dissertations of english

Department of English

Recent PhD Dissertations

Terekhov, Jessica (September 2022) -- "On Wit in Relation to Self-Division"

Selinger, Liora (September 2022) -- "Romanticism, Childhood, and the Poetics of Explanation"

Lockhart, Isabel (September 2022) -- "Storytelling and the Subsurface: Indigenous Fiction, Extraction, and the Energetic Present"

Ashe, Nathan (April 2022) – "Narrative Energy: Physics and the Scientific Real in Victorian Literature”

Bartley, Scott H. (April 2022) – “Watch it closely: The Poetry and Poetics of Aesthetic Focus in The New Criticism and Middle Generation”

Mctar, Ali (November 2021) – “Fallen Father: John Milton, Antinomianism, and the Case Against Adam”

Chow, Janet (September 2021) – “Securing the Crisis: Race and the Poetics of Risk”

Thorpe, Katherine (September 2021) – “Protean Figures: Personified Abstractions from Milton’s Allegory to Wordsworth’s Psychology of the Poet”

Minnen, Jennifer (September 2021) – “The Second Science: Feminist Natural Inquiry in Nineteenth-Century British Literature”

Starkowski, Kristen (September 2021) – “Doorstep Moments: Close Encounters with Minor Characters in the Victorian Novel”

Rickard, Matthew (September 2021) – “Probability: A Literary History, 1479-1700”

Crandell, Catie (September 2021) – “Inkblot Mirrors: On the Metareferential Mode and 19th Century British Literature”

Clayton, J.Thomas (September 2021) – “The Reformation of Indifference: Adiaphora, Toleration, and English Literature in the Seventeenth Century”

Goldberg, Reuven L. (May 2021) – “I Changed My Sex! Pedagogy and the Trans Narrative”

Soong, Jennifer (May 2021) – “Poetic Forgetting”

Edmonds, Brittney M. (April 2021) – “Who’s Laughing Now? Black Affective Play and Formalist Innovation in Twenty-First Century black Literary Satire”

Azariah-Kribbs, Colin (April 2021) – “Mere Curiosity: Knowledge, Desire, and Peril in the British and Irish Gothic Novel, 1796-1820”

Pope, Stephanie (January 2021) – “Rethinking Renaissance Symbolism: Material Culture, Visual Signs, and Failure in Early Modern Literature, 1587-1644”

Kumar, Matthew (September 2020) – “The Poetics of Space and Sensation in Scotland and Kenya”

Bain, Kimberly (September 2020) – “On Black Breath”

Eisenberg, Mollie (September 2020) – “The Case of the Self-Conscious Detective Novel: Modernism, Metafiction, and the Terms of Literary Value”

Hori, Julia M. (September 2020) – “Restoring Empire: British Imperial Nostalgia, Colonial Space, and Violence since WWII”

Reade, Orlando (June 2020) – “Being a Lover of the World: Lyric Poetry and Political Disaffection after the English Civil War”

Mahoney, Cate (June 2020) – “Go on Your Nerve: Confidence in American Poetry, 1860-1960”

Ritger, Matthew (April 2020) – “Objects of Correction:  Literature and the Birth of Modern Punishment”

VanSant, Cameron (April 2020) – “Novel Subjects:  Nineteenth-Century Fiction and the Transformation of British Subjecthood”

Lennington, David (November 2019) – “Anglo-Saxon and Arabic Identity in the Early Middle Ages”

Marraccini, Miranda (September 2019) – “Feminist Types: Reading the Victoria Press”

Harlow, Lucy (June 2019) – “The Discomposed Mind”

Williamson, Andrew (June 2019) – “Nothing to Say:  Silence in Modernist American Poetry”

Adair, Carl (April 2019) – “Faithful Readings: Religion, Hermeneutics, and the Habits of Criticism”

Rogers, Hope (April 2019) – “Good Girls: Female Agency and Convention in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel”

Green, Elspeth (January 2019) – “Popular Science and Modernist Poetry”

Braun, Daniel (January 2019) – Kinds of Wrong: The Liberalization of Modern Poetry 1910-1960”

Rosen, Rebecca (November 2018) – “Making the body Speak: Anatomy, Autopsy and Testimony in Early America, 1639-1790”

Blank, Daniel (November 2018) – Shakespeare and the Spectacle of University Drama”

Case, Sarah (September 2018) – Increase of Issue: Poetry and Succession in Elizabethan England”

Kucik, Emanuela  (June 2018) – “Black Genocides and the Visibility Paradox in Post-Holocaust African American and African Literature”

Quinn, Megan  (June 2018) – “The Sensation of Language: Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley”

McCarthy, Jesse D.  (June 2018) – “The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War, 1945-1965

Johnson, Colette E.  (June 2018) – “The Foibles of Play: Three Case Studies on Play in the Interwar Years”

Gingrich, Brian P.  (June 2018) – “The Pace of Modern Fiction: A History of Narrative Movement in Modernity”

Marcus, Sara R.  (June 2018) – “Political Disappointment: A Partial History of a Feeling”

Parry, Rosalind A.  (April 2018) – “Remaking Nineteenth-Century Novels for the Twentieth Century”

Gibbons, Zoe  (January 2018) – “From Time to Time:  Narratives of Temporality in Early Modern England, 1610-1670”

Padilla, Javier  (September 2017) – “Modernist Poetry and the Poetics of Temporality:  Between Modernity and Coloniality”

Alvarado, Carolina (June 2017) – "Pouring Eastward: Editing American Regionalism, 1890-1940"

Gunaratne, Anjuli (May 2017) – "Tragic Resistance: Decolonization and Disappearance in Postcolonial Literature"

Glover, Eric (May 2017) – "By and About:  An Antiracist History of the Musicals and the Antimusicals of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston"

Tuckman, Melissa (April 2017) – "Unnatural Feelings in Nineteenth-Century Poetry"

Eggan, Taylor (April 2017) – "The Ecological Uncanny: Estranging Literary Landscapes in Twentieth-Century Narrative Fiction"

Calver, Harriet (March 2017) – "Modern Fiction and Its Phantoms"

Gaubinger, Rachel (December 2016) – "Between Siblings: Form and Family in the Modern Novel"

Swartz, Kelly (December 2016) – "Maxims and the Mind: Sententiousness from Seventeenth-Century Science to the Eighteenth-Century Novel"

Robles, Francisco (June 2016) – “Migrant Modalities: Radical Democracy and Intersectional Praxis in American Literatures, 1923-1976”

Johnson, Daniel (June 2016) – “Visible Plots, Invisible Realms”

Bennett, Joshua (June 2016) – “Being Property Once Myself: In Pursuit of the Animal in 20th Century African American Literature”

Scranton, Roy (January 2016) – “The Trauma Hero and the Lost War: World War II, American Literature, and the Politics of Trauma, 1945-1975

Jacob, Priyanka (November 2015) – “Things That Linger: Secrets, Containers and Hoards in the Victorian Novel”

Evans, William (November 2015) – “The Fiction of Law in Shakespeare and Spenser”

Vasiliauskas, Emily (November 2015) – “Dead Letters: The Afterlife Before Religion”

Walker, Daniel (June 2015) – “Sociable Uncertainties: Literature and the Ethics of Indeterminacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain”

Reilly, Ariana (June 2015) – “Leave-Takings: Anti-Self-Consciousness and the Escapist Ends of the Victorian Marriage Plot”

Lerner, Ross (June 2015) – "Framing Fanaticism: Religion, Violence, and the Reformation Literature of Self-Annihilation”

Harrison, Matthew (June 2015) – "Tear Him for His Bad Verses: Poetic Value and Literary History in Early Modern England”

Krumholtz, Matthew (June 2015) – “Talking Points: American Dialogue in the Twentieth Century”

Dauber, Maayan (March 2015) – "The Pathos of Modernism: Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and Gertrude Stein (with a coda on J.M. Coetzee)”

Hostetter, Lyra (March 2015) – “Novel Errantry: An Annotated Edition of Horatio, of Holstein (1800)”

Sanford, Beatrice (January 2015) – “Love’s Perception: Nineteenth-Century Aesthetics of Attachment”

Chong, Kenneth (January 2015) – “Potential Theologies: Scholasticism and Middle English Literature”

Worsley, Amelia (September 2014) – “The Poetry of Loneliness from Romance to Romanticism”

Hurtado, Jules (June 2014) – “The Pornographer at the Crossroads: Sex, Realism and Experiment in the Contemporary English Novel”

Rutherford, James (June 2014) – "Irrational Actors: Literature and Logic in Early Modern England”

Wilde, Lisa (June 2014) – “English Numeracy and the Writing of New Worlds, 1543-1622”

Hyde, Emily (November 2013) – “A Way of Seeing: Modernism, Illustration, and Postcolonial Literature”

Ortiz, Ivan (September 2013) – “Romanticism and the Aesthetics of Modern Transport”

Aronowicz, Yaron (September 2013) – “Fascinated Moderns: The Attentions of Modern Fiction”

Wythoff, Grant (September 2013) – “Gadgetry: New Media and the Fictional Imagination”

Ramachandran, Anitha (September 2013) – "Recovering Global Women’s Travel Writings from the Modern Period: An Inquiry Into Genre and Narrative Agency”

Reuland, John (April 2013) – “The Self Unenclosed: A New Literary History of Pragmatism, 1890-1940”

Wasserman, Sarah (January 2013) – “Material Losses: Urban Ephemera in Contemporary American Literature and Culture”

Kastner, Tal (November 2012) – "The Boilerplate of Everything and the Ideal of Agreement in American Law and Literature"

Labella, John (October 2012) – "Lyric Hemisphere: Latin America in United States Poetry, 1927-1981"

Kindley, Evan (September 2012) – "Critics and Connoisseurs: Poet-Critics and the Administration of Modernism"

Smith, Ellen (September 2012) – "Writing Native: The Aboriginal in Australian Cultural Nationalism 1927-1945"

Werlin, Julianne (September 2012) – "The Impossible Probable: Modeling Utopia in Early Modern England"

Posmentier, Sonya (May 2012) – "Cultivation and Catastrophe:  Forms of Nature in Twentieth-Century Poetry of the Black Diaspora"

Alfano, Veronica (September 2011) – “The Lyric in Victorian Memory”

Foltz, Jonathan (September 2011) – “Modernism and the Narrative Cultures of Film”

Coghlan, J. Michelle (September 2011) – “Revolution’s Afterlife; The Paris Commune in American Cultural Memory, 1871-1933”

Christoff, Alicia (September 2011) – “Novel Feeling”

Shin, Jacqueline (August 2011) – “Picturing Repose: Between the Acts of British Modernism”

Ebrahim, Parween (August 2011) – “Outcasts and Inheritors: The Ishmael Ethos in American Culture, 1776-1917”

Reckson, Lindsay (August 2011) – “Realist Ecstasy: Enthusiasm in American Literature 1886 - 1938"

Londe, Gregory (June 2011) – “Enduring Modernism: Forms of Surviving Location in the 20th Century Long Poem”

Brown, Adrienne (June 2011) – “Reading Between the Skylines: The Skyscraper in American Modernism”

Russell, David (June 2011) – “A Literary History of Tact: Sociability, Aesthetic Liberalism and the Essay Form in Nineteenth-Century Britain”

Hostetter, Aaron (December 2010) – "The Politics of Eating and Cooking in Medieval English Romance"

Moshenska, Joseph (November 2010) – " 'Feeling Pleasures': The Sense of Touch in Renaissance England"

Walker, Casey (September 2010) – "The City Inside: Intimacy and Urbanity in Henry James, Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf"

Rackin, Ethel (August 2010) – "Ornamentation and Essence in Modernist Poetry"

Noble, Mary (August 2010) – "Primitive Marriage: Anthropology and Nineteenth-Century Fiction"

Fox, Renee (August 2010) – "Necromantic Victorians: Reanimation, History and the Politics of Literary Innovation, 1868-1903"

Hopper, Briallen (June 2010) – “Feeling Right in American Reform Culture”

Lee, Wendy (June 2010) -- "Failures of Feeling in the British Novel from Richardson to Eliot"

Moyer, James (March 2010) – "The Passion of Abolitionism: How Slave Martyrdom Obscures Slave Labor”

Forbes, Erin (September 2009) – “Genius of Deep Crime:  Literature, Enslavement and the American Criminal”

Crawforth, Hannah (September 2009) – “The Politics and Poetics of Etymology in Early Modern Literature”

Elliott, Danielle (April 2009) – "Sea of Bones: The Middle Passage in Contemporary Poetry of the Black Atlantic”

Yu, Wesley (April 2009) – “Romance Logic: The Argument of Vernacular Verse in the Scholastic Middle Ages”

Cervantes, Gabriel (April 2009) – "Genres of Correction: Anglophone Literature and the Colonial Turn in Penal Law 1722-1804”

Rosinberg, Erwin (January 2009) – "A Further Conjunction: The Couple and Its Worlds in Modern British Fiction”

Walsh, Keri (January 2009) – "Antigone in Modernism: Classicism, Feminism, and Theatres of Protest”

Heald, Abigail (January 2009) – “Tears for Dido: A Renaissance Poetics of Feeling”

Bellin, Roger (January 2009) – "Argument: The American Transcendentalists and Disputatious Reason”

Ellis, Nadia (November 2008) – "Colonial Affections: Formulations of Intimacy Between England and the Caribbean, 1930-1963”

Baskin, Jason (November 2008) – “Embodying Experience: Romanticism and Social Life in the Twentieth Century”

Barrett, Jennifer-Kate (September 2008) – “ ‘So Written to Aftertimes’: Renaissance England’s Poetics of Futurity”

Moss, Daniel (September 2008) – “Renaissance Ovids: The Metamorphosis of Allusion in Late Elizabethan England”

Rainof, Rebecca (September 2008) – “Purgatory and Fictions of Maturity: From Newman to Woolf”

Darznik, Jasmin (November 2007) – “Writing Outside the Veil: Literature by Women of the Iranian Diaspora”

Bugg, John (September 2007) – “Gagging Acts: The Trials of British Romanticism”

Matson, John (September 2007) – “Marking Twain: Mechanized Composition and Medial Subjectivity in the Twain Era”

Neel, Alexandra (September 2007) – “The Writing of Ice: The Literature and Photography of Polar Regions”

Smith-Browne, Stephanie (September 2007) – “Gothic and the Pacific Voyage: Patriotism, Romance and Savagery in South Seas Travels and the Utopia of the Terra Australis”

Bystrom, Kerry (June 2007) – “Orphans and Origins: Family, Memory, and Nation in Argentina and South Africa”

Ards, Angela (June 2007) – “Affirmative Acts: Political Piety in African American Women’s Contemporary Autobiography”

Cragwall, Jasper (June 2007) – “Lake Methodism”

Ball, David (June 2007) – “False Starts: The Rhetoric of Failure and the Making of American Modernism, 1850-1950”

Ramdass, Harold (June 2007) – “Miswriting Tragedy: Genealogy, History and Orthography in the Canterbury Tales, Fragment I”

Lilley, James (June 2007) – “Common Things: Transatlantic Romance and the Aesthetics of Belonging, 1764-1840”

Noble, Mary (March 2007) – “Primitive Marriage: Anthropology and Nineteenth-Century Fiction”

Passannante, Gerard (January 2007) – “The Lucretian Renaissance: Ancient Poetry and Humanism in an Age of Science”

Tessone, Natasha (November 2006) – “The Fiction of Inheritance: Familial, Cultural, and National Legacies in the Irish and Scottish Novel”

Horrocks, Ingrid (September 2006) – “Reluctant Wanderers, Mobile Feelings: Moving Figures in Eighteenth-Century Literature”

Bender, Abby (June 2006) – “Out of Egypt and into bondage: Exodus in the Irish National Imagination”

Johnson, Hannah (June 2006) – “The Medieval Limit: Historiography, Ethics, Culture”

Horowitz, Evan (January 2006) – “The Writing of Modern Life”

White, Gillian (November 2005) – “ ‘We Do Not Say Ourselves Like That in Poems’: The Poetics of Contingency in Wallace Stevens and Elizabeth Bishop

Baudot, Laura (September 2005) – “Looking at Nothing: Literary Vacuity in the Long Eighteenth Century”

Hicks, Kevin (September 2005) – “Acts of Recovery: American Antebellum Fictions”

Stern, Kimberly (September 2005) – “The Victorian Sibyl: Women Reviewers and the Reinvention of Critical Tradition”

Nardi, Steven (May 2005) – “Automatic Aesthetics: Race, Technology, and Poetics in the Harlem Renaissance and American New Poetry”

Sayeau, Michael (May 2005) – “Everyday: Literature, Modernity, and Time”

Cooper, Lawrence (April 2005) – “Gothic Realities: The Emergence of Cultural Forms Through Representations of the Unreal”

Betjemann, Peter (November 2004) – “Talking Shop: Craft and Design in Hawthorne, James, and Wharton”

Forbes, Aileen (November 2004) – “Passion Play: Theaters of Romantic Emotion”

Keeley, Howard (November 2004) – “Beyond Big House and Cabin: Dwelling Politically in Modern Irish Literature”

Machlan, Elizabeth (November 2004) – “Panic Rooms: Architecture and Anxiety in New York Stories from 1900 to 9/11”

McDowell, Demetrius (November 2004) – “Hawthorne, James, and the Pressures of the Literary Marketplace”

Waldron, Jennifer (November 2004) – “Eloquence of the Body: Aesthetics, Theology, and English Renaissance Theater”

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Digital Commons @ USF > College of Arts and Sciences > English > Theses and Dissertations

English Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2024 2024.

