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, has the opportunity to publish their project in Digital Commons so that it may be made available to the Colby community and to the world at large.
Honors Theses from 1995
The Schwarmgeister: The Development of Ecclesiastical Doctrine Through Schismatic Movements, Michael Neal Kaplan
Picking Up Where We Left Off: a novella, Jennifer Kelley
Willa Cather’s Pioneering Women, Kerry Knudsen
Female Awakening Literature Across Cultures, K. C. Lawler
James Welch: Finding Identities from the Past, Deanna Loew
The Quiet Ecstasy of a Woman Artist: Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941, Jennifer McIntosh
Harlem Renaissance and the intertextuality of the arts of passing, Anne McManus
Photoreduction of iron in natural waters, Matt Metz
Synthetic pathways towards natural products development of a general oxepane methodology, Evelyn Olivares
Driving to the Interior: Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetic of Self, Loss, and the Imagination, Eryn Paini
Transitions in masculinity and Hemingway's developed "code", Daniel Polk
Margaret Atwood: Canadian Women’s Individuality, Nationalism and voice in Surfacing and Cat’s Eye, Karen Rose
Electronic and Steric Factors Affecting Reactivity at a Heteroatom, Joshua Michael Smith
Consciousness, Confession, and Suicide: Efforts at Heroism in Camus’s Fiction, Erika Troseth
Myth and Society: Functions, Uses, and Abuses of Myth in Society, Frederick F. Webster
Role of the US Military in Humanitarian Interventions: The Case of Somalia, Delia C. Welsh
Syntheses of Cross-Linking Agents, Molecular Modeling of Oligonucleotides and Polypeptide-Ion Complexes, Michael J. Yunes
Honors Theses from 1994
Spies like us? : An analysis of six 1980s spy films and the images they presented about the Cold War, Jason Bologna
Love, sex, & family: radical revisionings of the Oneida community, Cathryn Czernicki
Old Like Hills, Like Stars The Poetry and Oral Tradition of Simon Oritz, Darren DeMonsi
The Female Language Barrier: A Close Reading of the Poetry of Emily Dickinson and Adrienne Rich, Annmarie Faiella
Investigations of Iron Cycling in Aquatic Systems, Heather A. Lounsbury
Studies in pinacol rearrangement and coupling, Gregory T. Lynch
For Better or For Worse: Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams as the Barometer for 'Lost Generation' Male Marital Attitudes. 1920-1940., Erik K. Mortenson
Purification and analysis of protein synthetic initiation factors from Volvox Carteri, Kathie L. Pooler
Studies directed toward the synthesis of natural products, Sarri Salah Salman
John Steinbeck’s Phalanx Theory: A Study of the Dichotomous Relationship Between the Needs of the Individual and Those of society in Depression-Era America, Heather Skye Stewart
The Politics of Privatization in Egypt, Michelle Tadros
Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead: A Journey through the Past, as a Guide to the Future, Cecily Totten
The Macroeconomic Effects of Economic Integration on Developing Economies: The Case of Spain and Implications for Mexico, Jennifer L. Zwick
Honors Theses from 1993
Lucille Clifton: Speaking in the Affirmative Voice, Signe L. Burns
Different Windows: An Examination of Delano’s Narrative and Melville’s Benito Cereno, Christopher Chamberlain
Rejecting the Dream: A Socio-Historical Reading of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Alison Coburn
Cinderella’s Legacy, M. Beth Cronin
Melting the Snow Man: Language as a Description, in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, D. Martin Hergert
The Evolution of the Influence of Hindu Religious Thought on the Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Matthew Isham
Nitrogen fixation: polypyridyl azido complexes of ruthenium, Louise Jalbert
The Western Imagination-Norman Maclean and N. Scott Momady. Literary Landscapes: Rivers, Mesas, and Big Sky, Matthew Kearns
The Refraction of Culture in 20th C Southern Literature: A Study of the Fiction of Warren, Faulkner, and Welty, Shawn Laurien Lambert
Intruders Upon a Personal New England, Catherine Nash
Myth and Counter-Myth in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Radcliffe
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Wealth: A Dynamic Relationship, Elizabeth Rogers
Cityscape: Two Stories, Leslie Tane
A Universal English: Proposal for a Universal Secondary Language Based on Modified English, Katharine C. Thomas
Honors Theses from 1992
