2023
Creative
Bromberg, Gabby
Nob Hill
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Galloway, Rosemary
Lividity in Pink
Faculty Advisor: Daniel Snelson
Kim, Ashley Gahyun
Evergreen
Faculty Advisor: Reed Wilson
Lacy, Jade
Danielle
Faculty Advisor: Mona Simpson
Maher, Tyler
Summer’s Dawn
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Wong, Jessica
(Re)Creation
Faculty Advisor: Mona Simpson
Research
Bhasin, Khushi
Sadomasochism in Jane Eyre: A Psychological Exchange of Power
Faculty Advisor: Megan Stephan
Chan, Kelsey
“The Lines of Influence”: The Occult Recontextualization of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Churches in From Hell and Lud Heat
Faculty Advisor: Saree Makdisi
Conley, Kathleen
A War of Roses: An Examination of Tudor Mythography in Shakespeare’s First Tetralogy of History and George R.R. Martin’s, A Song of Ice and Fire Series
Faculty Advisor: Christine Chism
He, Max
The Human Mecha: Titan, Technology, and Self in Attack on Titan
Faculty Advisor: Daniel Snelson
Huwe, Justin
Utopia by a Thousand Cuts: Melodrama and the Queer Art of Self-Harm in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life
Faculty Advisor: Mitchum Huehls
Justad, Miró
The Bildungsroman Transformed Magic, Memories, and the Unpredictable Movements of Growth in Young Adult Speculative Fiction
Faculty Advisor: Summer Kim Lee
Moore, Ella
Histories of Dust and Bone: Mythologizing the Chinese American Past in Contemporary Western Fictions
Faculty Advisors: Blake Allmendinger; Marissa López
Morrissey, Kayleigh
“I’ve Never Heard Silence Quite this Loud”: The Complexity of Taylor Swift’s Neutral Star Text
Faculty Advisor: Kathleen McHugh
Ovsepyan, Ana
Neurodivergent Diagnoses Explained in Abstract Metaphors in Lauren Slater’s Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir
Faculty Advisor: Eleanor Kaufman
Roche, Allyson
“Between Gloom and Laughter”: Female Longing, Unhappiness, and Structures of Absence in the Works of Virginia Woolf
Faculty Advisor: Louise Hornby
Sargent, Justine
The Feminine Episteme: Tracing the Experimental Body in Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, and David Cronenberg
Faculty Advisor: Joseph Bristow
Sukonik, Jolie
Queer Desire as Restoration: The Rejection of Phallic Exchange in Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”
Faculty Advisor: Helen Deutsch
2022
Creative
Brown, Woody
Upward Bound: Collected Stories
Faculty Advisor: Mona Simpson
Frankel, Lily
The Lily Frankel Show and Other Stories
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Guzman, Frances Nicole
Transmutation
Faculty Advisor: Reed Wilson
Kim, Young G.