The Drama of Last Things: Reckoning in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Drama , Spencer M. Daniels

African Spirituality in Literature Written by Women of African Descent , Brigét V. Harley

Hidden Monstrosities: The Transformation of Medieval Characters and Conventions in Shakespeare's Romances , Lynette Kristine Kuliyeva

Making the Invisible Visible: (Re)envisioning the Black Body in Contemporary Adaptations of Nineteenth-Century Fiction , Urshela Wiggins McKinney

Lawful Injustice: Novel Readings of Racialized Temporality and Legal Instabilities , Danielle N. Mercier

“Manne, for thy loue wolde I not lette”: Eucharistic Portrayals of Caritas in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Drama 1350-1650 , Rachel Tanski

Theses/Dissertations from 2023 2023

Of Mētis and Cuttlefish: Employing Collective Mētis as a Theoretical Framework for Marginalized Communities , Justiss Wilder Burry

What on earth are we doing (?): A Field-Wide Exploration of Design Courses in TPC , Jessica L. Griffith

Organizations Ensuring Resilience: A Case Study of Cortez, Florida , Karla Ariel Maddox

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Using Movie Clips to Understand Vivid-Phrasal Idioms’ Meanings , Rasha Salem S. Alghamdi

Writing Supports for Honors Thesis Students: An Applied Program Evaluation Study , Krysta Banke

An Exercise in Exceptions: Personhood, Divergency, and Ableism in the STAR TREK Franchise , Jessica A. Blackman

Vulnerable Resistance in Victorian Women’s Writing , Stephanie A. Harper

Curricular Assemblages: Understanding Student Writing Knowledge (Re)circulation Across Genres , Adam Phillips

Anthropocene Fiction: Empathy, Kinship, and the Troubled Waters at the End of the World , Megan Mandell Stowe

PAD Beyond the Classroom: Integrating PAD in the Scrum Workplace , Jade S. Weiss

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Social Cues in Animated Pedagogical Agents for Second Language Learners: the Application of The Embodiment Principle in Video Design , Sahar M. Alyahya

A Field-Wide Examination of Cross-Listed Courses in Technical Professional Communication , Carolyn M. Gubala

Labor-Based Grading Contracts in the Multilingual FYC Classroom: Unpacking the Variables , Kara Kristina Larson

Land Goddesses, Divine Pigs, and Royal Tricksters: Subversive Mythologies and Imperialist Land Ownership Dispossession in Twentieth Century Irish and American Literature , Elizabeth Ricketts

Oppression, Resistance, and Empowerment: The Power Dynamics of Naming and Un-naming in African American Literature, 1794 to 2019 , Melissa "Maggie" Romigh

Generic Expectations in First Year Writing: Teaching Metadiscoursal Reflection and Revision Strategies for Increased Generic Uptake of Academic Writing , Kaelah Rose Scheff

Reframing the Gothic: Race, Gender, & Disability in Multiethnic Literature , Ashely B. Tisdale

Intersections of Race and Place in Short Fiction by New Orleans Gens de Couleur Libres , Adrienne D. Vivian

Mental Illness Diagnosis and the Construction of Stigma , Katie Lynn Walkup

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Rhetorical Roundhouse Kicks: Tae Kwon Do Pumsae Practice and Non-Western Embodied Topoi , Spencer Todd Bennington

9/11 Then and Now: How the Performance of Memorial Rhetoric by Presidents Changes to Construct Heroes , Kristen M. Grafton

Kinesthetically Speaking: Human and Animal Communication in British Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century , Dana Jolene Laitinen

Exploring Refugee Students’ Second Language (L2) Motivational Selves through Digital Visual Representations , Nhu Le

Glamour in Contemporary American Cinema , Shauna A. Maragh

Instrumentalization Theory: An Analytical Heuristic for a Heightened Social Awareness of Machine Learning Algorithms in Social Media , Andrew R. Miller

Intercessory Power: A Literary Analysis of Ethics and Care in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon , Alice Walker’s Meridian , and Toni Cade Bambara’s Those Bones Are Not My Child , Kelly Mills

The Power of Non-Compliant Logos: A New Materialist Approach to Comic Studies , Stephanie N. Phillips

Female Identity and Sexuality in Contemporary Indonesian Novels , Zita Rarastesa

"The Fiery Furnaces of Hell": Rhetorical Dynamism in Youngstown, OH , Joshua M. Rea

“We developed solidarity”: Family, Race, Identity, and Space-Time in Recent Multiethnic U.S. American Fiction , Kimber L. Wiggs

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Remembrance of a Wound: Ethical Mourning in the Works of Ana Menéndez, Elías Miguel Muñoz, and Junot Díaz , José Aparicio

Taking an “Ecological Turn” in the Evaluation of Rhetorical Interventions , Peter Cannon

New GTA’s and the Pre-Semester Orientation: The Need for Informed Refinement , Jessica L. Griffith

Reading Rape and Answering with Empathy: A New Approach to Sexual Assault Education for College Students , Brianna Jerman

The Karoo , The Veld , and the Co-Op: The Farm as Microcosm and Place for Change in Schreiner, Lessing, and Head , Elana D. Karshmer

"The weak are meat, and the strong do eat"; Representations of the Slaughterhouse in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature , Stephanie Lance

Language of Carnival: How Language and the Carnivalesque Challenge Hegemony , Yulia O. Nekrashevich

Queer Authority in Old and Middle English Literature , Elan J. Pavlinich

Because My Garmin Told Me To: A New Materialist Study of Agency and Wearable Technology , Michael Repici

No One Wants to Read What You Write: A Contextualized Analysis of Service Course Assignments , Tanya P. Zarlengo

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Beauty and the Beasts: Making Places with Literary Animals of Florida , Haili A. Alcorn

The Medievalizing Process: Religious Medievalism in Romantic and Victorian Literature , Timothy M. Curran

Seeing Trauma: The Known and the Hidden in Nineteenth-Century Literature , Alisa M. DeBorde

Analysis of User Interfaces in the Sharing Economy , Taylor B. Johnson

Border-Crossing Travels Across Literary Worlds: My Shamanic Conscientization , Scott Neumeister

The Spectacle of The Bomb: Rhetorical Analysis of Risk of The Nevada Test Site in Technical Communication, Popular Press, and Pop Culture , Tiffany Wilgar

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Traveling Women and Consuming Place in Eighteenth-Century Travel Letters and Journals , Cassie Patricia Childs

“The Nations of the Field and Wood”: The Uncertain Ontology of Animals in Eighteenth-Century British Literature , J. Kevin Jordan

Modern Mythologies: The Epic Imagination in Contemporary Indian Literature , Sucheta Kanjilal

Science in the Sun: How Science is Performed as a Spatial Practice , Natalie Kass

Body as Text: Physiognomy on the Early English Stage , Curtis Le Van

Tensions Between Democracy and Expertise in the Florida Keys , Elizabeth A. Loyer

Institutional Review Boards and Writing Studies Research: A Justice-Oriented Study , Johanna Phelps-Hillen

The Spirit of Friendship: Girlfriends in Contemporary African American Literature , Tangela La'Chelle Serls

Aphra Behn on the Contemporary Stage: Behn's Feminist Legacy and Woman-Directed Revivals of The Rover , Nicole Elizabeth Stodard

(Age)ncy in Composition Studies , Alaina Tackitt

Constructing Health Narratives: Patient Feedback in Online Communities , Katie Lynn Walkup

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Rupturing the World of Elite Athletics: A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of the Suspension of the 2011 IAAF Regulations on Hyperandrogenism , Ella Browning

Shaping Climate Citizenship: The Ethics of Inclusion in Climate Change Communication and Policy , Lauren E. Cagle

Drop, Cover, and Hold On: Analyzing FEMA's Risk Communication through Visual Rhetoric , Samantha Jo Cosgrove

Material Expertise: Applying Object-oriented Rhetoric in Marine Policy , Zachary Parke Dixon

The Non-Identical Anglophone Bildungsroman : From the Categorical to the De-Centering Literary Subject in the Black Atlantic , Jarad Heath Fennell

Instattack: Instagram and Visual Ad Hominem Political Arguments , Sophia Evangeline Gourgiotis

Hospitable Climates: Representations of the West Indies in Eighteenth-Century British Literature , Marisa Carmen Iglesias

Chosen Champions: Medieval and Early Modern Heroes as Postcolonial Reactions to Tensions between England and Europe , Jessica Trant Labossiere

Science, Policy, and Decision Making: A Case Study of Deliberative Rhetoric and Policymaking for Coastal Adaptation in Southeast Florida , Karen Patricia Langbehn

A New Materialist Approach to Visual Rhetoric in PhotoShopBattles , Jonathan Paul Ray

Tracing the Material: Spaces and Objects in British and Irish Modernist Novels , Mary Allison Wise

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Representations of Gatsby: Ninety Years of Retrospective , Christine Anne Auger

Robust, Low Power, Discrete Gate Sizing , Anthony Joseph Casagrande

Wrestling with Angels: Postsecular Contemporary American Poetry , Paul T. Corrigan

#networkedglobe: Making the Connection between Social Media and Intercultural Technical Communication , Laura Anne Ewing

Evidence of Things Not Seen: A Semi-Automated Descriptive Phrase and Frame Analysis of Texts about the Herbicide Agent Orange , Sarah Beth Hopton

'She Shall Not Be Moved': Black Women's Spiritual Practice in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, and Home , Rondrea Danielle Mathis

Relational Agency, Networked Technology, and the Social Media Aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing , Megan M. Mcintyre

Now, We Hear Through a Voice Darkly: New Media and Narratology in Cinematic Art , James Anthony Ricci

Navigating Collective Activity Systems: An Approach Towards Rhetorical Inquiry , Katherine Jesse Royce

Women's Narratives of Confinement: Domestic Chores as Threads of Resistance and Healing , Jacqueline Marie Smith

Domestic Spaces in Transition: Modern Representations of Dwelling in the Texts of Elizabeth Bowen , Shannon Tivnan

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Paradise Always Already Lost: Myth, Memory, and Matter in English Literature , Elizabeth Stuart Angello

Overcoming the 5th-Century BCE Epistemological Tragedy: A Productive Reading of Protagoras of Abdera , Ryan Alan Blank

Acts of Rebellion: The Rhetoric of Rogue Cinema , Adam Breckenridge

Material and Textual Spaces in the Poetry of Montagu, Leapor, Barbauld, and Robinson , Jessica Lauren Cook

Decolonizing Shakespeare: Race, Gender, and Colonialism in Three Adaptations of Three Plays by William Shakespeare , Angela Eward-Mangione

Risk of Compliance: Tracing Safety and Efficacy in Mef-Lariam's Licensure , Julie Marie Gerdes

Beyond Performance: Rhetoric, Collective Memory, and the Motive of Imprinting Identity , Brenda M. Grau

Subversive Beauty - Victorian Bodies of Expression , Lisa Michelle Hoffman-Reyes

Integrating Reading and Writing For Florida's ESOL Program , George Douglas Mcarthur

Responsibility and Responsiveness in the Novels of Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley , Katherine Marie McGee

Ghosts, Orphans, and Outlaws: History, Family, and the Law in Toni Morrison's Fiction , Jessica Mckee

The "Defective" Generation: Disability in Modernist Literature , Deborah Susan Mcleod

Science Fiction/Fantasy and the Representation of Ethnic Futurity , Joy Ann Sanchez-Taylor

Hermes, Technical Communicator of the Gods: The Theory, Design, and Creation of a Persuasive Game for Technical Communication , Eric Walsh

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Rhetorical Spirits: Spirituality as Rhetorical Device in New Age Womanist of Color Texts , Ronisha Witlee Browdy

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Home > ARTSSCI > English > dissertations

English Dissertations and Theses

The English Department Dissertations and Theses Series is comprised of dissertations and thesis authored by Marquette University's English Department doctoral and master's students.

Theses/Dissertations from 2024 2024

Muslim Cultural Resistance , Ibtisam M. Abujad

Speculative Escapism in Contemporary Fantasy: Labor, Utility, Affect , Liamog Seamus Drislane

AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN’S WRITING: A CRITICAL EDITION OF A NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE AND TRAVELS OF MRS. NANCY PRINCE (1856) , Susan E. Landwer

Disillusionment and Domesticity in Mid-20th-Century British Catholic Literature , Catherine Simmerer

A LIBERATED WEST?: FEMALE AUTHORS’ REPRESENTATIONS OF THE "REAL AND THE FANTASIZED" ON THE AMERICAN FRONTIER , Amanda Diane Zastrow

Theses/Dissertations from 2023 2023

Lifting the Postmodern Veil: Cosmopolitanism, Humanism, and Decolonization in Global Fictions of the 21st Century , Matthew Burchanoski

Gothic Transformations and Remediations in Cheap Nineteenth-Century Fiction , Wendy Fall

Milton’s Learning: Complementarity and Difference in Paradise Lost , Peter Spaulding

“The Development of the Conceptive Plot Through Early 19th-Century English Novels” , Jannea R. Thomason

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Gonzo Eternal , John Francis Brick

Intertextuality and Sociopolitical Engagement in Contemporary Anglophone Women’s Writing , Jackielee Derks

Innovation, Genre, and Authenticity in the Nineteenth-Century Irish Novel , David Aiden Kenney II

Reluctant Sons: The Irish Matrilineal Tradition of Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and Flann O’Brien , Jessie Wirkus Haynes

Britain's Extraterrestrial Empire: Colonial Ambition, Anxiety, and Ambivalence in Early Modern Literature , Mark Edward Wisniewski

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Re-Reading the “Culture Clash”: Alternative Ways of Reading in Indian Horse , Hailey Whetten

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

When the Foreign Became Familiar: Modernism, Expatriation, and Spatial Identities in the Twentieth Century , Danielle Kristene Clapham

Reforming Victorian Sense/Abilities: Disabilities in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Social Problem Novels , Hunter Nicole Duncan

Genre and Loss: The Impossibility of Restoration in 20th Century Detective Fiction , Kathryn Hendrickson

A Productive Failure: Existentialism in Fin de Siècle England , Maxwell Patchet

Inquiry and Provocation: The Use of Ambiguity in Sixteenth-Century English Political Satire , Jason James Zirbel

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

No Home but the World: Forced Migration and Transnational Identity , Justice Hagan

The City As a Trap: 20th and 21st Century American Literature and the American Myth of Mobility , Andrew Joseph Hoffmann

The Fantastic and the First World War , Brian Kenna

Insane in the Brain, Blood, and Lungs: Gender-Specific Manifestations of Hysteria, Chlorosis, & Consumption in 19th-Century Literature , Anna P. Scanlon

Reading Multicultural Novels Melancholically: Racial Grief and Grievance in the Joy Luck Club, Beloved, and Anil's Ghost , Jennifer Arias Sweeney

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

The Ethos of Dissent: Epideictic Rhetoric and the Democratic Function of American Protest and Countercultural Literature , Jeffrey Lorino Jr

Literary Cosmopolitanisms of Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, and Arundhati Roy , Sunil Samuel Macwan

The View from Here: Toward a Sissy Critique , Tyler Monson

The Forbidden Zone Writers: Femininity and Anglophone Women War Writers of the Great War , Sareene Proodian

