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 2012
"Women's Rugby isn't That Feminine": Challenging Gender Norms Through Participation in Women's Rugby, Kerry Mulhern Gross
Las Trans: Negotiating Gender, Personhood, and Citizenship in Chile, Sydney A. Hare
Defining the Japanese OL Body Through Modern Advice Literature: Text and Images, Kaitlin L. Harrison
Dams over Nukes: Explaining Indian Water Treaties, Romina Istratii
Kaleidoscopic and Non-Monolithic Ethnic Tourism in China: A Case-specific Approach to the Examination of its Impacts on Minority Identities, Romina Istratii
Nerd Up: The Rise of Nerd Media and the Co-Optation of Narrative in Advertising, Ryan Thomas Katon
Commemorating the Holocaust and Communism: The Politics of Hungarian Public Memory, Kelsey LaFreniere
Objective Chances in a Deterministic World, Daniel Lambright
Hitler's Children: Education as Indoctrination under the Third Reich, Claire Lampen
Using Sedimentary and Geochemical Proxies for Little Ice Age Climate Climate Change Reconstructions, South Mainland Shetland, Jennifer A. Lindelof
Multinational States, Multicultural Nations: The Challenge of Liberal Multiculturalism in Nested Nations, Justin Gregory Lipton
Love, Crime, and Township Identity in Fred Khumalo's "Bitches' Brew" and "Seven Steps to Heaven", Erica Rose Long
Low-dose developmental arsenic exposure alters gene expression potentially through epigenetic modifications, Haley Ellen Manchester
“An Exceedingly Dirty and Nasty People”: Exploring the Patriot Forces of 1775, Katharine A. Maxwell
The Categorical Balance of Safeguarding Honor: A Cluster Analysis of Rhetorical Value Hierarchies in the Ninth Circuit’s United States v. Alvarez, Kevin Brown McCandlish
"It's All Happening at the Zoo:" Plural Visions of Landscape, Animals, and Humans in the Early Days of the Bronx Zoo, Rebecca Lauren Merten
Kinematics of the Phippsburg Shear Zone at Hermit Island and the Wood Islands, Small Point, Maine, Peter Kent Miller
The Problem of the Ordinary: Liberating the Fantastic and the Uncanny, Meghan R. Napier
The β-lactam antibiotic ceftriaxone as a treatment for the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia in 6-OHDA-lesioned rats., Caroline B. Neville
Program Music and the Influence of Extra-Musical Narratives on Performance, Karen E. Nicoletti
In Defense of Israel: How Social Context Affects Jewish-Americans’ Moral Reasoning, Michael Pasek
Los “Chicago Boys”: A Powerful Exchange of People and Ideas between Chile and Chicago, Josephine B. Reinhardt
Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell: Authorship, Collaboration, and Divergence, Maria J. Rouvalis
Access to Information in the Developing World: The Role of Mobile Telephony in Economic Development, Michael Bruce Sagan
Revising Sovereignty - A Case Study of Kosovo, East Timor, and South Ossetia, Gina Cristina Sima
The Structure and Stratigraphy of Small Point, Maine: D3 Inverted Transtensional Map-Scale Folds of Neoacadian Provenance, Haley Russell Sive
Counting "Whole Persons" in David Foster Wallace's Fiction, Charles J. Thaxton
The Evolution of Chivalric Values in the Order of the Garter: Edward III to Elizabeth I, Sarah Joy Vigne Ms.
The Unbending Pillars of John Adams's Political Philosophy, Anna Kane Wallman
"The Vindication of Spinsters: Winifred Holtby's Case for Female Satisfaction", Katherine Ann Wiryaman
Theses from 2011
Taking Back Sicily: The Antimafia Movement and its Counter-Hegemonic Attack on Cosa Nostra, Jennifer Anne Diefendorf
Nitrogen Isotopes in Zostera marina: a Potential Indicator of Anthropogenic Nutrient Loading in Casco Bay, Gulf of Maine, Gregory Edward Flynn
Stable Isotopic Shifts in Late Holocene Fish Bones from Multiple Archaeological Coastal Middens in Penobscot Bay, Maine, Carrie Maxene Harris
Paleostress Analysis of Mesozoic Extension in Fractures and Basalt Dikes, Great Gulf, NH, Carter A. Kindley
A Biogeochemical Study of Ditchplug and Natural Pools in Sprague River Marsh, Phippsburg, ME, Ingrid Knowles
The Vogar Fissure Swarm, Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland: Aseismic Kinematics of an Oblique Rift Zone, Keegan Timothy Runnals