Fascination: Sixteen
Faculty Advisor: Mona Simpson
McNeely, Tara
All Things in Situ
Faculty Advisor: Reed Wilson
Shin, Jane
Portals
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Zheng, Alice
All Rivers Run East to the Sea
Faculty Advisor: Brian Kim Stefans
Research
Dodd, Payton
Doomed Voyage: America’s Evolving Relationship with Moby-Dick
Faculty Advisor: Blake Allmendinger
Haslam, Jeffrey
A Social Disruption: The Decentering of the Individual in Contemporary Dystopian Fiction and its Challenges to Humanism, Posthumanism, and Neoliberal Individualism
Faculty Advisor: Michael North
Joseph, Rwiet
Blood as Reference to Fear in Dracula
Faculty Advisor: Megan Stephan
Leung, Ashley
Liberate the Asian American Writer: Embracing the Flaws of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
Faculty Advisor: Jinqi Ling
Montecillo, Janice
Baddies & Bodies: Remembering and Dismembering IMVU
Faculty Advisor: Daniel Snelson
Robles, Lillian
“The Spasmodic, the Obscure, the Fragmentary, the Failure”: The Negative Formation of Character in A Room of One’s Own and Orlando
Faculty Advisor: Louise Hornby
Sakuma, Evan
Performing Asian Americans for the End of the World: Reimagining the Inscrutable as Resistance in Asian/American Theatre
Faculty Advisor: Summer Kim Lee
Sidiqi, Mursal
Experienting on Oriental Women: Tracing Oriental Women’s Representations in Western Discussion of Bodily Autonomy and Desire in the Eighteenth and Nineteeth Centuries
Faculty Advisor: Saree Makdisi
Soetirto, Rania
Historical Retrospection and Ambivalence in A Tale of Two Cities
Faculty Advisor: Jonathan Grossman
Williams, Ellen
Sins of the Father: Race and Genealogy in the Medieval Imagination
Faculty Advisor: Matthew Fisher
2021
Creative
Borrayo, Saori
Before the Doors Close
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Carli, Michael
Burnt Up
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Keenan, Emma
Mag Hag
Faculty Advisor: Daniel Snelson
Maida, Vivien
Cup of Maté
Faculty Advisor: Mona Simpson
Mottern, Lillian
Sky (Hyper-Chlorinated)
Faculty Advisor: Blake Allmendinger
Tower, Jason
Golden Gate
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Research
Dolan, Stephen
Horror as Mode: Reading Matthew Lewis’ The Monk and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist as Critiques of Religion and Sexuality
Faculty Advisor: Helen Deutsch
Dowdle, Oliva
“The Feeling of Time”: An Ontological Approach to Trauma and Memory
Faculty Advisor: Mitchum Huehls
Madjidi, Yasmin
What are Words Worth?: Environmentalism in the Poetry of William Wordsworth and Joy Harjo
Faculty Advisor: Helen Deutsch
Nezu, Megumi
Redefining Gender and Traditional Gender Dynamics in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women
Faculty Advisor: Megan Stephan
Onarecker, Erin
What is so Ordinary about Literary Studies?
Faculty Advisor: Louise Hornby
Prishkulnik, Jy
Animating the Disney Princess: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), and the Evolving Princess Code
Faculty Advisor: Joseph Bristow
Reyes, Francisco
“Please Don’t Stop Being My Mother!”: Attachment Theory and Identity Formation in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion
Faculty Advisor: Brian Kim Stefans
Rosenberg, Hanna
“Contagions of Feeling”: Affect, Structural Violence, and Fallenness in Ruth, Adam Bede, and East Lynne
Faculty Advisor: Megan Stephan
To, Kalysa
Model Minority? Representations of Trauma in The Joy Luck Club and Shanghai Girls
Faculty Advisor: Jinqi Li
2020
Creative
Austin, Peyton
Fall, Spring
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Dumas, Damon
Plots of Dirt
Faculty Advisor: Fred D’Aguiar
Forster, Rose
The Tongue of Those Who are Taught
Faculty Advisor: Reed Wilson
Gomez, Emiliano
an Elegy for middle american
Faculty Advisor: Brian Kim Stefans
Harris, Rome
Songs of Enlightenment: In Collaboration with Light
Faculty Advisor: Reed Wilson
Kukoff, Alexandra
Courtship
Faculty Advisor: Reed Wilson
Sabala, Cole K.