Theatrical Weddings and Pious Frauds: Performance and Law in Victorian Marriage Plots , Adrianne A. Wojcik

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Changing the Victorian Habit Loop: The Body in the Poetry and Painting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris , Bryan Gast

Gendering Scientific Discourse from 1790-1830: Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Marcet , Bridget E. Kapler

Discarding Dreams and Legends: The Short Fiction of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty , Katy L. Leedy

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Saving the Grotesque: The Grotesque System of Liberation in British Modernism (1922-1932) , Matthew Henningsen

The Pulpit's Muse: Conversive Poetics in the American Renaissance , Michael William Keller

A Single Man of Good Fortune: Postmodern Identities and Consumerism in the New Novel of Manners , Bonnie McLean

Julian of Norwich: Voicing the Vernacular , Therese Elaine Novotny

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Homecomings: Victorian British Women Travel Writers And Revisions Of Domesticity , Emily Paige Blaser

From Pastorals to Paterson: Ecology in the Poetry and Poetics of William Carlos WIlliams , Daniel Edmund Burke

Argument in Poetry: (Re)Defining the Middle English Debate in Academic, Popular, and Physical Contexts , Kathleen R. Burt

Apocalyptic Mentalities in Late-Medieval England , Steven A. Hackbarth

The Creation of Heaven in the Middle Ages , William Storm

(re)making The Gentleman: Genteel Masculinities And The Country Estate In The Novels Of Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen, And Elizabeth Gaskell , Shaunna Kay Wilkinson

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Brides, Department Stores, Westerns, and Scrapbooks--The Everyday Lives of Teenage Girls in the 1940s , Carly Anger

Placed People: Rootedness in G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and Wendell Berry , David Harden

Rhetorics Of Girlhood Trauma In Writing By Holly Goddard Jones, Joyce Carol Oates, Sandra Cisneros, And Jamaica Kincaid , Stephanie Marie Stella

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

A Victorian Christmas in Hell: Yuletide Ghosts and Necessary Pleasures in the Age of Capital , Brandon Chitwood

"Be-Holde the First Acte of this Tragedy" : Generic Symbiosis and Cross-Pollination in Jacobean Drama and the Early Modern Prose Novella , Karen Ann Zyck Galbraith

Pamela: Or, Virtue Reworded: The Texts, Paratexts, and Revisions that Redefine Samuel Richardson's Pamela , Jarrod Hurlbert

Violence and Masculinity in American Fiction, 1950-1975 , Magdalen McKinley

Gender Politics in the Novels of Eliza Haywood , Susan Muse

Destabilizing Tradition: Gender, Sexuality, and Postnational Identity in Four Novels by Irish Women, 1960-2000 , Sarah Nestor

Truth Telling: Testimony and Evidence in the Novels of Elizabeth Gaskell , Rebecca Parker Fedewa

Spirit of the Psyche: Carl Jung's and Victor White's Influence on Flannery O'Connor's Fiction , Paul Wakeman

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

Performing the Audience: Constructing Playgoing in Early Modern Drama , Eric Dunnum

Paule Marshall's Critique of Contemporary Neo-Imperialisms Through the Trope of Travel , Michelle Miesen Felix

Hermeneutics, Poetry, and Spenser: Augustinian Exegesis and the Renaissance Epic , Denna Iammarino-Falhamer

Encompassing the Intolerable: Laughter, Memory, and Inscription in the Fiction of John McGahern , John Keegan Malloy

Regional Consciousness in American Literature, 1860-1930 , Kelsey Louise Squire

The Ethics of Ekphrasis: The Turn to Responsible Rhetoric in Mid-Twentieth Century American Poetry , Joshua Scott Steffey

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Cognitive Architectures: Structures of Passion in Joanna Baillie's Dramas , Daniel James Bergen

On Trial: Restorative Justice in the Godwin-Wollstonecraft-Shelley Family Fictions , Colleen M. Fenno

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

What's the point to eschatology : multiple religions and terminality in James Joyce's Finnegans wake , Martin R. Brick

Economizing Characters: Harriet Martineau and the Problems of Poverty in Victorian Literature, Culture and Law , Mary Colleen Willenbring

Submissions from 2008 2008

"An improbable fiction": The marriage of history and romance in Shakespeare's Henriad , Marcia Eppich-Harris

Bearing the Mark of the Social: Notes Towards a Cosmopolitan Bildungsroman , Megan M. Muthupandiyan

The Gothic Novel and the Invention of the Middle-Class Reader: Northanger Abbey As Case Study , Tenille Nowak

Not Just a Novel of Epic Proportions: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man As Modern American Epic , Dana Edwards Prodoehl

Recovering the Radicals: Women Writers, Reform, and Nationalist Modes of Revolutionary Discourse , Mark J. Zunac

Theses/Dissertations from 2007 2007

"The Sweet and the Bitter": Death and Dying in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings , Amy M. Amendt-Raduege

The Games Men Play: Madness and Masculinity in Post-World War II American Fiction, 1946-1964 , Thomas P. Durkin

Denise Levertov: Through An Ecofeminist Lens , Katherine A. Hanson

The Wit of Wrestling: Devotional-Aesthetic Tradition in Christina Rossetti's Poetry , Maria M.E. Keaton

Genderless Bodies: Stigma and the Myth of Womanhood , Ellen M. Letizia

Envy and Jealousy in the Novels of the Brontës: A Synoptic Discernment , Margaret Ann McCann

Technologies of the Late Medieval Self: Ineffability, Distance, and Subjectivity in the Book of Margery Kempe , Crystal L. Mueller

"Finding-- a Map-- to That Place Called Home": The Journey from Silence to Recovery in Patrick McCabe's Carn and Breakfast on Pluto , Valerie A. Murrenus Pilmaier

Emily Dickinson's Ecocentric Pastoralism , Moon-ju Shin

The American Jeremiad in Civil War Literature , Jacob Hadley Stratman

Theses/Dissertations from 2006 2006

Literary Art in Times of Crisis: The Proto-Totalitarian Anxiety of Melville, James, and Twain , Matthew J. Darling

(Re) Writing Genre: Narrative Conventions and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison , Jennifer Lee Jordan Heinert

"Amsolookly Kersse": Clothing in Finnegan's Wake , Catherine Simpson Kalish

"Do Your Will": Shakespeare's Use of the Rhetoric of Seduction in Four Plays , Jason James Nado

Woman in Emblem: Locating Authority in the Work and Identity of Katherine Philips (1632-1664) , Susan L. Stafinbil

When the Bough Breaks: Poetry on Abortion , Wendy A. Weaver

Theses/Dissertations from 2005 2005

Heroic Destruction: Shame and Guilt Cultures in Medieval Heroic Poetry , Karl E. Boehler

Poe and Early (Un)American Drama , Amy C. Branam

Grammars of Assent: Constructing Poetic Authority in An Age of Science , William Myles Carroll III

This Place is Not a Place: The Constructed Scene in the Works of Sir Walter Scott , Colin J. Marlaire

Cognitive Narratology: A Practical Approach to the Reader-Writer Relationship , Debra Ann Ripley

Theses/Dissertations from 2004 2004

Defoe and the Pirates: Function of Genre Conventions in Raiding Narratives , William J. Dezoma

Creative Discourse in the Eighteenth-Century Courtship Novel , Michelle Ruggaber Dougherty

Exclusionary Politics: Mourning and Modernism in the Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Amy Levy, and Charlotte Mew , Donna Decker Schuster

Theses/Dissertations from 2003 2003

Toward a Re-Formed Confession: Johann Gerhard's Sacred Meditations and "Repining Restlessnesse" in the Poetry of George Herbert , Erik P. Ankerberg

Idiographic Spaces: Representation, Ideology and Realism in the Postmodern British Novel , Gordon B. McConnell

Theses/Dissertations from 2002 2002

Reading into It: Wallace Stegner's Novelistic Sense of Time and Place , Colin C. Irvine

Brisbane and Beyond: Revising Social Capitalism in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America , Michael C. Mattek

Theses/Dissertations from 2001 2001

Christians and Mimics in W. B. Yeats' Collected Poems , Patrick Mulrooney

Renaissance Roles and the Process of Social Change , John Wieland

'Straunge Disguize': Allegory and Its Discontents in Spenser's Faerie Queene , Galina Ivanovna Yermolenko

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Dissertations.

Marcus Alaimo: “The Romantic-Utilitarian Debate” directed by David Bromwich, Leslie Brisman, Stefanie Markovits

Andie Berry: “This Has Not Happened: African American Performances At The Edge Of The Century” directed by Daphne A. Brooks, Tavia Nyong’o, Marc Robinson

Daniel de la Rocha: “Frustrated Journeys: Social Immobility and the Aesthetics of Disappointment in Nineteenth-Century Fiction” directed by Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Marta Figlerowicz, Stefanie Markovits

Seamus Dwyer: “Scripts and Literature in the Manuscripts of England and France, 1370-1425” directed by Jessica Brantley, Ardis Butterfield, Emily Thornbury

Emily Glider: “Geopolitical Players: Diplomacy, Trade, and English Itinerant Theater in Early Modern Europe” directed by David Kastan, Lawrence Manley, Ayesha Ramachandran

Tobi Haslett: “All This Sociology and Economics Jazz: Blackness, Writing, and Totality after Civil Rights” directed by Jacqueline Goldsby, Michael Warner, Michael Denning

Adam C. Keller: “Character in Conflict: Soldiers and the Formation of Eighteenth-Century Literary Character” directed by David Bromwich, Jill Campbell, Anastasia Eccles

Elizabeth R. Mundell-Perkins: “Matter of the Mind: Narrative’s Knowledge and the Novel of Impressionability, 1897-present” directed by Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Marta Figlerowicz, Juno Richards

Colton Valentine: “Between Languages: Queer Multilingualism in the British Belle Époque” directed by Marta Figlerowicz, Stefanie Markovits, Katie Trumpener, Ruth Bernard Yeazell

Elizabeth Colette Wiet: “Maximalism: An Art of the Minor” directed by Marc Robinson, Joseph Roach

Helen Hyoun Jung Yang: “Healed by Water: American Hydropathy and the Search for Meaning in Nature” directed by Caleb Smith, John Durham Peters, Wai Chee Dimock

December 2023

Shu-han Luo: “Didactic Poetry as Formal Experiment in Early Medieval England” directed by Emily Thornbury, Ardis Butterfield, Lucas Bender

Cera Smith: “Blackened Biology: Physiology of the Self and Society in African American Literature and Sculpture” directed by Jacqueline Goldsby, Tavia Nyong’o, Aimee Meredith Cox

Michael Abraham: “The Avant-Garde of Feeling: Queer Love and Modernism” directed by Langdon Hammer, Marta Figlerowicz, Ben Glaser

Peter Conroy: “Unreconciled: American Power and the End of History, 1945 to the Present” directed by Joe Cleary, Joseph North, Paul North

Trina Hyun: “Media Theologies, 1615-1668” directed by John Durham Peters, Catherine Nicholson, Marta Figlerowicz, John Rogers (University of Toronto)

Margaret McGowan: “A Natural History of the Novel: Species, Sense, Atmosphere” directed by Jonathan Kramnick, Katie Trumpener, Marta Figlerowicz

Benjamin Pokross: “Writing History in the Nineteenth-Century Great Lakes” directed by Caleb Smith, Greta LaFleur, Michael Warner

Sophia Richardson: “Reading the Surface in Early Modern English Literature” directed by Catherine Nicholson, Lawrence Manley, John Rogers(University of Toronto)

Melissa Shao Hsuan Tu: “Sonic Virtuality: First-Person Voices in Late Medieval English Lyric” directed by Ardis Butterfield, Jessica Brantley, John Durham Peters

Sarah Weston: “The Cypher and the Abyss: Outline Against Infinity” directed by Paul Fry, Tim Barringer, John Durham Peters

December 2022

Anna Hill: “Sublime Accumulations: Narrating the Global Climate, 1969-2001” directed by Joe Cleary, Marta Figlerowicz, Ursula Heise (UCLA)

Christopher McGowan: “Inherited Worlds: The British Modernist Novel and the Sabotage and Salvage of Genre” directed by Joe Cleary, Michael Denning, Katie Trumpener

Samuel Huber: “Every Day About the World: Feminist Internationalism in the Second Wave” directed by  Jacqueline Goldsby, Margaret Homans, Jill Richards

Shayne McGregor: “An Intellectual History of Black Literary Discourse 1910-1956” directed by Joseph North, Robert Stepto

Brandon Menke: “Slow Tyrannies: Queer Lyricism, Visual Regionalism, and the Transfigured World” directed by Langdon Hammer, Wai Chee Dimock, Marta Figlerowicz

Arthur Wang: “Minor Theories of Everything: On Popular Science and Contemporary Fiction” directed by Amy Hungerford, John Durham Peters, Sunny Xiang

December 2021

Sarah Robbins: “Re(-)Markable Texts: Making Meaning of Revision in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature” directed by Caleb Smith, Jacqueline Goldsby, Anthony Reed

David de León: “Epic Black: Poetics in Protest in the Time of Black Lives Matter” directed by  Langdon Hammer, Daphne Brooks, Marta Figlerowicz

Clio Doyle: “Rough Beginnings: Imagining the Origins of Agriculture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain” directed by Lawrence Manley, David Kastan, Catherine Nicholson

Clay Greene: “The Preexistence of the Soul in the Early English Enlightenment: 1640-1740” directed by John Rogers, Jonathan Kramnick, Lawrence Manley

December 2020

Wing Chun Julia Chan: “Veritable Utopia: Revolutionary Russia and the Modernism of the British Left” directed by Katie Trumpener, Jill Richards, Katerina Clark

James Eric Ensley: “Troubled Signs: Thomas Hoccleve’s Objects of Absence” directed by Jessica Brantley, Alastair Minnis, Ardis Butterfield

Paul Franz: “Because so it is made new”: D. H. Lawrence’s charismatic modernism directed by David Bromwich, Ben Glaser, and Langdon Hammer

Chelsie Malyszek: Just Words: Diction and Misdirection in Modern Poetry directed by Lanny Hammer, David Bromwich, and Ben Glaser

Justin Park: “The Children of Revenge: Managing Emotion in Early English Literature” directed by Roberta Frank, Alastair Minnis, David Kastan

Peter Raccuglia: “Lives of Grass: Prairie Literature and US Settler Capitalism” directed by Michael Warner, Jonathan Kramnick, Michael Denning

Ashley James: “ ‘Moist, Fleshy, Pulsating Surfaces’: Seeing and Reading Black Life after Experientiality” directed by Professors Jacqueline Goldsby, Elizabeth Alexander, and Anthony Reed

Brittany Levingston: “In the Day of Salvation: Christ and Salvation in Early Twentieth-Century African American Literature” directed by Professors Jacqueline Goldsby, Robert Stepto, and Anthony Reed

Lukas Moe: “Radical Afterlives: U.S. Poetry, 1935-1968” directed by Professors Langdon Hammer, Jacqueline Goldsby, and Michael Denning

Carlos Nugent: “Imagined Environments: Mediating Race and Nature in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” directed by Professors Wai Chee Dimock, Amy Hungerford, and Michael Warner

Anna Shechtman: “The Media Concept: A Genealogy” directed by Professors Amy Hungerford, John Durham Peters, and Michael Warner

December 2019

Bofang Li: “Old Media/New Media: Intimate Networked Publics and the Commodity Text Since 1700” directed by Professors Wai Chee Dimock, R. John Williams, and Francesco Casetti

Scarlet Luk: “Gender Unbound: The Novel Narrator Beyond the Binary” directed by Professors Margaret Homans, Jill Campbell, and Jill Richards

Phoenix Alexander: “Voices with Vision: Writing Black, Feminist Futures in Twentieth-Century African America” directed by Professors Jacqueline Goldsby, Daphne Brooks, Anthony Reed, and Wai Chee Dimock

Andrew S. Brown: “Artificial Persons: Fictions of Representation in Early Modern Drama” directed by Professors David Kastan, John Rogers, and Joseph Roach

Margaret Deli: “Authorizing Taste: Connoisseurship and Transatlantic Modernity, 1880-1959” directed by Professors Ruth Yeazell, Joseph Cleary, and R. John Williams

Ann Killian: “Expanding Lyric Networks: The Transformation of a Genre in Late Medieval England” directed by Professors Ardis Butterfield, Jessica Brantley, and Alastair Minnis

