Senior Thesis & Honors Colloquium

Class of 2023

Kenisha Barrett, “Self-Liberation in Paradise Lost and America’s Eden: Milton, Wheatley, and Morrison” (Literature)

Brianna Schwartz, “A Thread of Overlooked Narratives: Women, Higher Education, and the Untold Cost of Enrollment” (Literature)

Class of 2022

Thomas Behnke, “Saying Goodbye” (Creative Writing)

Shanika Cuthbert, “The Devil Herself: Three Generations of Inherited Trauma in Caribbean Women” (Creative Writing)

Nicole Flores, “’A Frankenstein of Fiction’: How Silvia Moreno-Garcia Pioneers A New Subgenre in Mexican Gothic.” (Literature)

Kabrien Gathers, “The People v. The Flying Thunder Man: Insights of the Human Spirit During An Alternate Covid-19 Pandemic” (Creative Writing)

Jasmine Gonzalez, “Before and After the Movement: Nuyorican Women’s Poetics and Performance” (Literature)

Rafiana Martinez, “La Grifa” (Creative Writing)

Jennifer Medina, "Chosen" Ones: An Examination of the False Prophet Figure in Plague Literature” (Literature)

Amanda Mendez, “’The Blood Is The Life’: Queerness and Race in Victorian Vampire Literature” (Literature)

Latesha Paisley, “An Irrepressible Case of Love: Uniting African American and Native American Women in Their Fight to the Core of Settler Colonialism” (Professional Writing)

Sibyl Randolf, “Slave Owning Women and Enslave Women in the Antebellum South” (Literature)

Peter Watson, “Liminal Landscapes: The Role of Rocks in Selected Irish Gothic Works” (Literature)

Class of 2021

Sonia Gonzalez, “A Daughter’s Reflection: The Role of Mental Illness Narratives as a Source of Healing in the Latinx Community” (Literature)

Ariana Hernandez Carrasco, “Mexican Women Redefining Womanhood: From Elena Garro to Valeria Luiselli” (Literature)

Brandon Mendez, “What is an Experiment” (Creative Writing)

Angela Peteani, “The Princesses and I” (Creative Writing)

Isha Serrano, “I Am the Sauce” (Creative Writing)

Class of 2020

Sally Barrilla, “Evaluating the Consequences of Clothing “(Creative Writing)

Ryan Cabrera, “Resolving Issues of Inherited Trauma through Travel in the Transgenerational Latinx Bildungsroman” (Literature)

Yenick Gonzalez, “What Color Is My Moon Asks the Rising Phoenix” (Creative Writing)

Natalia Kierzkowska, “A Philosophical Reading of Time, Identity and Gender in Jeannette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit” (Literature)

Francis Merencillo, “Through the Kaleidoscope: The Gendered Reception of Elizabeth Barrett Browning” (Literature)

Renée Pendarvis, “I Don’t Wanna Talk About It” (Creative Writing)

Davaughn Riley, “The Black Rainbow: Queer Masculinity and Black Identity” (Professional Writing)

Melissa Tejada, “’Dim, Lucent of All Lovely Mysteries’: Michael Field, Sexuality, and Power in 19th-Century England” (Literature)

Class of 2019

Calandra Albert, “Growing in Darkness: Colorism, Adultification, and Rape in Black Girlhood Narratives” (Literature)

Bernard Alexander, “’The Sisserou That Flew’: An Immigrant’s Journey to Self-Discovery” (Creative Writing)

Jennifer Chang, “Invisible Woman:  Analyzing Race, Color, and Identity in Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929)” (Literature)

Ashley N. Davis, “The Case for Fanfiction: The Establishment of Fanfiction as a Literary Genre” (Literature)

Ashley Gonzalez, “Cervantes’ Squires: Don Quixote Through Four Translations” (Literature)

Amberly Jimenez, “Dominican-American Literature: Expanding Women’s Voices and Understanding Their Identity Through Poetry” (Literature)