White Bread Hedonists
Faculty Advisor: Reed Wilson
Tan, Corine
Have You Eaten Yet? Stories
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Wilson, Rhiannon
Computer Room
Faculty Advisor: Danny Snelson
Research
Cepollina, Jacob
Disabling Charlotte Smith: A Marxist, Crip Theory Analysis of Class, Gender, Labor, and Disability in Romantic Poetry
Faculty Advisor: Anahid Nersessian
Choudary, Nida
Troublesome Minorities: Questioning Assimilation in The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Home Fire
Faculty Advisor: Rafael Perez-Torres
Duncan, Kierra
Mother, May I Please Have Some More: Melancholy, Maternity, and the State
Faculty Advisor: Yogita Goyal
Franco, Rafael
Unhappy Women and Creatures: Happiness and Its Patriarchal and Racial Exclusivity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Faculty Advisor: Michael Cohen
Hundley, Noah
Sermo Ursae ad Anglos
Faculty Advisor: Erica Weaver
Isayan, Talia
Breaking Byron’s Battlefield: Revelation, Representation, and Caesura in Don Juan
Faculty Advisor: Anahid Nersessian
Mikhaelpour, Talin
Kingly Infirmity and the Remedy: The Importance of Counsel in Thwarting Divinely Ordained Incompetence
Faculty Advisor: Debora Shuger
Monaghan, Susan
Oscillating Encounters with Meaning in Beowulf
Faculty Advisor: Erica Weaver
Nalbandian, Nicole K.
Unveiling Scheherazade: Superimposed Fantasies and Eighteenth-Century Reimaginings of The Arabian Nights
Faculty Advisor: Sarah Kareem
Peraic, Sebastian N.
Milton and Empire: Satanic and Edenic Colonization in Paradise Lost
Faculty Advisor: Debora Shuger
Reyes, Annabelle
External Show is not Sterling Worth; or, The Decoupling of Outer and Inner States in Jane Eyre
Faculty Advisor: Megan Stephan
Rodriguez, Angie
Invisible Labor in the Medieval World
Faculty Advisor: Matthew Fisher
2019
Creative
Alarcon, Pauline
About Face
Faculty Advisor: Brian Kim Stefans
Bhargava, Ananya
Bhaav Mat Kha
Faculty Advisor: Daniel Snelson
Castillo, Karen
Hereditary
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torrres
Chen, Madelyn
ABC (American. Born. Chinese)
Faculty Advisor: Fred D’Aguiar
Elliot, Jodi Scott
The Stray
Faculty Advisor: Reed Wilson
Fram, Eric
And Death Will Know Our Name
Faculty Advisor: Fred D’Aguiar
Garcia, Sarah
Gayme On! A Queer Game Thesis
Faculty Advisor: Daniel Snelson
Harper, Taylor Leigh
Kingfisher
Faculty Advisor: Daniel Snelson
Jean-Louis, Evelyn
Native Flowers
Faculty Advisor: Fred D’Aguiar
McNally, Eve
We First Came to Poetry
Faculty Advisor: Daniel Snelson
Nguyen, Christine Linh
Tidal
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Park, Jiesung Diana
Body of Art
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Tamura, Kalena
Hush
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Trabosh, Amara
Worlds Adrift
Faculty Advisor: Reed Wilson
Research
Arechiga, Brian
Mythic Pizza: Semiotic and Archetypal Significance in the Conspirary Narrative Known as ‘Pizzagate’
Faculty Advisor: Brian Kim, Stefans
Cook, Madeline
“No One Can See Behind Your Face”: The Female Fashion Model as a Posthuman Prototype in Jennifer Egan’s Look At Me
Faculty Advisor: Megan Stephan
Denny, Rachel
Painful Contradictions: Investigating the Intersections of Intraracial Violence in Black Feminist Fiction
Faculty Advisor: Richard Yarborough
Diaz, Jessikah
Embodied Disease: Femininity, Domination, and De Sade
Faculty Advisor: Anahid Nersessian
Dorst, Lauren
Alcott’s Conduct Manual: Educating Female Subjectivities
Faculty Advisor: Megan Stephan
Fieldman, Claire
“The Great Soup of Being”: Autotheory & Intersectionality in Cherríe Moraga’s Loving in the War Years and Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts
Faculty Advisor: Marissa Lopez
Ghosh, Kuhelika
Posthuman Time Beings
Faculty Advisor: Mitchum Huehls
Hernandez, Astrid
Narrative Strategies and Syles in Animal’s People and the Bhopal Reader: The Search for Environmental Justice through Distant Suffering in Bhopal
Faculty Advisor: Ursula Heise
Quintana, Jhemari
Chicana Punk Memoirs and Performances of Sublime Abjection: A Means to Reject Neoliberal Multiculturalism
Faculty Advisor: Marissa Lopez
Severson, Erin
“Be Not Solitary, Be Not Idle”: Tobias Smollett’s Expedition of Humphry Clinker in the Context of Early Modern Cure
Faculty Advisor: Helen Deutsch
Shaw, Carly
The Great Divide: The Moral Dimension of Socio-economic Structure in The Great Gatsby
Faculty Advisor: Joe Dimuro
Stepanian, Sevana
Victims, Perpetrators, and Implicated Subjects: The Effects of Trauma in Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer and Toni Morrison’s Beloved
Faculty Advisor: Michael Rothberg
Wilson, Scarlett
Violent Rapture in the Age of Comfort: Mapping Chardinian Convergence in O’Connor’s South
Faculty Advisor: Lowell Gallagher
Wolters, Colin
Strong Passions and “Bad Thinking”: Honor, Physiology, and Order in Much Ado About Nothing
Faculty Advisor: Claire McEachern
Digital Humanities
Busco, Chris
How We Communicate: The Value of Literary Frameworks for Understanding Non-Literary Objects
Faculty Advisor: Daniel Snelson
Yen, Leia
Lost in Migration: Digitalizing Diaspora and Decolonizing Syrian Refugee Narratives
Faculty Advisor: Daniel Snelson
2018
Creative
Bribach, Winston
Take Up the Cross
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Fard, Anousheh
Asphalt’s Fever Dream Houses
Faculty Advisor: Karen Kevorkian
Karlsson, Dylan
Deluge
Faculty Advisor: Fred D’Aguiar
Kunze, Nick
Fraternal Expectations
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Long, Alyssa
Miracles and Mistakes: A Collection of Short Stories
Faculty Advisor: Mona Simpson
Lovett, Johnathan
A Citizen of Late Hours
Faculty Advisor: Brian Kim Stefans
Parsons, Emily
Figuring Fatherhood
Faculty Advisor: Mona Simpson
Shin, Eunice
Winter
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Research
Bozoukov, Samuel
Opening the Doors of Perception in Paradise Lost: Seeing and Hearing as Imperfectly Gendered, or as Tools for Divine Revelation
Faculty Advisor: Sarah Kareem
Bradley, Danielle
American Dream Versus American Reality: Carlos Bulosan’s Long Flight and Kerouac’s Road Trip
Faculty Advisor: Stephen Dickey
Carroll, Sean Ryan
Abolishing Reality: Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, Philosophy and the Boundaries of Fiction
Faculty Advisor: Louise Hornby
Cohen, Ronnie Rachel
The Assignment of Gender to Artifically Intelligent Characters in Video Games
Faculty Advisor: Ursula Heise
Coronado, Priscila
Liminality in John Rechy’s City of Night
Faculty Advisor: Rafael Perez-Torres
Davis, Madison
A New Heroism: The Intersection of Collective Sacrifice and Feminism in the Harry Potter Series
Faculty Advisor: Christine Chism
Finley, Aurora
Female Power and the Supernatural in Early Gothic Literature
Faculty Advisor: Sarah Kareem
Giron, Tatianna
Privilege and Prejudice: White Male Protagonists in Crisis in 1960s American Novels
Faculty Advisor: Christopher Mott
Govan, Jekara Noelle
We Are Witches: Octavia E. Butler, Princess Nokia, and the Afro-Fem_Future
Faculty Advisor: Marissa Lopez
Hambro, Sarah
Romantic Illusions: Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Charlotte Smith, and the Politics of Landscape Poetry
Faculty Advisor: Anahid Nersessian
Henthorn, Andrea Helena
