Since 1927, Bates College has offered an Honors Program to promote, develop, and recognize academic work of higher quality than ordinarily required for the baccalaureate degree. The honors thesis is the written component of the yearlong program completed during the senior year under the guidance of a faculty advisor.
Historically, the final copy of the honors thesis has been submitted in paper format and made available for research at the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library. To promote greater access to senior theses by the Bates community and the world beyond Bates, the College introduces SCARAB, the College's institutional repository.
Paper copies of honors theses from 1927 through 2011 can be viewed in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library. To see the library catalog record for paper copies of theses deposited in the Archives, click HERE.
Theses from 2022
Preclinical Drug Development of a Novel Antiviral Target in Rotavirus, Emily-Claire Kathleen Duffy
The Role of Phosphoinositide Metabolism in the Regulation of Neuronal Activity, Abhirami Elayidom
Dancing on the Precipice: How People Reason about Threshold Problems in a Socially-Rich Real World Context, Xavier Fallone
Quantifying Crevassing, Damage, and Deformation on the Vaughan Lewis Icefall, Alaska, Cecilia G. Gichner
The ‘Forever Migrant:’ An Intersectional Analysis of L/A Workplace Discrimination on the Basis of Race, African Accent, and English Language Proficiency, Ronan Rhea Goulden
A Place Beyond all Hope, Thomas A. Hiscock
Flatness, Distortion, Nonsense, and the Ordinary in the Novels of Bolaño, O'Brien, and Bernhard, Elizabeth Claire Kissane
The Shul in the Factory: The Role of Community in Jewish American Women’s Activism in Early Twentieth Century New York City’s Garment Industry, Ashley T. Koman
Emotion in the Neutral Court: Attorney Appeals to Emotion in Jury Trial Argumentation, Elise Marie Lambert
Shanshui Reinterpreted: The Contemporary Art of Xu Bing, Yao Lu, and Yang Yongliang, Anna Landgren
Evaluating the Role of Race in Foreign Policymaking: U.S. Public Diplomacy in Latin America during Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, Sophie Mackin
Spatial Elevation Dynamics and Carbon Sequestration Variability Within Sprague Marsh, Phippsburg, Maine, Margaret R. O'Brien
Magnetic Trapping of Rubidium en Route to Bose-Einstein Condensate Formation Using an Atom Chip Based Trap, Stevens L. Shea
Humans vs. COVID-19: Data-driven Modeling of Disease Spread on College Campuses, Ognyan Simeonov
A History of Contested and Constructed Boundaries: Tracing the Torture Discourse from Northern Ireland's 'State of Exception' in the 1970s to the Global 'War on Terror', Bridget McBride Thompson
A comparison of carbon sequestration and vegetation history in two Maine salt marshes, Emily Lillian Torkelsen
Hitting Refresh: Regulating internet speech in the 21st century, Jack Charles Valentino
The Political Theory of Digital Sex Work, Christina Wang
AI in Proteomics: A Comparison Between Crystallographic and in silico Methods of Protein Modeling, Alex D. Weissman
“Dear You”: Witnessing Trauma in the World of The Handmaid’s Tale, Caroline Wood
Populist Through and Through: Consistency, Variations, and Framing Anchors of Populist Parties’ Environmental Agendas, Hermione Zhou
Theses from 2021
The Influence of Racial Bias on Jury Selection and Potential Consequences for Justice, Kate S. Abramowitz
Pestilence and Penitence: The Cyprianic Plague and the Rise of Christianity, Alan C. Bisesi
Queerness for Kids: A Content Analysis of LGBTQ Narrative Picture Books, Emma W. Bouchey
Boys to Braves: Performing an Idealized Colonial State at Ontario Canoe-Tripping Camps, Helen Moran Bruckner
Unvanquished: the Kumeyaay and the 1775 Revolt, Catherine Joan Buse
Tet2 Knockout May Lead to Selective Memory Enhancement, Mallory M. Caron