Alia Khoury, “The Reconstruction of Morality on a Spectrum in the Wake of Trauma and the Existence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Literature and Cultural Studies” (Literature)

Sharon Lee, ““Meat is the Message”: Female Asians and Asian-American Protest in The Vegetarian and My Year of Meats” (Literature)

Javiera Morales-Reyes, “Defying Patriarchy in England and New Spain: Free Speech and Self-Empowerment in Elizabeth Cary’s Mariam (1613) and Sor Juana’s La Respuesta (1691)” (Literature)

Carolina Peralta, “Purple and Blue Collide” (Creative Writing)

Karina Rice, “Because We Matter: A Collection of YA Short Stories” (Creative Writing)

Ashley Sanchez, “BLAST!  Imagist and Vorticist Legacies: The Ugliness of the English Language from Pound to Trump” (Professional Writing)

Hema Sookhai, “Episodes of Disordered Complexion” (Creative Writing)

Hardik Yadav, “A Coming To: Towards the Making the Contemporary Gay Man as His Own Subject” (Creative Writing)

Class of 2018

Kimberley Aguirre, “Rizada Roots” (Creative Writing)

Rakiye Shamir Benjamin, “Digital Storytelling – High School Story (Pilot)” (Creative Writing)

Shivani Radha Boodhoo, “Appropriation Versus Assimilation: Navigating A Path to Appreciation” (Professional Writing)

Tana Nicole Cambrelen, “Boxed In: A Walk Through the Intersections of An Afro-Latina White Girl from The Bronx” (Creative Writing)

Deirdre Fanzo, “Sympathy for the Devil: Mapping Addiction Narratives in Gothic Literature” (Literature)

Victoria Hofstad, “’God’s benison go with you, and with those that would make good of bad’ Macduff as Antibody in Shakespeare’s Macbeth – A New Soliloquy” (Literature)

Justin Joyce, “Great: A Novel-in-Progress” (Creative Writing)

Parbattie Khalawan, “Shakespeare and Women: A Feminist Perspective” (Literature)

Mena McCarthy, “Representations of Trauma Through the Authorial Lens of Haruki Murakami” (Literature)

Angel Mindanao, “Red, White, Blue & Yellow in the Big Apple: The Stories of Filipino Immigrants in New York City” (Professional Writing)

Arlinda Mulosmanaj, “A Poet’s Role: Identity, Nationalism, and the Ability to Incite Change” (Literature)

Maria Reyes-Ramirez, “’Long Live the King’: The Power of Legacy in Fatherhood in 20th Century African-American Literature” (Literature)

Melissa Ruiz, “Queer Visibility, Liminality, and Otherness: The Importance of Representation in Young Adult Literature” (Literature)

Jeffrey Sanders, “Engleke, Elisabet” (Creative Writing)

Nicholas Santiago, “To Live Again: Digital Rhetoric and First-Year Composition” (Literature)

Eileen Sepulveda, “Q” (Creative Writing)

Rachel Strom, “Lifeline: Transracial Adoption” (Professional Writing)

Nicole Torres, “Perturbation” (Creative Writing)

Anabel Ventura, “Five Degrees of Separation” (Literature)

Class of 2017

Sheema Alamari, “’She’s Split in Half’: The Hybridity of Genre in Irani and Afghani Women’s Memoirs” (Professional Writing)

Danitsa Andaluz, “Vacio: Three Stories” (Creative Writing)

Kejana Andaluz, “Waking Up to Stars” (Creative Writing)

Elissa Fanzo, “Edgar Allan Poe: Progenitor of Contemporary American Genre Fiction” (Literature)

Nadia Floyd, “Pyramids: Exploring Emotional Agency with Respect to Colorism and Patriarchy” (Literature)

Melanie Hernandez, “A Yogi’s Journey Towards Practicing Vinyasa” (Professional Writing)

Merita Ljubanovic, “’ She looked what she said’: Discourse and Identity in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa” (Literature)