Alexandra Reider: “The Multilingual English Manuscript Page, c. 950-1300” directed by Professors Roberta Frank, Ardis Butterfield, and Alastair Minnis

December 2018

Seo Hee Im: “After Totality: Late Modernism and the Globalization of the Novel” directed by Professors Joseph Cleary, Katie Trumpener, and Marta Figlerowicz

Angus Ledingham: “Styles of Abstraction: Objectivity and Moral Thought in Nineteenth-Century British Literature” directed by Professors David Bromwich, Jill Campbell, and Stefanie Markovits

Jason Bell: “Archiving Displacement in America” directed by Professors Caleb Smith, Wai Chee Dimock, and Jacqueline Goldsby

Joshua Stanley: “If but Once We Have Been Strong: Collective Agency and Poetic Technique in England during the Period of Early Capitalism” directed by Professors Paul Fry, David Bromwich, and Anthony Reed

December 2017

Carla Baricz: “Early Modern Two-Part and Sequel Drama, 1490-1590” directed by Professors David Quint, Lawrence Manley, and David Kastan

Edward King: “The World-Historical Novel: Writing the Periphery” directed by Professors Joseph Cleary, R. John Williams, and Michael Denning

Palmer Rampell: “The Genres of the Person in Post-World War II America” directed by Professors Amy Hungerford, Michael Warner, and R. John Williams

Anya Adair: “Composing the Law: Literature and Legislation in Early Medieval England” directed by Professors Roberta Frank, Ardis Butterfield, and Alastair Minnis

Robert Bradley Holden: “Milton between the Reformation and Enlightenment: Religion in an Age of Revolution” directed by Professors David Quint, Bruce Gordon, and John Rogers

Andrew Kau: “Astraea’s Adversary: The Rivalry Between Law and Literature in Elizabethan England” directed by Professors Lawrence Manley, David Quint, and David Kastan

Natalie Prizel: “The Good Look: Victorian Visual Ethics and the Problem of Physical Difference” direcgted by Professors Janice Carlisle and Tim Barringer

Rebecca Rush: “The Fetters of Rhyme: Freedom and Limitation in Early Modern Verse” direcgted by Professors David Quint, David Kastan, and John Rogers

Prashant Sharma: “Conversions to the Baroque: Catholic Modernism from James Joyce to Graham Greene” directed by Professors Paul Fry, Joseph Cleary, and Marta Figlerowicz

Joseph Stadolnik: “Subtle Arts: Practical Science and Middle English Literature” directed by Professors Ardis Butterfield and Alastair Minnis

Steven Kirk Warner: “Versions of Narcissus: The Aesthetics and Erotics of the Male Form in English Renaissance Poetry” directed by Professors John Rogers and Catherine Nicholson

December 2016

Kimberly Quiogue Andrews: “The Academic Avant-Garde: Poetry and the University since 1970” directed by Professors Langdon Hammer, Paul Fry, and Wai Chee Dimock

Alexis Chema: “Fancy’s Mirror: Romantic Poetry and the Art of Persuasion” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Paul Fry

Daniel Jump: “Metadiscursive Struggle and the Eighteenth-Century British Social Imaginary: From the End of Licensing to the Revolution Controversy” directed by Professors Michael Warner, Jill Campbell, and Paul Fry

Jordan Brower: “A Literary History of the Studio System, 1911-1950” directed by Wai Chee Dimock, JD Connor, and Joe Cleary

Ryan Carr: “Expressivism in America” directed by Michael Warner, Caleb Smith, and Paul Fry

Megan Eckerle: “Speculation and Time in Late Medieval Visionary Discourse” directed by Jessica Brantley and Alastair Minnis

Gabriele Hayden: “Routes and Roots of the New World Baroque: U.S. Modernist Poets Translate from Spanish” directed by Landon Hammer and Wai Chee Dimock

Matthew Hunter: “The Pursuit of Style in Shakespeare’s Drama” directed by David Kastan, Lawrence Manley, and Brian Walsh

Leslie Jamison: “The Recovered: Addiction and Sincerity in 20th Century American Literature” directed by Wai Chee Dimock, Amy Hungerford, and Caleb Smith

Jessica Matuozzi: “Double Agency: A Multimedia History of the War on Drugs” directed by Jacqueline Goldsby, Amy Hungerford, and Anthony Reed

Aaron Pratt: “The Status of Printed Playbooks in Early Modern England” directed by David Kastan, Lawrence Manley, and Keith Wrightson

Madeleine Saraceni: “The Idea of Writing for Women in Late Medieval Literature” directed by Jessica Brantley, Ardis Butterfield, and Alastair Minnis

J. Antonio Templanza: “Know to Know No More: The Composition of Knowledge in Milton’s Epic Poetry” directed by John Rogers and Paul Fry

Andrew Willson: “Idle Works: Unproductiveness, Literature Labor, and the Victorian Novel” directed by Janice Carlisle, Stefanie Markovits, and Ruth Yeazell

December 2015

Melina Moe: “Public Intimacies: Literary and Sexual Reproduction in the Eighteenth Century” directed by Katie Trumpener, Wendy Lee, Jonathan Kramnick, and Jill Campbell

Merve Emre: “Paraliterary Institutions” directed by Wai Chee Dimock and Amy Hungerford

Samuel Fallon: “Personal Effects: Personal and Literary Culture in Elizabethan England” directed by David Kastan, Catherine Nicholson, and Lawrence Manley

Edgar Garcia: “Deep Land: Hemispheric Modernisms and Indigenous Media” directed by Wai Chee Dimock, Langdon Hammer, and Anthony Reed

Jean Elyse Graham: “The Book Unbound: Print Logic between Old Books and New Media” directed by David Kastan, Catherine Nicholson, and R. John Williams

December 2014

Len Gutkin: “Dandiacal Forms” directed by Amy Hungerford, Sam See, and Katie Trumpener

Justin Sider: “Parting Words: Address and Exemplarity in Victorian Poetry” directed by Linda Peterson, Leslie Brisman, and Stefanie Markovits

William Weber: “Shakespearean Metamorphoses” directed by David Kastan

Thomas Koenigs: “Fictionality in the United States, 1789-1861” directed by Michael Warner, Jill Campbell, and Caleb Smith

Andrew Kraebel: “English Traditions of Biblical Criticism and Translation in the Later Middle Ages” directed by Alastair Minnis, Jessica Brantley, and Ian Cornelius

Tessie Prakas: “The Office of the Poet: Ministry and Verse Practice in the Seventeenth Century” directed by John Rogers, David Kastan, and Catherine Nicholson

Nienke Christine Venderbosch: “‘Tha Com of More under Misthleothum Grendel Gongan’: The Scholarly and Popular Reception of Beowulf ’s Grendel from 1805 to the Present Day” directed by Roberta Frank and Paul Fry

Eric Weiskott: “The Durable Alliterative Tradition” directed by Roberta Frank, Alastair Minnis, Ian Cornelius

December 2013

Anthony Domestico: “Theologies of Crisis in British Literature of the Interwar Period” directed by Amy Hungerford and Pericles Lewis

Glyn Salton-Cox: “Cobbett and the Comintern:  Transnational Provincialism and Revolutionary Desire from the Popular Front to the New Left” directed by Katie Trumpener, Katerina Clark, and Joe Cleary

Samuel Alexander: “Demographic Modernism: Character and Quantification in Twentieth Century Fiction” directed by Professors Pericles Lewis and Barry McCrea

Andrew Karas: “Versions of Modern Poetry” directed by Professors Paul Fry and Langdon Hammer

James Ross Macdonald: “Popular Religious Belief and Literature in Early Modern England” directed by Professors David Kastan and John Rogers

December 2012

Michael Komorowski: “The Arts of Interest: Private Property and the English Literary Imagination in the Age of Milton” directed by Professors David Quint and John Rogers

Fiona Robinson: “Raising the Dead: Writing Lives and Writing Wars in Britain, 1914-1941” directed by Professors Katie Trumpener, Margaret Homans, and Sam See

Nathalie Wolfram: “Novel Play: Gothic Performance and the Making of Eighteenth Century Fiction” directed by Professors Joseph Roach and Katie Trumpener

Michaela Bronstein: “Imperishable Consciousness: The Rescue of Meaning in the Modernist Novel” directed by Professors Ruth Yeazell and Pericles Lewis

David Currell: “Epic Satire: Structures of Heroic Mockery in Early Modern English Literature” directed by Professor David Quint

Andrew Heisel: “Reading in Darkness: Sacred Text and Aesthetics in the Long Eighteenth Century” directed by Professors Jill Campbell and Elliott Visconsi

Hilary Menges: “Authorship before Copyright: The Monumental Book, 1649-1743” directed by Professors Jill Campbell and John Rogers

Nathan Suhr-Sytsma: “Poetry and the Making of the Anglophone Literary World, 1950-1975” directed by Professors Wai Chee Dimock and Langdon Hammer

December 2011

Patrick Gray: “The Passionate Stoic: Subjectivity in Shakespeare’s Rome” directed by Professors Lawrence Manley and David Quint

Christopher Grobe: “Performing Confession: American Poetry, Performance, and New Media 1959” directed by Professors Amy Hungerford and Joseph Roach

Sebastian LeCourt: “Culture and Secularity: Religion in the Victorian Anthropological Imagination” directed by Professors Linda Peterson and Katie Trumpener

Laura Saetveit Miles: “Mary’s Book: The Annunciation in Middle England” directed by Jessica Brantley and Alastair Minnis

Stephen Tedeschi: “Urbanization in English Romantic Poetry” directed by Professors Paul Fry and Christopher R. Miller

Julia Fawcett: “Over-Expressing the Self: Celebrity, Shandeism, and Autobiographical Performance, 1696-1801” directed by Professors Jill Campbell and Joseph Roach

Daniel Gustafson: “Stuart Restorations: History, Memory, Performance” directed by Professor Joseph Roach and Elliott Visconsi

Sarah Mahurin: “American Exodus: Migration and Oscillation in the Modern American Novel” directed by Professors Wai Chee Dimock and Robert Stepto

Erica Levy McAlpine: “Lyric Elsewhere: Strategies of Poetic Remove” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Langdon Hammer

Sarah Novacich: “Ark and Archive: Narrative Enclosures in Medieval and Early Modern Texts” directed by Professors Roberta Frank and Alastair Minnis

Jesse Schotter: “The Hieroglyphic Imagination: Language and Visuality in Modern Fiction and Film” directed by Professors Peter Brooks and Pericles Lewis

Matthew Vernon: “Strangers in a Familiar Land: The Medieval and African-American Literary Tradition” directed by Professor Alastair Minnis

Chia-Je Weng: “Natural Religion and Its Discontents: Critiques and Revisions in Blake and Coleridge” directed by Professors Leslie Brisman and Paul Fry

Nicole Wright: “‘A contractile power’: Boundaries of Character and the Culpable Self in the British Novel, 1750-1830” directed by Professors Jill Campbell and Katie Trumpener

December 2010

Molly Farrell: “Counting Bodies: Imagining Population in the New World” directed by Professor Wai Chee Dimock

John Muse: “Short Attention Span Theaters: Modernist Shorts Since 1880” directed by Professors Joseph Roach and Marc Robinson

Denis Ferhatović: “An Early English Poetics of the Artifact” directed by Professor Roberta Frank

Colin Gillis: “Forming the Normal: Sexology and the Modern British Novel, 1890-1939” directed by Professors Laura Frost and Pericles Lewis

Katherine Harrison: “Tales Twice Told: Sound Technology and American Fiction after 1940” directed by Professor Amy Hungerford

Jean Otsuki: “British Modernism in the Country” directed by Professors Paul Fry and Margaret Homans

Erin Peterson: “On Intrusion and Interruption: An Exploration of an Early Modern Literary Mode” directed by Professor John Rogers

Patrick Redding: “A Distinctive Equality: The Democratic Imagination in Modern American Poetry” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Langdon Hammer

Emily Setina: “Modernism’s Darkrooms: Photography and Literary Process” directed by Professors Langdon Hammer and Pericles Lewis

Jordan Zweck: “Letters from Heaven in the British Isles, 800-1500” directed by Professor Roberta Frank

December 2009

Elizabeth Twitchell Antrim: “Relief Work: Aid to Africa in the American Novel Since 1960” directed by Professor Wai Chee Dimock

Emily Coit: “The Trial of Abundance: Consumption and Morality in the Anglo-American Novel, 1871-1907” directed by Professors Catherine Labio and Ruth Bernard Yeazell

Andrew Goldstone: “Modernist Fictions of Aesthetic Autonomy” directed by Professors Langdon Hammer and Amy Hungerford

Matthew Mutter: “Poetry Against Religion, Poetry As Religion: Secularism and its Discontents in Literary Modernism” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Pericles Lewis

Anna Chen: “Kinship Lessons: The Cultural Uses of Childhood in Late Medieval England” directed by Professors Jessica Brantley and Lee Patterson

Anne DeWitt: “The Uses of Scientific Thinking and the Realist Novel” directed by Professor Linda Peterson

Irina Dumitrescu: “The Instructional Moment in Anglo-Saxon Literature” directed by Professor Roberta Frank

Susannah Hollister: “Poetries of Geography in Postwar America” directed by Professors Paul Fry and Langdon Hammer

James Horowitz: “Rebellious Hearts and Loyal Passions: Imagining Civic Consciousness in Ovidian Writing on Women, 1680-1819” directed by Professors Jill Campbell and Elliott Visconsi

Ben LaBreche: “The Rule of Friendship: Literary Culture and Early Modern Liberty” directed by Professors David Quint and John Rogers

December 2008

Sarah Van der Laan: “What Virtue and Wisdom Can Do: Homer’s Odyssey in the Renaissance Imagination” directed by Professor David Quint

Annmarie Drury: “Literary Translators and Victorian Poetry” directed by Professor Linda Peterson

Jeffrey Glover: “People of the Word: Puritans, Algonquians, and the Politics of Print in Early New England” directed by Professors Elizabeth Dillon and Wai Chee Dimock

Dana Goldblatt: “From Contract to Social Contract: Fortescue’s Governance and Malory’s Morte ” directed by Professors David Quint and Alastair Minnis

Kamran Javadizadeh: “Bedlam and Parnassus: Madness and Poetry in Postwar America” directed by Professor Langdon Hammer

Ayesha Ramachandran: “Worldmaking in Early Modern Europe: Global Imaginations from Montaigne to Milton” directed by Professors Annabel Patterson and David Quint

Jennifer Sisk: “Forms of Speculation: Religious Genres and Religious Inquiry in Late Medieval England” directed by Professor Lee Patterson

Ariel Watson: “The Anxious Triangle: Modern Metatheatres of the Playwright, Performer, and Spectator” directed by Professor Joseph Roach

Jesse Zuba: “The Shape of Life: First Books and the Twentieth-Century Poetic Career” directed by Professors Langdon Hammer and Amy Hungerford

December 2007

Rebecca Boggs: “The Gem-Like Flame: the Aesthetics of Intensity in Hopkins, Crane, and H.D.” directed by Professor Langdon Hammer

Maria Fackler: “A Portrait of the Artist Manqué : Form and Failure in the British Novel Since 1945” directed by Professors Pericles Lewis and Ruth Bernard Yeazell

Melissa Ganz: “Fictions of Contract: Women, Consent, and the English Novel, 1722-1814” directed by Professor Jill Campbell

Siobhan Phillips: “The Poetics of Everyday Time in Frost, Stevens, Bishop, and Merrill” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Langdon Hammer

Morgan Swan: “The Literary Construction of a Capital City: Late-Medieval London and the Difficulty of Self-Definition” directed by Professor Lee Patterson

Andrea Walkden: “Lives, Letters and History: Walton to Defoe” directed by Professors David Quint and John Rogers

Rebecca Berne: “Regionalism, Modernism and the American Short Story Cycle” directed by Professors Wai Chee Dimock and Vera Kutzinski

Leslie Eckel: “Transatlantic Professionalism: Nineteenth-Century American Writers at Work in the World” directed by Professors Wai Chee Dimock and Jennifer Baker

December 2006

Gregory Byala: “Samuel Beckett and the Problem of Beginning” directed by Professors Paul Fry and Pericles Lewis

Eric Lindstrom: “Romantic Fiat” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Paul H. Fry

Megan Quigley: “Modernist Fiction and the Re-instatement of the Vague” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Pericles Lewis

Randi Saloman: “Where Truth is Important: The Modern Novel and the Essayistic Mode” directed by Professors David Bromwich and Laura Frost

Michael Wenthe: “Arthurian Outsiders: Heterogeneity and the Cultural Politics of Medieval Arthurian Literature” directed by Professor Lee Patterson

Christopher Bond: “Exemplary Heroism and Christian Redemption in the Epic Poetry of Spenser and Milton” directed by Professors David Quint and John Rogers

Lara Cohen: “Counterfeit Presentments: Fraud and the Production of Nineteenth-Century American Literature” directed by Professors Elizabeth Dillon and Wai Chee Dimock

Nicholas Salvato: “Uncloseting Drama: Modernism’s Queer Theaters” directed by Professors Joseph Roach and Michael Trask

Anthony Welch: “Songs of Dido: Epic Poetry and Opera in Seventeenth-Century England” directed by Professor David Quint

December 2005

Brooke Conti: “Anxious Acts: Religion and Autobiography in Early Modern England” directed by Professor Annabel Patterson

Brett Foster: “The Metropolis of Popery: Writing of Rome in the English Renaissance” directed by Professors Lawrence Manley and David Quint

Curtis Perrin: “Langland’s Comic Vision” directed by Professor Traugott Lawler

Department of English

Recent Theses and Dissertations

Recent ph.d. dissertations.

