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 2006
Carrying Emptiness: the Ecology and Zen Buddhism of Gary Snyder’s Poetry, Erica Dorpalen
Some Big Tragedy, Travis Downs
Non-adherence: a Symptom of the Current Health Care Model, Margaret Duggan
Exploring Opportunity in America: Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Rags to Riches Success, Anna Erdheim
Investigating the mechanisms of a novel ribosomal RNA degradation system, Daniel Fowler
Vector Theory of Spontaneous Lorentz Violation, Shu Hong Fung
Modernist Success in a Postmodern Failure: Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionism, the Avant-Garde and the Ascension of Late Capitalism, Art after 1945, Russell Gullette
A Computational Study of the Reactivity Differences of Two Carbonyl Dianions, Sylvia Haller
Resistance of forest community types to structural and compositional change following beech bark disease infestation, Sarah Ann Hoskinson
Altering finite Markov chains to more accurately model forest succession, Malcolm Itter
Land, Consciousness and Continuance: The Poetry of Simon J. Ortiz and Joy Harjo, Ashley Jones-Pierce
Modeling spatially explicit human-wildlife conflict: GIS and moose-vehicle collisions in Maine, Alexandra Jospe
Patterns of dorm energy use and potential opportunities for dorm energy conservation at Colby College, Sarah Kelly
Assisted living: The politics of Medicaid and Medicare, Sarah Lim
The Tastes of a Nation: M.F.K. fisher and the Genre of Culinary Literature, Melina Markos
A Journey Through Memory and Self in the Works of Edwidge Danticat and Julia Alvarez, Kara McCabe
The travel imagination and the hybrid reality in the wake of colonialism, James McLaughlin
Media Coverage and Disaster Relief: Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words?, Jessica H. Minty
Environmental awareness of Waterville Junior High School students, Jenna Morrison
Creating a code snippet wiki repository, Nicholas Kinyua Mwai
The Case of Raging Bull: Homophobia and the Masculine Cinema of Martin Scorsese, Michael O’Brien
A broad-spectrum mer operon in a multi-drug resistant strain of the fish pathogen, Aeromonas salmonicida, Erin Parry
Beautiful Reckonings: Thought, Pain, and Complexity in John Keats’s Letters and Poetry, Erin Rhoda
Let Us Now Praise Famous Women, Erin Rhoda
Position tracking and motion prediction using Fuzzy Logic, Patrick Rodjito
Hydrogeologic investigation of the Serpentine Bog, Belgrade Lakes Watershed, Maine, Christopher J. Russoniello
Of Catholics and Politics in China: an Evaluation of the Political Agency of the Chinese Catholic Church, Sarah J. Schleck
Infinite Jest’s Spectacular Resistance: Subversion and Hope in a Pluralizing Entertainment Culture, Samuel Stark
Role of home equity in retirement saving: building your nest (egg), Caroline Theoharides
Politics and Poetry: The Evolution of Adrienne Rich, Eleanor Thermansen
Catalyzing Change: Towards Accelarated and Expanded U.S.-EU-Russian Action to Reduce the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism, Jessica C. Varnum
Characterization of the Wheat Grain PKABA1-Interacting Protein TaWD40, Natalie Wayne
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Liz Wyckoff
Synthesis of 2-oxo-16-(3', 4'-methylenedioxyphenyl)-trans-15-hexadecene, Adelajda Zorba
Honors Theses from 2005
The Use and Characterization of Rivers in Modern Literature, Jessica Beetz
Role of private owners in the conservation of exotic species, Jessica L. Beetz
Mysticizing Philosophy, Megan Celeste Burd
The Transboundary Implications of Wolf Reintroduction and Recovery in Maine, Brendan J. Carroll
The Synthesis of Biomimetic Tungsten and Molybdenum Complexes, John Sterling Cole III
United Methodism in New England: A historical, organizational, and spiritual study, Benjamin Davis
Guest-host chemistry of p-sulfonatocalix[6]arene and nizatidine, Galia Debelouchina
Speechless, Caitlin Dennehy
Extension of national membership: government promises, immigrant expectations and the impact on the foreign population in Germany, Justin Dubois
Synthesis and characterization of di- and tri-oxacalix[4]arenes, Michael Feldman
Sew and Tell: Making Rebozos, Stories and Thinking about Sandra Cisneros’ Caramelo, Melissa Hernandez
Liberalization of village banking in Guatemala: structural differences in village banking institutions, Erica L. Hill