Luis Machuca, “The Autonomy of Blindness: Reimagining Blind Characters in Literature Through Disability Studies” (Literature)

Alejandra Perez Fonseca, “How the Media Portrayal of Menstruation Has Changed in the Last Decade” (Professional Writing)

C. Lionel Spencer, “The Family Values of Hip Hop: An Analysis of Kendrick Lamar’s and Shawn ‘Jay’Z’ Carter’s Hip Hop Texts (Lyrics)” (Literature)

Nisha Varughese, “Unraveling the Mystery: Exploring the Representations of Women and Children Victims during the Partition of India” (Literature)

Class of 2016

Bidget Kelly, “The Future Value of Liberal Arts” (Professional Writing)

Alivia Lopez, “The Current State of Criticism: The Art of the Review” (Professional Writing)

Nora Moncada, “Joyce’s Dubliners: Constructs of Gender and Nation in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland” (Literature)

Yesica Montesino, “The Creation of Revolutionary Women Through the Restrictions of Machismo and Marianismo During Rafael Trujillo’s Dictatorship” (Literature)

Gergely Nemeth, “Agents of Order and Chaos in Society in Traditional Detective Fiction” (Literature)

Yocasta C. Novas, “Influences of White Standards of Beauty on Black Women and Girls in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye” (Literature)

Bianca Mari Ruiz, “Lost Child: A Story of Understanding and Love” (Creative Writing)

Veronica M. Seda, “The Protean Power of Poetry: Over the Classroom and Beyond” (Creative Writing)

Jean Carlos Soto, “Daggers and Drones: Part I of an Urban-Apocalyptic Novel” (Creative Writing)

Stephanie Trinidad, “The Evolution of a Genre: How William Golding Influenced a Generation of Writers and the Young Adult Fiction Genre through Lord of the Flies” (Literature)

Jodell Ulerie, “Condemned to Freedom: An Existentialist Reading of Choice and Identity in Invisible Man and Madame Bovary” (Literature)

Sumeya Yafaie, “Self-Establishment in the Works of Women Writers from Eighteenth-Century Christian England to Twenty-First-Century Muslim America” (Literature)

Class of 2015

Stephanie Chung, “Nature in Shelley’s “Ozymandias” and Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”: A Study of Breaking Bad” (Creative Writing)

Shabraj Miller, “Child of Trauma: The Multifaceted Black Woman” (Creative Writing)

Danyelle Milton, “Transforming Oppression: Revolutionary Women Re-Gender Rights and Virtue” (Literature)

Jasmine Miranda, “The Critical Revival: Scientific Approaches to the Works of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath” (Creative Writing)

Jennifer Morin, “Navigating the Gray Area: Defining Multiracial Diversity in a Black and White World” (Professional Writing)

Orevaghene Obaro-Best, “The Palliation of Racial Oppression: Social Darwinism in the Novels of Joseph Conrad and Chinua Achebe” (Literature)

Octrisha Parker, “Momma Where Are You?: The Traumatic and Beautiful Childhood of a Child Named Boo” (Creative Writing)

Ebba Zajmi Gjergji, “From Hana to Mark and Back Again: Dones’ Sworn Virgin & the Evasion and Subversion of Patriarchal Gender Prescriptions” (Literature)

Class 2014

Kenny Aguirreche, “Escaping the Shadow of the System: Alternatives to Utopias and Dystopias in Literary History” (Literature)

Sandra Cortez, “Embracing Duality and the Need for Expression: Women’s Roles in Gothic Literature” (Literature)

Stephanie Crotty, “Tragedy: A Conundrum of Green Stilettos” (Creative Writing)

Sean Engeldrum, “Bronx Destiny” (Creative Writing)

Veronica Garcia, “The Tropical Negro: Rethinking The Identity of The New Negro Through the Writings of Claude McKay and Eric Walrond” (Literature)