• Graham Barnhart, In The Field Well Past the Golden Hour
• Madison Garber, A Dance in Memory: A Novel
• Colleen Mayo, The Traitor, Julia Kind and Stories
• Christa Reaves, Metamorphoses in Adaptation: Ovid, Shakespeare, and Modern Theatre
• Joshua Zimmerer, Set Fire to the Rodeo: A Novel
• Mohammed Alhamili, The Emergence of Arab Nation-State Nationalism as an Alternative to the Supranational Concept of Ummah
• Anthony Buenning, Shakespeare and Early Modern Trauma
• Jay Gentry, The World We Want to Leave Behind: White Supremacy in the Apocalyptic Genres Past, Present, and Future
• Jonathan Duckworth, The Sometime Joy
• Maricruz Gomez, Chicana Decolonial Feminism: An Interconnectedness of Being
• Cassia Hameline, Stay for the Heron: Essays
• Kat Moore, Have You Ever Had a Broken Heart?
• Aza Pace, Her Terrible Splendor
• Travis Scott Ray, Stories and "Burning Man"
• Megan Arlett, Louisiana Saturday Nights
• Anum Aziz, Mapping the Feminist Movement in Pakistani Literature: Towards a Feminist Future
• Joshua Jones, Somehow Holier
• Minadora Macheret, Dear Bone Mother
• Takuya Matsuda, This Man is Your Friend: Knowing "Us" and "Them" in Ethnic American Literature of the Pacific Theater
• Lauren Rogener, Cultures of Elite Theatre in the Elizabethan and Jacobean Masque: Four Incarnations
• Andrew Smith, The Construction of the Fringe Extraterrestrial of Postmodernity
• Carly Susser, Molt
• Kevin West, Portal
• Brett Armes, The Ends of Smaller Worlds
• Rebecca Bernard, In the Way of Family
• Natalie Clark, Defining and Teaching Courtliness with Animals and Clothing in the Lais of Marie de France
• Brian Clifton, Wrong Feast
• Andrew Koch, Some Names for Empty Space
• Shannon Sawyer, True War Stories: Lies, Truth, and Recovery in the Non/Fiction of Vietnam
• Katherine Schneider, Body Doubles: Materiality and Gender Non-Binarism in Victorian Supernatural Fiction
• Stephanie Vastine, Queerness, Futurity, and Desire in American Literature: Improvising Identity in the Shadow of Empire
• Aurelia von Tress, Revolutionaries and Prophets: Post-Oppositionality in Kathleen Alcalá's Sonoran Desert Trilogy
• Sarah Warren, Oklahoma History
• Ruby Al-Qasem, Resurrection Attempts: Essays
• Stevie Edwards, Still House
• Sanderia Faye, Eleven
• Natalie Foster, Winter
• Allyson Jones, Just Ask: A Memoir of My Father
• Matthew Morton, Improvisation without Accompaniment and What Passes Here for Mountains
• Sebastian Paramo, Where We Split
• James Redmond, Because You Previously Liked or Played
• Iqra Shagufta, Postmodernity and Pakistani Postmodern Literature
• Daniel Stuart, Stalking Dickens: Predatory Disturbances in the Novels of Charles Dickens
• Virginia Wood, Tigers Born in the Same Year
• Conor Burke, Given That the Body Was Made
• Justin Carter, Brazos
• Cheri Paris Edwards, Your Blues Ain't Like Mine:Voices from the Other Side of the Color Line
• Kimberly Garza, The Last Karankawas: Stories
• Meghan Taylor Johnson, Poor Things: Objects, Ownership, and the Underclasses in American Literature, 1868-1935
• Ross Wilcox, Union: A Novel
• Spencer Hyde, Let It Run
• Nick Lu, Constructing Taiwan: Taiwanese Literature and National Identity
• Jessica Murray, Notes for the Manual Assembly
• Clint Peters, The Divine Coming of the Light
• Jeff Pickell, Jeff Pickell: New and Selected
• Timothy Regetz, Lollardy and Eschatology: English Literature c. 1380-1430
• Charlie Ricciardelli, The Hoboken War Bride: A Novel
• Brian Tatum, Rearranging an Infinite Universe: Literary Misprision and Manipulations of Space and Time, 1750-1850
• Heidi Cephus, Corporeal Judgment in Sheakpeare's Plays
• Trista Edwards, Spectral Evidence
• Anthony Cole Jeffrey, The Aesthetics of Sin: Beauty in Early Modern English Literature
• Tana Juko, Misrecognized and Misplaced: Race Performed in African American Literature, 1900-2015
• Darcy Lewis, Xenotopia: Death and Displacement in the Landscape of Nineteenth-Century American Authorship
• Nick McRae, Inscrutable House
• Amber Pagel, "How Can We Know the Dancer from the Dance?": Cognitive Poetics and the Poetry of William Butler Yeats
• Timothy Ponce, The Hybrid Hero of Early Modern English Literature: A Synthesis of Classical and Contemplative Heroism
• Karl Zuehlke, Momentarium

Recent MA Theses

• Xaviera Hernandez, Mexican Goodbye
• Caleb Kunasek, The Colonial Subject in the Early British Novel: Revisiting Colonial Captivity in Robinson Crusoe
• John Brandt, "Before This Memory Makes Sense": Essays
• Joel Najera, Beyond the Hold: The Evolution of the Ship in African American Literature
• Andrea Perez, Death Date
• Sara Ulery, Rein of Renegades
• Kaitlyn Brown, Exploitation, Justification and Overcoming through Voice: Exploring American Slavery and the Slave Narrative in "The Handmaid's Tale"
• Cade Mason, "Engine Running": Essays
• Martin Ramirez, "The Sandbox" and Other Short Stories
• Olivia Trotter, Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy: How Society of Spectacle Bred the Mockingjay
• Conor Flannery, Collected Stories
• Zachary Kusch, A Century of Ash
• Garrett Vesely, Mortal Ghosts
• Laura Allen, Driving Lessons and Other Stories
• WIlliam Ross Irvin, Life Holders
• Hunter Jernigan, Running from My Youth: Essays
• Benjamin Smith, "A Very Fine Piece of Writing": Parnell and the Joycean Text, 1905-1922
• Morgan Inigo Smith, Flotsam: Men in Isolation
• Leah Tieger, Animals Alive and Dead
• Jaya Wagle, Homeland/Split
• Jessica Beattie, Second Life, Second Chance
• Caleb Braun, Developer
• Lauren Pilcher, "A Kind of Ghost"
• Sarah Ridley , That Every Christian May be Suited: Isaac Watts's Hymns in the Writings of Early Mohegan Writers, Samson Occom and Joseph Johnson
• Cary Siegfried, "Failure to Yield": Essays
• Amanda Yanowski , Off Main Street: Stories

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College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Department of English

Dissertations.

Find below a list of PhD dissertation defenses in English and Medieval Studies from 2012 to the present, organized by academic year. Committee members’ department and/or institution are listed if they are not UConn English faculty.

Kathryn Warrender-Hill. April 14, 2023. "Mapping Student Workflows: Exploring Students’ Tool Use in Their Composing Practices." Deans, Brueggemann, Carillo.

Patrick Russell. April 11, 2023. "Crime Narratives and their Engagement with Democracy and Capitalism within 20th C American Liberalism and Neoliberalism.” Bedore, Eby, Pierrot, Cassuto (English, Fordham).

Leah Begg. April 11, 2023. "Foundations of American Literary Environmentalism: 1823-1977." Franklin, Burke, Eby.

Julia Brush. April 10, 2023. "Sites of Yearning: Archives, Intimate Spaces, Documentary Poetics, and Digital Worlds in Contemporary Asian American Poetry." Pelizzon, Shringarpure, Breen, Igarashi.

Kerry Carnahan. May 18, 2022. “ Song of Songs/Who Intimately Live.” Pelizzon,  Breen,  Mahoney, and Shoulson.

Amy Fehr. May 5, 2022. “Reading for World Citizenship in the Postwar University." Knapp, Eby, and Vials.

Alexander Dawson. April 18, 2022. “ Postcolonial Friction: Mobilities in Twenty-First Century African Literature.” Shringarpure, Pierrot, and Coundouriotis.

William Biel. April 15, 2022. “ The Edge of Desire: Objects, Masculinity, and Medieval Romance.” Hasenfratz, Somerset, Berthelot (Literatures, Culture, and Languages), and Olsen (History).

Kari Daly. April 11, 2022. “ Equivocal Enrichment: Theorizing the Autodidact in Nineteenth-Century Literature.” Recchio, Cutter, and Lynch.

Mollie Kervick. April 8, 2022. “ Networks of Nurture in Celtic Tiger and Post-Crash Fiction by Irish Women.” Lynch, Breen, and Burke.

Anna Ziering. March 28, 2022. “ Dirty Forms: Masochism, Race, and World-Making in U.S. Literature and Culture.” Vials, Pierrot, and McElya.

Daniel Pfeiffer. March 21, 2022. “ Striving Artists: New York City, Neoliberalism, and the Twenty-First Century Art Novel.” Knapp, Vials, and Boylan (Art and History).

Arpita Mandal. July 26, 2021. “Ruptured Belonging: Postcolonial Perspectives on Trauma and Nationalism.” Coundouriotis, Hogan, Shringarpure, and Winter.

Ruth Book. June 25, 2021. “Dwelling Together: The Ethos of a Writing Program in a Moment of Change.” Brueggemann, Deans, Görkemli, and Winter.

Emma Burris-Janssen. June 9, 2021. “Novel Abortions.” Higonnet, Coundouriotis, Smith, Winter.

Roxanne Gentry. June 7, 2021. “Inheriting Jane’s Estate: Toward Radical Heritage in the Afterlives of   Pride and Prejudice. ” Recchio, Marsden, Semenza, and Smith.

Erin Lynn. April 9, 2021. “Made of Weather: Fantasy, Anger, and the Recuperation of Female Voice In Women’s Poetry from Modernism to Present.” Pelizzon, Breen, and Mahoney.

Rebecca Rowe. March 19, 2021. “Acting Like a Kid: Adults in Contemporary American Adaptations of Children’s Literature.” Smith, Capshaw, Semenza, Wannamaker, and Eastern MI U.

Matthew Shelton. March 5, 2021. “ A Diagram of Winds : Lines of Flight in Translation and Translingual   Poiesis. ” Pelizzon, Burke, and Mahoney.

Nicole Lawrence. July 28, 2020. “Living in the Impasse: British Writers and Non-Normative Identities, 1880-1940.” Winter, Breen, and Smith.

Amanda Greenwell. May 7, 2020. “Confronting America: The Child Gaze in American Literature, 1930-2018.” Capshaw, Duane, and Smith.

Katie Nunnery’s. April 23, 2020. “Fin-de-siècle Decadent Writing and the Queerness of Childhood.” Smith, Breen, and Capshaw.

Hayley Stefan. April 21, 2020. “Writing National Tragedies: Race and Disability in Contemporary U.S. Literature and Culture.” Schlund-Vials, Capshaw, Coundouriotis, and Eby.

Alex Gatten. April 20, 2020. “Formal Perversions: Queer Poetics and the Turn in Romantic Verse.” Mahoney, Breen, and Igarashi.

Elizabeth Reinwald. April 20, 2020. “Englishing Rome: Translation, Adaptation, and Gender in Early Modern Drama.” Semenza, King’oo, and Marsden.

Katelyn Jaynes. April 17, 2020. “Barns of Disunity: Satirizing Households in Late Medieval English Poetry.” Somerset, Olson, and Tonry.

Laura Godfrey. April 10, 2020. “Be Wholly Out of Body”: Astonishment in Late Medieval English Literature.” Somerset, Hasenfratz, and Olson.

Micah Goodrich. April 3, 2020. “Nature-Work: (Re)Production and the Body in Medieval Discourses of Nature.” Hasenfratz, Somerset, Kruger, and Olson.

Meghan Brown. Dec. 19, 2019. “Performing Americanness: Music and Nationality in 20th Century U.S. Literature.” Cutter, Knapp, Pierrot, and Schlund-Vials.

Matthew Jones. November 15, 2019. “Tradition’s Chains: Wales in British Literature, 1780-1870.” Mahoney, Codr, Vials, and Winter.

Michael Bartch. Nov. 7, 2019. “National Elegy: The Form of Public Discourse in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” Mahoney, Pelizzon, and Winter.

Brian Sneeden. October 29, 2019. “Humans in Translation: First Translations and Faithful Originals.” Pelizzon, Burke, and Constantine.

Christopher Iverson. September 17, 2019. “The Effects of Service-Learning on Writing and Rhetorical Development.” Deans, Brueggemann, Carillo, and Görkemli.

Melissa Rohrer. August 9, 2019. “Ripped from the Broadsides: The Invention of Scandal on the Early Modern Stage.” Semenza, Codr, Marsden, and Sullivan.

Kate Gross. May 30, 2019. “Writing Wrongs: Humanitarian Activism in Contemporary World Literature and Film.” Schlund-Vials, Semenza, and Vials.

Joseph Leake. Apr 25, 2019. “ex linguis gentes: Etymologizing of Landscape and Peoples in Early Medieval Britain.” Biggs, Hasenfratz, Olson, Shoulson, and Somerset.

Sarah Moon. Apr 22, 2019. “Making Space: Community Writing and Performance toward the Production of Location.” Deans, Görkemli, and Winter.

Abigail Fagan. Apr 19, 2019. “Bloated: Power and the Body in American Temperance Literature.” Duane, Breen, and Franklin.

J. Brandon Benevento. April 18, 2019. “Upkeep: Maintenance in American Representations of Work, 1945-Present.” Codr, Eby, and Vials.

Joanna MacGugan. Feb 8, 2019. “The Emergence of an Oral-Textual Mentality: Social Practices and the Politics of Death in Medieval co. Dublin, 1257-1485.” Co-Major Advisors, Kane and Olson; Biggs, and Somerset.

Sara Austin. Jun 14, 2018. “The Evolution of Monsters in Contemporary American Children’s and Young Adult Literature.” Smith, Capshaw, Dunae, and Heinkein.

Jarred Wiehe. Apr 27, 2018. “Straightening Crip/Queer Desires: Sexualities and Disabilities in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatrical Culture.” Marsden, Breen, and Capshaw.

M. Breann Leake. Apr 26, 2018. “Rewriting the Historian of the English People: The Afterlife of Bede in Early English Texts.” Co-Major Advisors: Biggs and Olson, Hasenfratz, and Somerset.

Patrick Butler. April 26, 2018. “Unsettling the Exceptional Hero: Recognition & Vulnerability in Middle English Romance.” Somerset, Berthelot, and Olson.

Eleanor Reeds. Apr 19, 2018. “Hearing Voices: The Reader Encounters Genre in the Nineteenth Century.” Higonnet, Mahoney, and Recchio.

Rachel Nolan. Apr 19, 2018. “Professions of Intimacy: Work, Reproduction, and the Professional Woman in the Progressive Era United States.” Eby, McElya (History), and Vials.

Erick Piller. Apr 13, 2018. “Invention in the Age of Innovation: Composition, Creativity Studies, and Social Change.” Deans, Brueggemann, Codr, and Vials.

