess Human Health Impacts of Purchasing, Kaitlin C. Himmelmann

Religion and Renunciation in Wordsworth: the Progression of Natural Individualism to Christian Stoicism, Geoffrey L. Meldahl

Intramolecular Chemistry of ß-acetoxyethylidene and Photochemical Generation of Vinylidenes, Jennifer M. Nguyen

Optimizations for hardware-software partitioning using WalkSAT, Andreea Olea

Detailed Mechanistic and Optimization of the Photochemical Production Method of Superoxide, Ta-Chung Ong

POV-IT: the POV-Ray Interactive Tutorial, Eleanor O'Rourke

Too Many Bad Cooks Spoiling the Broth? Effectiveness of NGOs in Addressing Child Labour in El Salvador, Ivica Petríková

Short History of Waterville, Maine, Stephen Plocher

In Any Weather : a Collection of Short Stories, Stephen J. Plocher

Gendered Struggle for the Freedom From Violence Using Frantz Fanon’s Theory in Three Postcolonial Novels: Albert Wendt’s Pouliuli, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, and Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory, Robin M. Respaut

World Bank -CPA conflict: the Struggle to Define Human Rights and Development in the Philippines, Adam B. Robbins

Collective Moral Responsibility, Allyson Rudolph

Museo de la memoria: an exploration through memory of ESMA, Cornelia Sage

Hearing Arnold in a new space : building a transformational-theory patrimony, Whitney Simmonds

Obstacles and Stepping Stones to the Hero’s Pedestal: Reunified Germany’s Selective Commemoration of Resisters to National Socialism, Suzanne J. Swartz

Immunological effects of written disclosure in athletes, Kristen Thatcher

Voices of the Poor: Poverty and Growth in Albania, Magda Tsaneva

Two essays in the Indiana family cap provision, Aimee Williams

External Control of Electron Temperature in Ultra-cold Plasmas, Roy O. Wilson

Dialectics of Diaspora Space: a Study of Contemporary, Diasporic, South Asian Fiction, Christopher A. Zajchowski

Honors Theses from 2006

League of their own: the competition for Jewish-American identity in the novels of Philip Roth, Rebeccah Amendola