“You don’t see yourself:” On the relationship between women’s body appreciation, self-objectification, and sexual agency, Shelby Elizabeth Cronkhite
“What We Do Minister to Our Gross Selves”: Afflicted Bodies, Illicit Sex, and the Agency of Disease in Romeo & Juliet and Measure for Measure, Deon J. Custard
Bedrock Geology, Geochronology, and Tectonic History of the Bronson Hill Anticlinorium in Northern New Hampshire, Liza Anne Folsom
Stories from the Flood: Narratives of Celilo Falls, 1805-2021, Maximilian LeGrand Friedenwald-Fishman
Geometry of Brittle and Ductile Bedrock Structures Influencing Groundwater Hydrology Adjacent to the Chlor-alkali Superfund Site, Berlin, NH, Peter B. Galloway
“Resolute Support:” Contextualizing Afro-Asian Imagery of the Cultural Revolution through the Lens of Maoist Theory, Owen Greenwood
Choosing the Fall to Rise Up: Gender Consumption and Eve’s Culinary World, Sarah Catherine Herde
Convection in Rotating Spherical Fluid Shell, Xiaole Jiang
"Without Lawful Authority": Reassessing Nullification and its Contributions to Political and Constitutional Development in Antebellum America, Benjamin Keener
Moral Duties Amid Legal Bias, Benjamin Klafter
Fluid Stirring on a Sphere -- a Topological Approach, Kirstin E. Koepnick
Minimal Requirements for Topologically Protected Edge Modes, Kirstin E. Koepnick
Widespread Social Isolation During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Child and Parent Perspectives, Nicki S. Lane
Medium-bound Horror in the Manga of Itō Junji, Michael A. Lombardi
Beguiling time, making air, and taking milk for gall: queerness in Macbeth, Erin Lyons
Laying the Groundwork: Desert Spaces and the Sacralization of U.S. Settler Colonialism, Anna-Elena Maheu
Exploring “Cultural Sensitivity” Among Frontline Workers Addressing Violence Against Women in Lewiston, Maine, Hannah Marian McKenzie
"I Became Unstoppable:" A Community-Based Quantitative and Qualitative Examination of a Mentoring Program's Effect on Youth in the Foster Care System, Emma Morehouse-Hulbert
The Design Experience: Accessing Design in a Liberal Arts Education, Julia Ann Nash
“The Real Target”: Medical Racism and AIDS Genocide Conspiracy Theory, Madeline Grace Polkinghorn
Reconstructing the Female Experience in Classical Attica Through A Close Analysis of The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Nicholas P. Quill
Why We Need Translingualism: An Antiracist Approach in the Writing Center, Sarah Townsend Raphael
On Brass and Snow: An Athlete's History of the Sport of Biathlon, Brad William Ravenelle
New School(s), Same Problem: An Analysis of Black Students’ Experiences in Urban Charter Schools, Joshua Redd
Sounds of Scotland, Ian W. Robertson
Sounds of Scotland, Ian W. Robertson
Authorship Identification of Li Qingzhao’s Anthology: A Computational Approach, Richard Tyler Simmons
"La Migración Cambió Mi Visión (Migration Changed My Vision)": How and Why Oaxacan Return Migrants Run for Mayor of Their Hometowns, Daniel Lawrence Tepler
Theses from 2020
Endangering Danger: An Anthropological Exploration of the Relationship between Snakes and People in Sāmoa., Ariel Abonizio
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Auburn Public School District, Samantha Alexander
Exploring Structure in Origami Constructions, Deveena R. Banerjee
Applying the Generalized Quasilinear Approximation to Taylor-Couette Flow, Morgan Baxter
Conceptualizing the Variables That Shape the International Student Experience in Higher Education, Francesca Biondi Morra
Representations of Black Queer Masculinity in Contemporary Popular Music: A Close Analysis of Tyler, The Creator and Frank Ocean, Josephine Blanchon
A Taste of Life, Christian A. Bradna Diaz
The Role Of ABC Transporters ABCC4 and ABCE1 in Establishing Ephydatia muelleri/Chlorella Symbioses, Lillian Chang
2D and 3D Magneto-Optical Trapping of ⁸⁷Rb in an Atom Chip Bose-Einstein Condensation Apparatus, Michał Ćwik