Christina Solomon. Apr 12, 2018. “Romantic Orientalisms: British Encounters with the East and the Forms of the Oriental Tale, 1765-1825.” Mahoney, Codr, Hogan, and Schlund-Vials.

Emily Tucker. Apr 5, 2018. “Victorian and Neo-Victorian Melodrama: Clarity, Recognition, Misreading.” Recchio, Burke, and Winter.

Laura Wright. Mar 20, 2018. “Prizing Difference: PEN Awards and Multiculturalist Politics in American Fiction.” Schlund-Vials, Eby, and Capshaw.

Christiana Ares-Christian. Mar 13, 2018. “The Place of Race in the Academy: Narrating the Failure of Multiculturalism in Higher Education.” Schlund-Vials, Capshaw, and Salvant.

Sarah Berry. Mar 7, 2018. “The Politics of Voice in Twentieth-Century Verse Drama.” Burke, Mahoney, and Pelizzon.

Daniel Graham. Feb 23, 2018. “Spectral Speculations: The Political Economy of American Spiritualism, 1848-1905.” Vials, Eby, and Schlund-Vials.

Alaina Kaus’s. Oct 27, 2017. “Humanitarian Coercion: Literature of War, Violence, and Migration.” Schlund-Vials, Capshaw, Vials, and Phillips.

George Moore. Oct 23, 2017. “The Return of Dagon: Failed Iconoclasm in Early Modern English Literature.” Semenza, King’oo, and Shoulson.

Melissa Bugdal. Apr 21, 2017. “Finding their Voices: A Longitudinal Study of Student Writers from Basic Writing to Writing in the Disciplines.” Deans, Bloom, and Carillo.

Miller Oberman. Feb. 22, 2017. “The Unstill Ones.” Pelizzon, Breen, and Hasenfratz.

Tina Iraca. Dec 2, 2016. “Epistemology, Education, and the Individual: Lockean Philosophy in Sarah Fielding’s Fiction.” Marsden, Recchio, and Winter.

Joanna Asia Rowe. Sept 30, 2016. “Commonplace Dissidence: English Renaissance Humanism and its Skeptics.” Semenza, King’oo, and Deans.

Maria Seger. Aug 5, 2016. “At All Costs: Property and Extra Legal Violence in American Literature and Culture.” Duane, Eby, and Vials.

Christiana Salah. Apr 29, 2016. “The Popular Invention of the Victorian Governess, 1815-2015.” Higonnet, Semenza, and Winter.

Shawn Higgins. Apr 14, 2016. “Literary Soundscapes: Nationalism and U.S. Literature, 1890-1940.” Schlund-Vials, Cutter, and Vials.

Todd Barry. Mar 10, 2016. “From Wilde to Obergefell: Gay Legal Theatre, 1895-2015.” Murphy, Breen, and Burke.

Steve Mollmann. Mar 9, 2016. “Visions of the Victorian Scientist.” Recchio, Bedore, and Winter.

Tara Harney Mahajan. Jan 25, 2016. “Claiming Queer Inheritances: Alternative Genealogies in Irish and Indian English Women’s Fiction.” Burke, Coundouriotis, Hogan, and Mahoney.

Chad Jewett. Dec 3, 2015. “Aesthetic Activism: Race, Ethnicity, Literary Experimentalism and The U.S. South.” Makowsky, Eby, and Schlund-Vials.

Gordon Fraser. Oct 5, 2015. “American Cosmologies: Race and Revolution in the Nineteenth Century.” Harris, Duane, and Schlund-Vials.

Jared Demick. Jun 23, 2015. “Alien Comforts: The Languages and Foodways of Chinese Americans and Hawaiian Locals in U.S. Popular Culture.” Harris, Eby, Schlund-Vials, and Vials.

Laila Khan. Jun 22, 2015. “Traumatic Modes: Sentiment, Sympathy, and the Sublime.” Mahoney, Higonnet, and Semenza.

Christina Henderson. Jun 10, 2015. “Cities of the Future: Literary Utopias, World’s Fairs, and the Making of American Progressivism.” Harris, Schlund-Vials, and Winter.

Michelle Maloney-Mangold. May 28, 2015. “Under the Table: The Precariat in Contemporary U.S. Culture.” Schlund-Vials, Bedore, Capshaw, Knapp, and Vials.

Kim Armstrong. May 14, 2015. “Repackaging American Women’s Literature, 1850-1920.” Harris, Eby, Gross, and Recchio.

Chantelle Messier. May 1, 2015. “The Pedagogy of the Garden: Forming Gender and Sexuality in Romantic Literature.” Mahoney, Breen, Codr, and Winter.

Pam Swanigan. Apr 22, 2015. “’I shall live for ever and ever’”: Ecological Perspectives on Immortality in Children’s Fantasy.” Capshaw, Ford-Smith, and Pickering.

Joseph Darda. Apr 21, 2015. “When Is Postwar? American Narratives in an Age of Permanent War.” Schlund-Vials, Eby, and Vials.

Emily Cormier. Feb 25, 2015. “New Agrarianism in American Children’s Literature.” Capshaw, Higonnet, and Major.

Matthew Mroz. Jan 30, 2015. “Rhetoric and Relationship in Milton’s Paradise Lost.” Semenza, Kneidel, and Winter.

Christopher Bertucci. Jan 28, 2015. “Diseases of the Soul in Early Modern English Drama.” Semenza, Kneidel, and Marsden.

Kathryn Kornacki. Jan 21, 2015. “Margaret Fuller’s Conversations: Self and Other in Nineteenth-Century Literary and Intellectual Culture.” Franklin, Duane, and Makowsky.

Matthew Salyer. Dec 12, 2014. “As we was kings”: Britain’s Empire and the Rise of the Anglo-American Historical Novel.” Franklin, Bercaw-Edwards, Codr, and Mahoney,

Jennifer Ryer. Dec 10, 2014. “The Good Imperialists: Empire, National Identity, and Gender in British Theater, 1660-1790.” Marsden, Codr, and Mahoney.

Kofi J. Adisa. Dec. 1, 2014. “But They Mean To Do Right:  Stories of African-American Male Teachers.” Litman, Hogan, and Pelizzon.

Patrick Lawrence. Oct. 15, 2014. “Obscene Gestures: Representations of Sexual Transgression and Late Twentieth-Century American Political Culture.” Schlund-Vials, Capshaw, Cutter, Lambert, and Vials.

Ramon Elinevsky. Sep. 11, 2014. “For the Wild: A Critique of Civilization.” Schlund-Vials, Bystrom, Pelizzon, and Vials.

Abbye Meyer. Aug. 14, 2014. “Accidents, Freaks, Fruits, and Wallflowers: Representations of Disability in Adolescent Literature.” Capshaw, Eby, and Higonnet.

Brandon Hawk. Aug. 5, 2014. “Aprocryphal Narratives in Old English Sermon Collections.” Biggs and King’oo, Hasenfratz, Johnson, and Olson.

Pamela Longo. Aug. 5, 2014. “Voices of Great Authority: Framing History, Reforming Community in the Reigns of Richard II and Henry VI.” Somerset, Biggs, Tonry, Johnson, and Olson.

Tiffanie Itsou. Aug, 1, 2014. “Truth Itself in the Supremeness of Its Perfection: The Influence of Photography on Edgar Allan Poe’s Writing.” Tilton, Anselment, and Capshaw.

Matthew Simpson. May 14, 2014. “Personal and Political Disunity in Early Modern Literature.” Semenza, Kneidel, and Marsden.

Rebecca Nisetich. Dec. 11, 2013. “Contested Identities: Racial Ambiguity, Indeterminacy and Law in the American Novel, 1900-1942.″ Eby, Schlund-Vials, and Capshaw.

Leah Schwebel. Dec. 6, 2013. “Re-telling Old Stories: Chaucer and an Italian Poetic of Intertextual Commentary.” Somerset, Benson, Hasenfratz, Marsden, and Masciandaro.

Jorge Santos. Nov. 14, 2013. “Religion, Race, and Rupture: Re-Reading the Civil Rights Era.” Cutter, Sanchez, Schlund-Vials, and Vials.

Jeremy DeAngelo. Oct. 18, 2013. “Unsettling: Transgression and Travel in the Literature of the Medieval North Atlantic.” Hasenfratz, Biggs, Kane, and Olson.

Amber West. Sep. 25, 2013. “Fourth Way: Feminist Hybrid Poetics Beyond the Page.” Pelizzon, Murphy, Schlund-Vials, and Bell.

Mandy Suhr-Sytsma. Jun 25, 2013. “Collaborative Sovereignty: The Visionary Work of American Indian and Canadian Aboriginal Young Adult Literature.” Tilton, Schlund-Vials, Capshaw, and VanAlst.

Erin Haddad-Null. May 22, 2013. “Family Stories: Narrating the Nation in Recent Postcolonial Novels.” Coundouriotis, Bystrom, Hogan, and Phillips.

Ivy Stabell. May 1, 2013. “Children’s Bigraphy and American Identity, 1620-1865.” Capshaw-Smith, Harris, and Higonnet.

Emily Dolan. Dec. 7, 2012. “Unhappily Ever After: The Troubled Conclusions of Postbellum Women Writers.” Harris, Eby, and Higonnet.

Peter Chidester. Nov. 28, 2012. “A Land Choice above All Others: The Importance of the American Wilderness to the Rise of the Mormon Church.” Phillips, Pickering, Tilton, Recchio, and Duane.

Mary Isbell. Nov. 7, 2012. “Amateurs: Home, Shipboard, and Public Theatricals in the Nineteenth Century.” Winter, Eby, and Murphy.

Michael Jones. Oct. 17, 2012. “The Secret History of Romance Masculinity: The Byronic Hero and the Novel, 1814-1914.” Mahoney, Pelizzon, and Winter.

Patricia Taylor. Oct. 5, 2012. “Writing with the Word: Post-Reformation Authorship in England, 1546-1671.” Semenza, King’oo, and Marsden.

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Use the following sources to find doctoral dissertations and master's theses.  Copies of dissertations and theses from other universities can be requested via Interlibrary Loan: borrowing . For more resources for finding theses and dissertations, see the Research Guide Dissertations .

• Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window Full text (PDF) of most US dissertations from 1997 on, many earlier works and some from outside the US plus some master's theses. Also lists all dissertations and theses from 1861 on from US universities and some works from Europe and Asia from 1637 on. Abstracts included after July, 1980.
• Virgo Virgo provides discovery of all theses and dissertations originating at the University of Virginia as well as many others. Newer theses and dissertations are accessible online. From the advanced search screen, you can limit your search to Thesis/Dissertation under the Format heading.
• Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations Contains more than one million records of electronic theses and dissertations.
• American Doctoral Dissertations This freely accessible database includes nearly 100,000 dissertations from 1933 through 1955, which represents the only comprehensive record of dissertations accepted by U.S. universities during that period.

Recent UVA English Dissertations & M.A. Theses

Dissertations and theses offer the latest research from graduate students, identifying trends in the field. As research tools, they are invaluable for their extensive bibliographies. The following are examples of recent dissertations and MA theses written by UVA English graduate students that can be found through Virgo and are available online through the LibraETD repository:

• "Corporate Voice": Poetic Personation and Political Theology in Early Modern England, Dissertation, 2022, Evan Cheney
• "What Is Past, or Passing, or to Come": Transnational Modernism, Self-Transcendence, and the Rise of Ultranationalism (1884-1945), Dissertation, 2024, Kathryn Webb-Destefano
• After Haiti: Race, Empire, and Global Decadent Literary Resistance, 1804-1948, Dissertation, 2024, Cherrie Kwok
• All Y'All: Queering Southernness in Recent US Fiction, Dissertation, 2022, Heidi Siegrist
• The Architecture of Solitude: Constructions of Isolation in Victorian Literature, Dissertation, 2024, Monica David
• Attitude Problems: Late Capitalist Desire and the Psychopolitics of Queer American Fiction, Dissertation, 2024, John Modica
• Beyond Subversion: Raising Doubt Through Ancient Scripture in Contemporary Novels, Dissertation, 2022, Nathan Frank
• Black Boyhood and the Queer Practices of Impossibility in African American Literary and Cultural Productions, Dissertation, 2022, Dionte Harris
• Cholera's Clock: Race, Illness, and Time in the Nineteenth-Century American Literary Imagination, Dissertation, 2023, Bridget Reilly
• Cognitive-Affective Formalism: T.S. Eliot and the Embodiment of Early Modern Verse, Dissertation, 2024, Justin Stec
• Crossing Lines: Topoi of Kynde in Medieval Romance, Dissertation, 2024, Courtney Watts
• The Economics of the Novel in Britain, 1750-1836, Dissertation, 2023, Michael VanHoose
• Forms of Time and Times of Race: Narrative in the Jim Crow Era, Dissertation, 2023, Josephine Adams
• Ghostly Encounters: Transnational Gothic and the Twenty-First Century Global Novel, Dissertation, 2022, Dipsikha Thakur
• Intimate Editing: Toward a Relational Philological Poetics, Dissertation, 2022, Anne Marie Thompson
• Its Radiant Arms: The Novelized Lyric in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel, Dissertation, 2023, Lydia Brown
• Lyric Crossings: Decoloniality in Contemporary Latinx Poetry, Dissertation, 2023, Rebecca Foote
• Neoliberal Melancholia and the Narration of Chineseness in the Twenty-First Century, Dissertation, 2024, Tracey Wang
• Outlaws, Collectors, Songsters, and Bards: Modern Lyric and the Voices of Ballad History, Dissertation, 2024, Samuel Walker
• Playing for Profit: Staging Self-interest in Early Modern England, Dissertation, 2024, Lucie Alden
• A Poetics that is Not One: Origins, Forms, and Communities of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century TransPoetics, Dissertation, 2023, Austyn James
• Postcritical Relations, Dissertation, 2023, Jessica Swoboda
• Provincial Matters: Poetry and the Work of Space in the Global Twentieth Century, Dissertation, 2023, Wei Liu
• Radical Media, Radical Culture: Technology and Social Change in 20th and 21st Century America, Dissertation, 2022, Grace Alvino
• Refracting the Past in Post-Reformation Romance, Dissertation, 2022, Valerie Voight
• Refugee Poetics: Southeast Asian American Poets, Literary Institutions, and Structures of Postmemory, Dissertation, 2023, Joseph Wei
• Renovated Spirits: Character and the Modern Dramatic Monologue, Dissertation, 2024, Matthew Martello
• The Sacrament and the Stage: Eucharistic Representations in English Theater, Dissertation, 2022, Daniel Zimmerman
• Threshold Domesticity in the English Gothic Novel, Dissertation, 2024, Natalie Thompson
• Who Robbed the Woods: American Deforestation and Indigenous Literary Resistance, 1825-1930, Dissertation, 2023, Lloyd Sy
• "Bridge the Gap" With Community: Approaches for Community Building for First-Year Writing Across Two- and Four-Year Colleges, M.A. Thesis, 2024, Olivia Barrett
• "Handmade by You": The Poetics and Politics of Long-Distance Correspondence in Agha Shahid Ali, M.A. Thesis, 2023,Yichu Wang
• "Love Beyond Anything I Will Ever Make of It": Lyric Poetry as an Approach to Writing About Climate Crisis, M.A. Thesis, 2024, Krysten Kuhn
• "Worthiest to Be Obeyed": Right Learning and Pedagogy in Paradise Lost, M.A. Thesis, 2024, Alexander Slansky
• Accessibility for Whom? Teaching Graphic Novels to Represent the Embodied Experiences of Neurodiverse AFAB Intersectional Identities, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Kaylin Preslar
• Acting with Disruptive Compassion at Empathetic Intersections in Octavia Butler's Parable of the Talents, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Rebecca Barry
• Behind the Boar-Helm: Examining Men and Performed Masculinity in Pre-Conquest England, M.A. Thesis, 2024, Anna Weese-Grubb
• Breaking Chains, Building Narratives: U.S. Prison Education and Critical Narrative Pedagogy, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Jacob Francis
• The Call Is Coming From Inside the House: Surveillance and Haunted Houses in Contemporary Literature, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Pamela Avery Erskine
• Can the Subaltern Speak Through Postcolonial Historical Fiction?: A Study of Amitav Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Gauri Jhangiani
• The Contemporary (African) American Sonnet, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Lucy Catlett
• Cosmopolitan Futures, Modernist Afterlives: Critical Aesthetics in Teju Cole's Open City and Kazuo Ishiguro's the Unconsoled, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Eugenie Jiwon Shin
• Demonic Women and Machiavellian Men in Shakespeares's Early History Plays, M.A. Thesis, 2024, Yiding Yu
• Distant Aesthetics: Amazon's Impacts on the Aesthetic of the Novel, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Thomas Williams
• The Early Social History of Kenneth Grahame's the Wind in the Willows, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Kathryn Higinbotham
• The Empathy Habit: Vernon Lee's Psychological Aesthetics, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Quenby Hersh
• Fatal Affections: Charlotte Temple, the Coquette, and the Mourning Reader, M.A. Thesis, 2024, Mackenzie Daly
• Filtered Through Fiction: The Evolution of Perspective in Hemingway's in Our Time, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Grant Nuttall
• Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Theorist With a Reparative Mindset, M.A. Thesis, 2024, Tanner Eckstein
• Moral Implications of Madness: Female Sexuality and Violence in Sir Walter Scott's the Bride of Lammermoor and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Hana Liebman
• Otherwise Than Schooling: Three Critiques of Secularism, State Power, and US Public Education, 1960-2000, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Chandler Jennings
• Playing to Learn: Integrating Story-Based Games Into Secondary English Curriculum, M.A. Thesis, 2024, Caroline Ford
• A Queer Claim to the World: Stanley Cavell, Tangerine, and Acknowledgment, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Henry Tschurr
• Queering the Process: A Pedagogical Case Analysis of Queer Interruptions in the First-Year Writing Classroom, M.A. Thesis, 2024, Kayla Reese Arbini
• Slow Reading, Slow Eating: A Postcritical Approach to First-Year Writing Pedagogy, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Rianna Turner
• Sympathy and Revulsion in Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound", M.A. Thesis, 2023, Sara Di Muzio
• Teaching Ambiguity in Shakespeare, M.A. Thesis, 2024, Jared Willden
• Teaching Loving: On Embracing Affect in the First-Year Writing Classroom, M.A. Thesis, 2024, Allison Gish
• Teaching the Controversy:Using Challenged and Banned Books in the High School English Curriculum, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Caroline Greenblatt
• Trauma-Informed Teaching in Low Income Schools, M.A. Thesis, 2024, "Rynx" Claire Gordon Schulz
• A Turn Toward Empathy: A Pedagogy for Developing Emotional Literacy with Multicultural Coming-of-Age Novels, M.A. Thesis, 2023, Amanda Boivin
• Yeats, Violence, and Aesthetic Distance, M.A. Thesis, 2024, Eric Miller
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English Language and Literature Research Guide: Finding Dissertations