Finding Family Trees: Barbara Kingsolver’s Creation of An Ecological Community, Melissa Hinkle
Governmental resistance in international intellectual property rights, Emily Honig
How Unpleasant It is to be Locked Out' Gender, Value and The Canon, A Reception Study of Three Modernist Women Writers, Elizabeth Johnson
On Messalonskee Lake, Michael King
Quite Off the Beaten Track: The Emergency of Sentimental Travel Writing and Its Influence on Anglo-American Society, Daniel Lynch
The Extraordinary Ordinary West: Humanity and Realism in McMurty’s Old West Narratives, Ann MacDonald
So I Guess You Know What I’m Thinking: A Collection of Short Stories, Mary Medlin
Analytical tools for studying phosphorus and nitrogen lake nutrient dynamics and their application to the field, Ivan Mihajlov
Beyond the Ordinary: The Consoling Power of Fantasy Literature in War, Todd Moore
Timing is Everything, Gillian Nadel
Synthetic approaches to rigid "rod-and-panel" macrocycles, Timothy Newhouse
Maternal and Cultural Influences on Individual Identity: The Novels of Toni Morrison and William Faulkner, Rebecca Nisetich
Witchcraft, Madness, and Misogyny: A Macbeth Production, Catherine Pappas
Photochemical generation of 2-methoxy-2methylpropylidene and its rearrangement pathways, Stanislav Presolski
Murder She Wrote, Setting She Did Not: The Creation of Mise-en-Scene in the Film Adaptations of Christie’s Poirot, Nathan Quigley
Automated identification of malicious code variants, Christopher Ries
Precarious Properties: Constructions of Body and Soul in John Donne and Emily Dickinson, Rachel Ritchie
Repetition and Revision: Mythology in the Novels of Toni Morrison and William Faulkner, Toni-Lynn Robbins
The Synthesis and Characterization of Bicyclooxacalixarenes, Kevin J. Selby
Education for the Oppressed: An Examination of the Effects of Literacy on Minority Groups in America, Rachel Sheinbaum
Exploring the World of Hollywood Through Literature, Lauren Smith
JeSS – a Java Security Scanner for Eclipse, Russell Spitler
The Forest Service's Quest for Power and Money: Implications of a Budget-Maximizing Agency, Allison M. Stewart
An Analysis of the Effect of Carbon Dioxide on the Decay Rates of Superoxide, Michael Jay Walsh
Opening the Windows of the Church to the World: The Creation of Nostra Aetate and Its Impact on the Christian-Jewish relationship, Christopher Rodney Yeoh
Honors Theses from 2004
Wealth effects on consumer spending in the US economy, Andriy Avramenko
Reinforcement of Patriarchal Society Through Film: An Examination of the Mother-Daughter Relationship in Literature and Film, Rebecca Avrutin
Hidden Remains: Freud, The Unconscious, and the Irrational in Contemporary American Poetry, Jared Berezin
Spontaneous evolution of cold Rydberg atoms to plasma, Jennifer Carini
"Passage O Soul to India!": Transcending the Transcendentalists, Jennifer Carpenter
Pyaguapy Ita: Silencing the Singing Stone: the Impact of Modern Technology on Indigenous People in Brazil, Caitlin Cassis
The most segregated hour in Christian America: Opposing science in the classroom propagates prejudice in the state of Georgia, Mickey Cooper
Boundary maintenance: an examination of municipal political participation in rural Bolivia, Spencer Fenniman
The Evolution of Language: Rock-Talk to Earth-Talk, Kristin Flanders
Theoretical mathematical model of fishery economics, Andre Garron
Breakdancing on Thin Ice, Sarah Getchell
The Noble Savage in Jean Jacques Rousseau and Three Successors, Chelsie Gosk
Power, positionality, and conceptions of stewardship and ownership in the cleanup of Nomans Land Island, Massachusetts, Michael Greenberg
What about the Canaanites? : Liberating Liberation Theology, Lindsey Grossman
The Musical Idiom: an Exploration of the Language of Music in African American Literature, Laurel Haeusslein
Building Morocco through literacy: women's participation in development, Elizabeth L. Holmes
Mapping of Diepoxybutane Damage in the Cytochrome b Domain of Mitochondrial DNA and the β-globin Domain of Nuclear Chicken DNA Using Quantitative PCR, Justin Juskewitch
High Art: Expedition Literature, Erick Lambert
Searching for the Rules: A Study of John Updike’s Harry Angstrom in Rabbit, Run and the Rabbit Tetralogy, Andrew Lizotte
Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, Lilla Lund
The Aesthetics of Adaptation: Plain Jane Goes to the Movies, Emma McCandless
Writing on the River: Kayak Stories, Henry Munter