Armed Struggle, Global Stage: Irish-American Politics & The Troubles in the 1980s, James Claiborne Fagan
"The Divergent Paths of Jihad: Comparing Violence Against Civilians Perpetrated by IS and JN in the Syrian Civil War", Abigail Katherine Frost
“Your Favorite Rapper’s a Christian Rapper”: Chance the Rapper’s Creation of a New Community of Christian Hip Hop Through His Use of Religious Discourse on the 2016 Mixtape Coloring Book, Samuel Patrick Glenn
The Attitudes We Live By: The Impact of Symbols of Authority and the Questionable Nature of their Rejection, William Moses Green
The Origins and Dynamics of Phosphorus in Maine’s Lake Auburn Watershed, Lars Gundersen
The Development of Meaning and Purpose in Life Among Adolescents in Germany and Maine, Janika Ho
Late Glacial to Holocene Sea Level History of Kapp Linné, Svalbard, Norwegian High Arctic, Hannah Brierly Johnson
"One" and "I": Dimensions of Ritual Unity and Individuality in the Liturgical Practice of the Catholic Nicene Creed, Jack M. McLarnon
Synthesis and Structural Analysis of Mn and Ni-Based Materials for Cathode Applications, Robyn Moss
Decolonization, Resurgence, and Climate Adaptation: Confronting Settler Colonialism in the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe’s Climate-Induced Resettlement, Margaret O'Shea
Understanding the Alerting-Congruency Interaction in the Attention Network Test (ANT), Lily Ashare Patterson
Shrouded Voices: The Social Networks of Afro-Mexican Women in Seventeenth Century Mexico City and Veracruz, Ursula Yoshiko Rall
Tet2 and H2A.Z Negatively Regulate Memory Formation in the Hippocampus, Anas Reda
Assessing Task-dependent Flexibility and the Temporal Dynamics of Object Categorization, Alyssa Magill Rohan
“At the heart of legend”: Feminist Revisionist Mythology in Twentieth-Century Poetry, Madison Rozells
This Land is My Land: racism and antiracism in farmland succession in Auburn, Maine, Jesse Bull Saffeir
The Construction of Exceptionalist Nationalism: A Critique of Danish Imperialist Shame and Ongoing Colonialism in Kalaallit Nunaat, Sofie Lee Sogaard
Cosmopolitan Americanisms: Post-9/11 Transnational Immigrant Narratives, Bence Xavier Szechenyi
Hydroclimate Reconstruction in the Changing High Arctic Maritime Environment, Linnédalen, Svalbard, Emma Lea Wheeler
Silencing, Discrediting, Dismissing: Testimonial Injustice as a Violation of Universal Moral Obligations, Ernestine B. Whitaker
Synthetic Studies of Linderofruticoside A, Mitchell A. Willsey
Theses from 2019
Living on the Edge: India in the Greek Mind before Alexander the Great, Zofia Ahmad
The Road to Riches: Quantifying the Persistent Effects of the Silk Roads Network, Zofia Ahmad
The Ethos of Agency: Exploring Questions of Communication and Categorization in Greece’s Refugee Crisis, Caroline R. Barnes
Spirit Possession, Mediation, and Ambiguity in the Ancient Greek Worship of Dionysos, Isabella Barrengos
The Matrilineal Specter in Kingston's Woman Warrior and Keller's Comfort Woman, Theodore V. Burns
Assessing the Relevant Barriers to Climate Justice in Bolivia: An Analysis of Bolivian Climate Politics, Josh Caldwell
La búsqueda de una nueva identidad española en las películas de Pedro Almodóvar de los 80, Andrew Chen
Heat and Light in the City of the Future: A Feasibility Study of Renewable Energy in Lewiston, Maine, Haley Crim
Sentimental Arcs From Grief to Mourning in An Unnecessary Woman and Koolaids: The Art of War by Rabih Alameddine, Carl D. Deakins Mx
Irish Identity, American Identity, and the Irish American Anti-Partition Movement, Margaret Mary Dever
Development of novel tissue-type plasminogen activator-binding RNA aptamer, Nathan Paul Frederick
Stealing Borders: The Yiddish Book Center and Expansions of Postvernacular Yiddishland, Sarah Elsa Freyd
Truth-Telling and Transitional Justice in Chile: Healing for Women Survivors of Trauma Through Testimonial Art Collectives, Olivia Snow Fried