• Finding Books
• Finding Articles
• Finding Dissertations
• Using Subject Specific Resources
• Doing Research with Primary Sources
• Plagiarism, Research and Writing

ProQuest Theses and Dissertations

ProQuest dissertations & theses globa l contains dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1743 to the present day. It also offers full text for graduate works added since 1997, along with selected full text for works written prior to 1997. If you locate a dissertation using another index, bibliography, or database, you can use ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global to search for that dissertation if digitized.

Dissertations & theses @ Yale University

Searchable database of Yale dissertations and theses in all disciplines written by students at Yale University from 1861 to the present. Full text PDF versions available for some titles from 1878. More recent years available in full text.

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Oxford theses

The Bodleian Libraries’ thesis collection holds every DPhil thesis deposited at the University of Oxford since the degree began in its present form in 1917. Our oldest theses date from the early 1920s. We also have substantial holdings of MLitt theses, for which deposit became compulsory in 1953, and MPhil theses.

Since 2007 it has been a mandatory requirement for students to deposit an electronic copy of their DPhil thesis in the Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) , in addition to the deposit of a paper copy – the copy of record. Since the COVID pandemic, the requirement of a paper copy has been removed and the ORA copy has become the copy of record. Hardcopy theses are now only deposited under exceptional circumstances. 

ORA provides full-text PDF copies of most recent DPhil theses, and some earlier BLitt/MLitt theses. Find out more about Oxford Digital Theses, and depositing with ORA .

Finding Oxford theses

The following theses are catalogued on SOLO (the University libraries’ resource discovery tool) :

• DPhil and BLitt and MLitt theses
• BPhil and MPhil theses 
• Science theses

SOLO collates search results from several sources.

How to search for Oxford theses on SOLO

To search for theses in the Oxford collections on SOLO :

• navigate to the SOLO homepage
• click on the 'Advanced Search' button
• click the 'Material Type' menu and choose the 'Dissertations' option
• type in the title or author of the thesis you are looking for and click the 'Search' button.

Also try an “Any field” search for “Thesis Oxford” along with the author’s name under “creator” and any further “Any field” keywords such as department or subject. 

Searching by shelfmarks

If you are searching using the shelfmark, please make sure you include the dots in your search (e.g. D.Phil.). Records will not be returned if they are left out.

Oxford University Research Archive (ORA)

ORA was established in 2007 as a permanent and secure online archive of research produced by members of the University of Oxford. It is now mandatory for students completing a research degree at the University to deposit an electronic copy of their thesis in this archive. 

Authors can select immediate release on ORA, or apply a 1-year or 3-year embargo period. The embargo period would enable them to publish all or part of their research elsewhere if they wish. 

Theses held in ORA are searchable via  SOLO , as well as external services such as EThOS and Google Scholar. For more information, visit the Oxford digital theses guide , and see below for guidance on searching in ORA.

Search for Oxford theses on ORA

Type your keywords (title, name) into the main search box, and use quotes (“) to search for an exact phrase.

Refine your search results using the drop-downs on the left-hand side. These include:

• item type (thesis, journal article, book section, etc.)
• thesis type (DPhil, MSc, MLitt, etc.)
• subject area (History, Economics, Biochemistry, etc.)
• item date (as a range)
• file availability (whether a full text is available to download or not)

You can also increase the number of search results shown per page, and sort by relevance, date and file availability. You can select and export records to csv or email. 

Select hyperlinked text within the record details, such as “More by this author”, to run a secondary search on an author’s name. You can also select a hyperlinked keyword or subject. 

Other catalogues

Card catalogue  .

The Rare Books department of the Weston Library keeps an author card index of Oxford theses. This includes all non-scientific theses deposited between 1922 and 2016. Please ask Weston Library staff for assistance.

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

You can use ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global  to find bibliographic details of Oxford theses not listed on SOLO. Ask staff in the Weston Library’s Charles Wendall David Reading Room for help finding these theses. 

Search for Oxford theses on ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global

Basic search.

The default Basic search page allows for general keyword searches across all indexes using "and", "and not", "and or" to link the keywords as appropriate. Click on the More Search Options tab for specific title, author, subject and institution (school) searches, and to browse indexes of authors, institutions and subjects. These indexes allow you to add the word or phrase recognised by the database to your search (ie University of Oxford (United Kingdom), not Oxford University).

Advanced search

The Advanced search tab (at the top of the page) enables keyword searching in specific indexes, including author, title, institution, department, adviser and language. If you are unsure of the exact details of thesis, you can use the search boxes on this page to find it by combining the key information you do have.

Search tools

In both the Basic and Advanced search pages you can also limit the search by date by using the boxes at the bottom. Use the Search Tools advice in both the Basic and Advanced pages to undertake more complex and specific searches. Within the list of results, once you have found the record that you are interested in, you can click on the link to obtain a full citation and abstract. You can use the back button on your browser to return to your list of citations.

The Browse search tab allows you to search by subject or by location (ie institution). These are given in an alphabetical list. You can click on a top-level subject to show subdivisions of the subject. You can click on a country location to show lists of institutions in that country. At each level, you can click on View Documents to show lists of individual theses for that subject division or from that location.

In Browse search, locations and subject divisions are automatically added to a basic search at the bottom of the page. You can search within a subject or location by title, author, institution, subject, date etc, by clicking on Refine Search at the top of the page or More Search Options at the bottom of the page.

Where are physical Oxford theses held?

The Bodleian Libraries hold all doctoral theses and most postgraduate (non-doctoral) theses for which a deposit requirement is stipulated by the University:

• DPhil (doctoral) theses (1922 – 2021)
• Bachelor of Divinity (BD) theses
• BLitt/MLitt theses (Michaelmas Term 1953 – 2021)
• BPhil and MPhil theses (Michaelmas Term 1977 – 2021)

Most Oxford theses are held in Bodleian Offsite Storage. Some theses are available in the libraries; these are listed below.

Law Library

Theses submitted to the Faculty of Law are held at the Bodleian Law Library .

Vere Harmsworth Library

Theses on the United States are held at the Vere Harmsworth Library .

Social Science Library

The Social Science Library holds dissertations and theses selected by the departments it supports. 

The list of departments and further information are available in the Dissertations and Theses section of the SSL webpages. 

Locations for Anthropology and Archaeology theses

The Balfour Library holds theses for the MPhil in Material and Visual Anthropology and some older theses in Prehistoric Archaeology.

The Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library holds theses for MPhil in Classical Archaeology and MPhil in European Archaeology.

Ordering Oxford theses

Theses held in Bodleian Offsite Storage are consulted in the Weston Library. The preferred location is the Charles Wendell David Reading Room ; they can also be ordered to the Sir Charles Mackerras Reading Room .

Find out more about requesting a digitised copy, copyright restrictions and copying from Oxford theses .

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What is a thesis?

What is a dissertation, getting started, staying on track.

A thesis is a long-term project that you work on over the course of a semester or a year. Theses have a very wide variety of styles and content, so we encourage you to look at prior examples and work closely with faculty to develop yours. 

Before you begin, make sure that you are familiar with the dissertation genre—what it is for and what it looks like.

Generally speaking, a dissertation’s purpose is to prove that you have the expertise necessary to fulfill your doctoral-degree requirements by showing depth of knowledge and independent thinking.

The form of a dissertation may vary by discipline. Be sure to follow the specific guidelines of your department.

• PhD This site directs candidates to the GSAS website about dissertations , with links to checklists,  planning, formatting, acknowledgments, submission, and publishing options. There is also a link to guidelines for the prospectus . Consult with your committee chair about specific requirements and standards for your dissertation.
• DDES This document covers planning, patent filing, submission guidelines, publishing options, formatting guidelines, sample pages, citation guidelines, and a list of common errors to avoid. There is also a link to guidelines for the prospectus .
• Scholarly Pursuits (GSAS) This searchable booklet from Harvard GSAS is a comprehensive guide to writing dissertations, dissertation-fellowship applications, academic journal articles, and academic job documents.

Finding an original topic can be a daunting and overwhelming task. These key concepts can help you focus and save time.

Finding a topic for your thesis or dissertation should start with a research question that excites or at least interests you. A rigorous, engaging, and original project will require continuous curiosity about your topic, about your own thoughts on the topic, and about what other scholars have said on your topic. Avoid getting boxed in by thinking you know what you want to say from the beginning; let your research and your writing evolve as you explore and fine-tune your focus through constant questioning and exploration.

Get a sense of the broader picture before you narrow your focus and attempt to frame an argument. Read, skim, and otherwise familiarize yourself with what other scholars have done in areas related to your proposed topic. Briefly explore topics tangentially related to yours to broaden your perspective and increase your chance of finding a unique angle to pursue.

Critical Reading

Critical reading is the opposite of passive reading. Instead of merely reading for information to absorb, critical reading also involves careful, sustained thinking about what you are reading. This process may include analyzing the author’s motives and assumptions, asking what might be left out of the discussion, considering what you agree with or disagree with in the author’s statements and why you agree or disagree, and exploring connections or contradictions between scholarly arguments. Here is a resource to help hone your critical-reading skills:

http://writing.umn.edu/sws/assets/pdf/quicktips/criticalread.pdf

Conversation

Your thesis or dissertation will incorporate some ideas from other scholars whose work you researched. By reading critically and following your curiosity, you will develop your own ideas and claims, and these contributions are the core of your project. You will also acknowledge the work of scholars who came before you, and you must accurately and fairly attribute this work and define your place within the larger discussion. Make sure that you know how to quote, summarize, paraphrase ,  integrate , and cite secondary sources to avoid plagiarism and to show the depth and breadth of your knowledge.

A thesis is a long-term, large project that involves both research and writing; it is easy to lose focus, motivation, and momentum. Here are suggestions for achieving the result you want in the time you have.

The dissertation is probably the largest project you have undertaken, and a lot of the work is self-directed. The project can feel daunting or even overwhelming unless you break it down into manageable pieces and create a timeline for completing each smaller task. Be realistic but also challenge yourself, and be forgiving of yourself if you miss a self-imposed deadline here and there.

Your program will also have specific deadlines for different requirements, including establishing a committee, submitting a prospectus, completing the dissertation, defending the dissertation, and submitting your work. Consult your department’s website for these dates and incorporate them into the timeline for your work.

Accountability

Sometimes self-imposed deadlines do not feel urgent unless there is accountability to someone beyond yourself. To increase your motivation to complete tasks on schedule, set dates with your committee chair to submit pre-determined pieces of a chapter. You can also arrange with a fellow doctoral student to check on each other’s progress. Research and writing can be lonely, so it is also nice to share that journey with someone and support each other through the process.

Common Pitfalls

The most common challenges for students writing a dissertation are writer’s block, information-overload, and the compulsion to keep researching forever.

There are many strategies for avoiding writer’s block, such as freewriting, outlining, taking a walk, starting in the middle, and creating an ideal work environment for your particular learning style. Pay attention to what helps you and try different things until you find what works.

Efficient researching techniques are essential to avoiding information-overload. Here are a couple of resources about strategies for finding sources and quickly obtaining essential information from them.

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/writing_in_literature_detailed_discussion/reading_criticism.html

https://students.dartmouth.edu/academic-skills/learning-resources/learning-strategies/reading-techniques

Finally, remember that there is always more to learn and your dissertation cannot incorporate everything. Follow your curiosity but also set limits on the scope of your work. It helps to create a folder entitled “future projects” for topics and sources that interest you but that do not fit neatly into the dissertation. Also remember that future scholars will build off of your work, so leave something for them to do.

Browsing through theses and dissertations of the past can help to get a sense of your options and gain inspiration but be careful to use current guidelines and refer to your committee instead of relying on these examples for form or formatting.

DASH Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard.

HOLLIS Harvard Library’s catalog provides access to ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global .

MIT Architecture has a list of their graduates’ dissertations and theses.

Rhode Island School of Design has a list of their graduates’ dissertations and theses.

University of South Florida has a list of their graduates’ dissertations and theses.

Harvard GSD has a list of projects, including theses and professors’ research.

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Dissertation Structure & Layout 101: How to structure your dissertation, thesis or research project.

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) Reviewed By: David Phair (PhD) | July 2019

So, you’ve got a decent understanding of what a dissertation is , you’ve chosen your topic and hopefully you’ve received approval for your research proposal . Awesome! Now its time to start the actual dissertation or thesis writing journey.

To craft a high-quality document, the very first thing you need to understand is dissertation structure . In this post, we’ll walk you through the generic dissertation structure and layout, step by step. We’ll start with the big picture, and then zoom into each chapter to briefly discuss the core contents. If you’re just starting out on your research journey, you should start with this post, which covers the big-picture process of how to write a dissertation or thesis .

*The Caveat *

In this post, we’ll be discussing a traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout, which is generally used for social science research across universities, whether in the US, UK, Europe or Australia. However, some universities may have small variations on this structure (extra chapters, merged chapters, slightly different ordering, etc).

So, always check with your university if they have a prescribed structure or layout that they expect you to work with. If not, it’s safe to assume the structure we’ll discuss here is suitable. And even if they do have a prescribed structure, you’ll still get value from this post as we’ll explain the core contents of each section.  

Overview: S tructuring a dissertation or thesis

• Acknowledgements page
• Abstract (or executive summary)
• Table of contents , list of figures and tables
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Literature review
• Chapter 3: Methodology
• Chapter 4: Results
• Chapter 5: Discussion
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Reference list

As I mentioned, some universities will have slight variations on this structure. For example, they want an additional “personal reflection chapter”, or they might prefer the results and discussion chapter to be merged into one. Regardless, the overarching flow will always be the same, as this flow reflects the research process , which we discussed here – i.e.:

• The introduction chapter presents the core research question and aims .
• The literature review chapter assesses what the current research says about this question.
• The methodology, results and discussion chapters go about undertaking new research about this question.
• The conclusion chapter (attempts to) answer the core research question .

In other words, the dissertation structure and layout reflect the research process of asking a well-defined question(s), investigating, and then answering the question – see below.