Kashif Graham, “’A Place Espyrituell’: Looking at Shakespeare’s Gardens as Places of Human Interaction” (Literature)

Rik Lee, “’Weaving Words Together’: A Diachronous History of the English Dictionary” (Literature)

Madeline Scher, “WTH Happened? Technology, Education, and the Decline of Professional Communication Skills in the Millennial Generation” (Professional Writing)

Rebecca Severn, “Leaping Over Fences: A Repertoire of Gender Performance in Peter Pan” (Literature)

Alexandria Torres, “Who Are You” (Creative Writing)

Class of 2013

Del Alvarado, “An Evolutionary Revolution” (Literature)

Jessica Bouret, “In the Mind of a Mother: Love and Scars” (Literature)

Marco Centeno, “Metafiction: Fictional Mimesis of Reality” (Creative Writing)

lana Dadras, “New Journalism: Revealing a Subjective and Collaborative Truth” (Professional Writing)

Allison Dillon, “What a Character: A Metafictional Story and an Analysis of Postmodern Metafiction” (Literature)

Alexander Linde, “The Stone and the Corn: Literature and Revolution against Neoliberalism” (Literature)

Sharene Shaw, “The End of the World As We Know It: As Seen Through the Lenses of Japanese Multimedia” (Literature)

Ivanna Uquillas, “’Let me remember what . . . herself should say’: Chaste Maidens and Wives in Shakespeare and Contemporary Women Writers” (Literature)

Class of 2012

Lisa Abate, “Worm in the Apple: The Bastardization of Human Behavior” (Literature)

Lisa Marie Blanco, “Denial in the Face of Imminent Demise in Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi-Contini, Wiesel’s Night, and Muñoz Molina’s Sepharad’ (Literature)

Grecia Huesca, “Swollen” (Creative Writing)

Yvette Lewis, “Mary, Mary: Hardly Contrary” (Literature)

Sherin Mathew, “Archetypes of Fairy Tales and Christianity in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and Great Expectations (Literature)

Viviana Ocampo, “William Faulkner: Postcolonial Narrator of a Decaying South” (Literature)

Suely Riordan, “An Empowering Trinity: Christine de Pizan, Mary Astell and Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz” (Literature)

Brian Rivera, “’Every Negro Walk in a Circle’: Re-examining Women as Leaders in Neo-slave Narratives” (Literature)

Valerie Ross, “Up From Termagancy: The Taming of the Shrew and The Color Purple” (Literature)

Carmen Santiago, “Magical Realism as the True Latin American Literary Expression” (Literature)

Pablo Torres, “Dr. Nevermore@Hotmail.com” (Creative Writing)

Shabana Yusuf, “Tragic Love Song of Destiny” (Creative Writing)

Class of 2011

Skye Akiyama, “Noting” (Creative Writing)

Conor Anderson, “He Will Remember You” (Creative Writing")

Michelle Cantey, “Tragedy and Emotional Turmoil: The Myth of the Tragic Mulatto” (Literature)

Sylvia Churchill, “Native American Legends and Their Efficacy in the Past and in the Present” (English / Early Childhood and Childhood Education)

Tihela Feit, “Getting “back-to-the-text“ Really: The Formal Features of On Beauty and Persepolis” (Literature)

Ng Fructuoso, “The Literary Contributions of Barbauld, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Blake to the Antislavery Campaign in 19th Century England from a Christian Perspective” (Literature)

Jordana Lopez Da Silva, “All That Glitters Isn’t Gold: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Trilogy” (Literature)

Kaminie Singh, “A Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n’: What It Means To Be Satanic or Non-Satanic” (Literature)

Anita Spearman, “Conservation and Clean Energy: Solutions for a Warming Planet” (Professional Writing)

Kissie Spencer, “’Whiskey and Water, a good combination’: A look at James Baldwin’s Treatment of Literature and Sociology in Go tell it On the Mountain and ‘Notes of Native Son’” (Literature)