William Carlos: a poet among painters, Andrew Benson
Feminine Voice as a Continuum: The Transformation and Evolution of Gender in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Jeanine Ann Caunt
Your Heart Beat in My Ribs, and Mine in Yours': A Look at the Relationship Between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jessica D’Ercole
Crises of Faith: The Spiritual Agenda of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in Anna Karenina and The Bothers Karamazov, Jane E. DeStefano
War on the twenties: the effects of World War I on the American public and the literary imagination of the 1920s, Laura Dwyer
Success and failure in the life of Edwin Arlington Robinson, Katey Ford
The Unity of Style and Theme in Dubliners and Ulysses, Michael Gerard
Infinite Variety' and Domineering Dames: The Power of Shakespeare’s Women, Erica S. Gregg
Isolation of protein synthesis initiation factors using Volvox Carteri: a clue to the translational control of cytodifferentiation, Claudia Hackethal
Arthur Miller’s Female Characters, Sarah Hamilton
From One to Many: Brian Friel’s development as a dramatist…, James V. Hayes
Artists with no Form, Women without Community: Erotic Empowerment and Society in Modern American Women’s Writing, Laura E. Kuske
F. Scott Fitzgerald: Women and His Dreams, Laura Longsworth
'Peace: A Gift of God, A Human Task': Toward a Liberation Theology for Northern Ireland, David Miles Moore
Peace, a gift of God, a human task: Towards a Liberation Theology for Northern Ireland, Davis Miles Moore
Mark Twain, Huck Finn, and the American Child: Their Place in Society and in the History of Education, Sarah Oelkers
Fantasies as Adored and Abhorred by Today’s 'Pretty' Women, Erika Juall Sayewick
Writing at McDonald’s: Stories and Journals, Cathryn Swaffar
Honors Theses from 1991
Spatial and temporal distribution of hydrogen peroxide in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, Renee Blanchard
The Empire Strikes Out? A Look at the Nationalities Crisis in the Soviet Union, Catherine E. Breen
False Hopes: The United States Senate and Campaign Finance Reform 1980-1990, James Heimbach
The Stork and The Reaper: Duality in the Family in Two Family Plays of Tennessee Williams, Maggie Lacey
Gender Stereotypes, Love, and Marriage in Thomas Hardy’s Major Novels, Heidi Meehan
Male Domination/Female Degradation: Women's Sexuality in Bestselling Romance Fiction from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Barbara L. Shaw
Mountain Majesty: The Significance of Alpine Landscapes to the Mind and Poetics of Williams Wordsworth, Matt Testa
Paradox and Moral Drama in Milton’s Lycidas, Donna F. Wentworth
Honors Theses from 1990
Theological Voices. PAC Politics and the Abortion Debate: Abortion Politics and the Reagan Era, Kenneth W. Barber
Corporate hierarchies: communities of women in the fiction of Sarah Orne Jewett, Jennifer Milsop
Honors Theses from 1989
Hardboiled American detective fiction: the novels of Ross Macdonald, Mickey Spillane & Robert B. Parker, Kathleen Dowley
Fundamental American studies cocktail trivia, Joanne Tuffy Kriegel
Honors Theses from 1988
Power and the Social Order: Sex Role Stereotyping in Children's Television, Christine Burke
Irish-American fiction and the ethnic identity of Irish-Americans, Mary Carty
Doubletake : the obsessions of Sylvia Plath, Brian Connors
Hispanic-American culture in California, Kimberly Lynch
Garrison Keillor: Growing Up and Growing Old in America. Finding a Cultural Bridge to the Past., Lisa Jayne Tomasetti
Nikki Giovanni: Sell-out or Individual?, Nell Walker
Honors Theses from 1987
American Colleges of the 1920s: Myth vs. Reality, Deborah Fillman
Rise to power of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy: reflections of the Cold War McCarthy era in American film, Scott Lainer
Colby College: The Developmental Plan, Katharine V. R. Webster
Honors Theses from 1986
Burning of the Ursuline convent, Gregory Cronin
Radicalism in Literature: proletarian fiction of the 1930s, Susan Maxwell
Honors Theses from 1985
The American West: An Analysis of the Development of Myth as Portrayed in American Literature, Gus Wilmerding
Honors Theses from 1983
Impact of the 1980 election on ideological liberal organizations, Michael Coval
Honors Theses from 1981
Iran; Nicaragua; Cuba; An Analysis of Revolutions, Neil Moynihan
Honors Theses from 1958
Cultural Influences on American Literature in the Late Nineteenth Century, Joan Muir
Honors Theses from 1918
Cost of war, Lewis Levine