To restate that – the structure and layout of a dissertation reflect the flow of the overall research process . This is essential to understand, as each chapter will make a lot more sense if you “get” this concept. If you’re not familiar with the research process, read this post before going further.

Right. Now that we’ve covered the big picture, let’s dive a little deeper into the details of each section and chapter. Oh and by the way, you can also grab our free dissertation/thesis template here to help speed things up.

The title page of your dissertation is the very first impression the marker will get of your work, so it pays to invest some time thinking about your title. But what makes for a good title? A strong title needs to be 3 things:

• Succinct (not overly lengthy or verbose)
• Specific (not vague or ambiguous)
• Representative of the research you’re undertaking (clearly linked to your research questions)

Typically, a good title includes mention of the following:

• The broader area of the research (i.e. the overarching topic)
• The specific focus of your research (i.e. your specific context)
• Indication of research design (e.g. quantitative , qualitative , or  mixed methods ).

For example:

A quantitative investigation [research design] into the antecedents of organisational trust [broader area] in the UK retail forex trading market [specific context/area of focus].

Again, some universities may have specific requirements regarding the format and structure of the title, so it’s worth double-checking expectations with your institution (if there’s no mention in the brief or study material).

Acknowledgements

This page provides you with an opportunity to say thank you to those who helped you along your research journey. Generally, it’s optional (and won’t count towards your marks), but it is academic best practice to include this.

So, who do you say thanks to? Well, there’s no prescribed requirements, but it’s common to mention the following people:

• Your dissertation supervisor or committee.
• Any professors, lecturers or academics that helped you understand the topic or methodologies.
• Any tutors, mentors or advisors.
• Your family and friends, especially spouse (for adult learners studying part-time).

There’s no need for lengthy rambling. Just state who you’re thankful to and for what (e.g. thank you to my supervisor, John Doe, for his endless patience and attentiveness) – be sincere. In terms of length, you should keep this to a page or less.

Abstract or executive summary

The dissertation abstract (or executive summary for some degrees) serves to provide the first-time reader (and marker or moderator) with a big-picture view of your research project. It should give them an understanding of the key insights and findings from the research, without them needing to read the rest of the report – in other words, it should be able to stand alone .

For it to stand alone, your abstract should cover the following key points (at a minimum):

• Your research questions and aims – what key question(s) did your research aim to answer?
• Your methodology – how did you go about investigating the topic and finding answers to your research question(s)?
• Your findings – following your own research, what did do you discover?
• Your conclusions – based on your findings, what conclusions did you draw? What answers did you find to your research question(s)?

So, in much the same way the dissertation structure mimics the research process, your abstract or executive summary should reflect the research process, from the initial stage of asking the original question to the final stage of answering that question.

In practical terms, it’s a good idea to write this section up last , once all your core chapters are complete. Otherwise, you’ll end up writing and rewriting this section multiple times (just wasting time). For a step by step guide on how to write a strong executive summary, check out this post .

Need a helping hand?

Table of contents

This section is straightforward. You’ll typically present your table of contents (TOC) first, followed by the two lists – figures and tables. I recommend that you use Microsoft Word’s automatic table of contents generator to generate your TOC. If you’re not familiar with this functionality, the video below explains it simply:

If you find that your table of contents is overly lengthy, consider removing one level of depth. Oftentimes, this can be done without detracting from the usefulness of the TOC.

Right, now that the “admin” sections are out of the way, its time to move on to your core chapters. These chapters are the heart of your dissertation and are where you’ll earn the marks. The first chapter is the introduction chapter – as you would expect, this is the time to introduce your research…

It’s important to understand that even though you’ve provided an overview of your research in your abstract, your introduction needs to be written as if the reader has not read that (remember, the abstract is essentially a standalone document). So, your introduction chapter needs to start from the very beginning, and should address the following questions:

• What will you be investigating (in plain-language, big picture-level)?
• Why is that worth investigating? How is it important to academia or business? How is it sufficiently original?
• What are your research aims and research question(s)? Note that the research questions can sometimes be presented at the end of the literature review (next chapter).
• What is the scope of your study? In other words, what will and won’t you cover ?
• How will you approach your research? In other words, what methodology will you adopt?
• How will you structure your dissertation? What are the core chapters and what will you do in each of them?

These are just the bare basic requirements for your intro chapter. Some universities will want additional bells and whistles in the intro chapter, so be sure to carefully read your brief or consult your research supervisor.

If done right, your introduction chapter will set a clear direction for the rest of your dissertation. Specifically, it will make it clear to the reader (and marker) exactly what you’ll be investigating, why that’s important, and how you’ll be going about the investigation. Conversely, if your introduction chapter leaves a first-time reader wondering what exactly you’ll be researching, you’ve still got some work to do.

Now that you’ve set a clear direction with your introduction chapter, the next step is the literature review . In this section, you will analyse the existing research (typically academic journal articles and high-quality industry publications), with a view to understanding the following questions:

• What does the literature currently say about the topic you’re investigating?
• Is the literature lacking or well established? Is it divided or in disagreement?
• How does your research fit into the bigger picture?
• How does your research contribute something original?
• How does the methodology of previous studies help you develop your own?

Depending on the nature of your study, you may also present a conceptual framework towards the end of your literature review, which you will then test in your actual research.

Again, some universities will want you to focus on some of these areas more than others, some will have additional or fewer requirements, and so on. Therefore, as always, its important to review your brief and/or discuss with your supervisor, so that you know exactly what’s expected of your literature review chapter.

Now that you’ve investigated the current state of knowledge in your literature review chapter and are familiar with the existing key theories, models and frameworks, its time to design your own research. Enter the methodology chapter – the most “science-ey” of the chapters…

In this chapter, you need to address two critical questions:

• Exactly HOW will you carry out your research (i.e. what is your intended research design)?
• Exactly WHY have you chosen to do things this way (i.e. how do you justify your design)?

Remember, the dissertation part of your degree is first and foremost about developing and demonstrating research skills . Therefore, the markers want to see that you know which methods to use, can clearly articulate why you’ve chosen then, and know how to deploy them effectively.

Importantly, this chapter requires detail – don’t hold back on the specifics. State exactly what you’ll be doing, with who, when, for how long, etc. Moreover, for every design choice you make, make sure you justify it.

In practice, you will likely end up coming back to this chapter once you’ve undertaken all your data collection and analysis, and revise it based on changes you made during the analysis phase. This is perfectly fine. Its natural for you to add an additional analysis technique, scrap an old one, etc based on where your data lead you. Of course, I’m talking about small changes here – not a fundamental switch from qualitative to quantitative, which will likely send your supervisor in a spin!

You’ve now collected your data and undertaken your analysis, whether qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. In this chapter, you’ll present the raw results of your analysis . For example, in the case of a quant study, you’ll present the demographic data, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics , etc.

Typically, Chapter 4 is simply a presentation and description of the data, not a discussion of the meaning of the data. In other words, it’s descriptive, rather than analytical – the meaning is discussed in Chapter 5. However, some universities will want you to combine chapters 4 and 5, so that you both present and interpret the meaning of the data at the same time. Check with your institution what their preference is.

Now that you’ve presented the data analysis results, its time to interpret and analyse them. In other words, its time to discuss what they mean, especially in relation to your research question(s).

What you discuss here will depend largely on your chosen methodology. For example, if you’ve gone the quantitative route, you might discuss the relationships between variables . If you’ve gone the qualitative route, you might discuss key themes and the meanings thereof. It all depends on what your research design choices were.

Most importantly, you need to discuss your results in relation to your research questions and aims, as well as the existing literature. What do the results tell you about your research questions? Are they aligned with the existing research or at odds? If so, why might this be? Dig deep into your findings and explain what the findings suggest, in plain English.

The final chapter – you’ve made it! Now that you’ve discussed your interpretation of the results, its time to bring it back to the beginning with the conclusion chapter . In other words, its time to (attempt to) answer your original research question s (from way back in chapter 1). Clearly state what your conclusions are in terms of your research questions. This might feel a bit repetitive, as you would have touched on this in the previous chapter, but its important to bring the discussion full circle and explicitly state your answer(s) to the research question(s).

Next, you’ll typically discuss the implications of your findings . In other words, you’ve answered your research questions – but what does this mean for the real world (or even for academia)? What should now be done differently, given the new insight you’ve generated?

Lastly, you should discuss the limitations of your research, as well as what this means for future research in the area. No study is perfect, especially not a Masters-level. Discuss the shortcomings of your research. Perhaps your methodology was limited, perhaps your sample size was small or not representative, etc, etc. Don’t be afraid to critique your work – the markers want to see that you can identify the limitations of your work. This is a strength, not a weakness. Be brutal!

This marks the end of your core chapters – woohoo! From here on out, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

The reference list is straightforward. It should contain a list of all resources cited in your dissertation, in the required format, e.g. APA , Harvard, etc.

It’s essential that you use reference management software for your dissertation. Do NOT try handle your referencing manually – its far too error prone. On a reference list of multiple pages, you’re going to make mistake. To this end, I suggest considering either Mendeley or Zotero. Both are free and provide a very straightforward interface to ensure that your referencing is 100% on point. I’ve included a simple how-to video for the Mendeley software (my personal favourite) below:

Some universities may ask you to include a bibliography, as opposed to a reference list. These two things are not the same . A bibliography is similar to a reference list, except that it also includes resources which informed your thinking but were not directly cited in your dissertation. So, double-check your brief and make sure you use the right one.

The very last piece of the puzzle is the appendix or set of appendices. This is where you’ll include any supporting data and evidence. Importantly, supporting is the keyword here.

Your appendices should provide additional “nice to know”, depth-adding information, which is not critical to the core analysis. Appendices should not be used as a way to cut down word count (see this post which covers how to reduce word count ). In other words, don’t place content that is critical to the core analysis here, just to save word count. You will not earn marks on any content in the appendices, so don’t try to play the system!

Time to recap…

And there you have it – the traditional dissertation structure and layout, from A-Z. To recap, the core structure for a dissertation or thesis is (typically) as follows:

• Acknowledgments page

Most importantly, the core chapters should reflect the research process (asking, investigating and answering your research question). Moreover, the research question(s) should form the golden thread throughout your dissertation structure. Everything should revolve around the research questions, and as you’ve seen, they should form both the start point (i.e. introduction chapter) and the endpoint (i.e. conclusion chapter).

I hope this post has provided you with clarity about the traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below, or feel free to get in touch with us. Also, be sure to check out the rest of the  Grad Coach Blog .

Psst... there’s more!

This post was based on one of our popular Research Bootcamps . If you're working on a research project, you'll definitely want to check this out ...

36 Comments

many thanks i found it very useful

Glad to hear that, Arun. Good luck writing your dissertation.

Such clear practical logical advice. I very much needed to read this to keep me focused in stead of fretting.. Perfect now ready to start my research!

what about scientific fields like computer or engineering thesis what is the difference in the structure? thank you very much

Thanks so much this helped me a lot!

Very helpful and accessible. What I like most is how practical the advice is along with helpful tools/ links.

Thanks Ade!

Thank you so much sir.. It was really helpful..

You’re welcome!

Hi! How many words maximum should contain the abstract?

Thank you so much 😊 Find this at the right moment

You’re most welcome. Good luck with your dissertation.

best ever benefit i got on right time thank you

Many times Clarity and vision of destination of dissertation is what makes the difference between good ,average and great researchers the same way a great automobile driver is fast with clarity of address and Clear weather conditions .

I guess Great researcher = great ideas + knowledge + great and fast data collection and modeling + great writing + high clarity on all these

You have given immense clarity from start to end.

Morning. Where will I write the definitions of what I’m referring to in my report?

Thank you so much Derek, I was almost lost! Thanks a tonnnn! Have a great day!

Thanks ! so concise and valuable

This was very helpful. Clear and concise. I know exactly what to do now.

Thank you for allowing me to go through briefly. I hope to find time to continue.

Really useful to me. Thanks a thousand times

Very interesting! It will definitely set me and many more for success. highly recommended.

Thank you soo much sir, for the opportunity to express my skills

Usefull, thanks a lot. Really clear

Very nice and easy to understand. Thank you .

That was incredibly useful. Thanks Grad Coach Crew!

My stress level just dropped at least 15 points after watching this. Just starting my thesis for my grad program and I feel a lot more capable now! Thanks for such a clear and helpful video, Emma and the GradCoach team!

Do we need to mention the number of words the dissertation contains in the main document?

It depends on your university’s requirements, so it would be best to check with them 🙂

Such a helpful post to help me get started with structuring my masters dissertation, thank you!

Great video; I appreciate that helpful information

It is so necessary or avital course

This blog is very informative for my research. Thank you

Doctoral students are required to fill out the National Research Council’s Survey of Earned Doctorates

wow this is an amazing gain in my life

This is so good

How can i arrange my specific objectives in my dissertation?

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• Dissertation & Thesis Outline | Example & Free Templates

Dissertation & Thesis Outline | Example & Free Templates

Published on June 7, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on November 21, 2023.

A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical early steps in your writing process . It helps you to lay out and organize your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding the specifics of your dissertation topic and showcasing its relevance to your field.

Generally, an outline contains information on the different sections included in your thesis or dissertation , such as:

• Your anticipated title
• Your abstract
• Your chapters (sometimes subdivided into further topics like literature review, research methods, avenues for future research, etc.)

In the final product, you can also provide a chapter outline for your readers. This is a short paragraph at the end of your introduction to inform readers about the organizational structure of your thesis or dissertation. This chapter outline is also known as a reading guide or summary outline.

Table of contents

How to outline your thesis or dissertation, dissertation and thesis outline templates, chapter outline example, sample sentences for your chapter outline, sample verbs for variation in your chapter outline, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis and dissertation outlines.

While there are some inter-institutional differences, many outlines proceed in a fairly similar fashion.

• Working Title
• “Elevator pitch” of your work (often written last).
• Introduce your area of study, sharing details about your research question, problem statement , and hypotheses . Situate your research within an existing paradigm or conceptual or theoretical framework .
• Subdivide as you see fit into main topics and sub-topics.
• Describe your research methods (e.g., your scope , population , and data collection ).
• Present your research findings and share about your data analysis methods.
• Answer the research question in a concise way.
• Interpret your findings, discuss potential limitations of your own research and speculate about future implications or related opportunities.

For a more detailed overview of chapters and other elements, be sure to check out our article on the structure of a dissertation or download our template .

To help you get started, we’ve created a full thesis or dissertation template in Word or Google Docs format. It’s easy adapt it to your own requirements.

 Download Word template    Download Google Docs template

It can be easy to fall into a pattern of overusing the same words or sentence constructions, which can make your work monotonous and repetitive for your readers. Consider utilizing some of the alternative constructions presented below.

Example 1: Passive construction

The passive voice is a common choice for outlines and overviews because the context makes it clear who is carrying out the action (e.g., you are conducting the research ). However, overuse of the passive voice can make your text vague and imprecise.

Example 2: IS-AV construction

You can also present your information using the “IS-AV” (inanimate subject with an active verb ) construction.

A chapter is an inanimate object, so it is not capable of taking an action itself (e.g., presenting or discussing). However, the meaning of the sentence is still easily understandable, so the IS-AV construction can be a good way to add variety to your text.

Example 3: The “I” construction

Another option is to use the “I” construction, which is often recommended by style manuals (e.g., APA Style and Chicago style ). However, depending on your field of study, this construction is not always considered professional or academic. Ask your supervisor if you’re not sure.

Example 4: Mix-and-match

To truly make the most of these options, consider mixing and matching the passive voice , IS-AV construction , and “I” construction .This can help the flow of your argument and improve the readability of your text.

As you draft the chapter outline, you may also find yourself frequently repeating the same words, such as “discuss,” “present,” “prove,” or “show.” Consider branching out to add richness and nuance to your writing. Here are some examples of synonyms you can use.

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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When you mention different chapters within your text, it’s considered best to use Roman numerals for most citation styles. However, the most important thing here is to remain consistent whenever using numbers in your dissertation .

The title page of your thesis or dissertation goes first, before all other content or lists that you may choose to include.

A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical first steps in your writing process. It helps you to lay out and organize your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding what kind of research you’d like to undertake.

• Your chapters (sometimes subdivided into further topics like literature review , research methods , avenues for future research, etc.)

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If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

George, T. (2023, November 21). Dissertation & Thesis Outline | Example & Free Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved September 16, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/dissertation-thesis-outline/

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