The Art of Mobility: Analyzing Female Travelers’ Asymmetrical Agency in Edith Wharton’s Short Fiction
Faculty Advisor: Christopher Mott
Herbert, Lauren
The Legacy of Ophelia: Manic Pixie Dream Girls and the Problem of Female (Mis)representation
Faculty Advisor: Louise Hornby
Hodgers, Meghan
Commentaries on Society’s Treatment of the Mad in Works of Shakespeare and Hogarth
Faculty Advisor: Helen Deutsch
Kellogg, Anastacia
Utopia Over the Rainbow: L. Frank Baum’s Oz Books and Queer Feminist Exploration
Faculty Advisor: Karen Rowe
Lamen, Sarah
“A Queen of the Desert”: Lady Hester Stanhope’s Performance of Power Through Transvetic Ethnomasquerade
Faculty Advisor: Saree Makdisi
Lopez, Isair Elizame
Negotiating Posthuman Subjectivities: Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood and Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl
Faculty Advisor: Christine Chism
McLiam, Maeve
Shame in Medieval Outlas Tales
Faculty Advisor: Matthew Fisher
Montgomery, Simone
A Text Without a Title in the Service of Justice: The Poetics of Survival in Cross-Racial Conversation
Faculty Advisor: Karen Rowe
Nguyen, Sandra
Writing Screams and Sympathy in The Sympathizer: The Sociopolitical Potential of Contemporary Metafiction
Faculty Advisor: King-Kok Cheung
Reynaga, Randy
On Why This Text Does Not Need a Title Because Whoever Made the Word Title Never Knew What a Title Was, Those Who Knew What a Title Was Didn’t Need Words for It; or, Empathy and the Function of Language in Faulkner
Faculty Advisor: Joe Dimuro
2017
Creative
Cavender, John
19th Avenue
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Green, Natalie
Lost Angeles
Faculty Advisor: Fred D’Aguiar
Vidal, Jessica
The Migratory Patterns of Marisol
Faculty Advisor: Mona Simpson
Williamson, Amanda
Canticles of Consent: Four Variations of Aarne-Thompson-Uther 425C
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Wilson, Camille
The Team
Faculty Advisor: Justin Torres
Research
Amouzadeh, Nahal
Beyond Binaries: Exploring Diaspora and the Native Informant in Iranian-American Memoirs
Faculty Advisor: Ali Behdad
Juarez, Miriam
Affective Bodies: Remapping Language and the Chicana Subject in the Work of Myriam Gurba
Faculty Advisor: Marissa Lopez
Keen, Nina
Redressing God in the Poetry of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath
Faculty Advisor: Christopher Mott
Lee, Rachael
Does Language Matter? The Ontological Turn in Contemporary American Fiction
Faculty Advisor: Mitchum Huehls
Lonsinger, Megan
Farm to Table to Confessional: Literary Gastronomy in Late Medieval England
Faculty Advisor: Matthew Fisher
Martinez, Jocelyn
Queer Resistance in Latin America: Deconstructing Postcolonial Social Norms through Queer Bodies and Erotic Desires in Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama Tambien and Maurice Escheverria’s Labios
Faculty Advisor: Marissa Lopez
Murray, Emily
The Politicization of “Dead Silence”: Jane Austen and the Female Influence on Issues of Imperialism
Faculty Advisor: Sarah Kareem
Paek, Jasmine
Reimagining Immigrant Histories: Gender and Generational Conflicts in the Novels of Fae Myenne Ng and Maxine Hong Kingston
Faculty Advisor: Jinqu Ling
Panosian, Angelica
The Sounds of Violence in William Blake’s Literature
Faculty Advisor: Juan Sanchez
Pavell, Evan
The Ludonarrative: Defining the Structural Inseparability of Gameplay and Story in Video Games
Faculty Advisor: Brian Kim Stefans
Roche, Karina Anastasia
John Keats and the Poet as Spiritual Guide for the Modern Age
Faculty Advisor: Michael Cohen
Saedi, Navid
Optics in the Works of Joseph Conrad
Faculty Advisor: Jonathan Grossman
Samai, Jendi
“First-Gen” African: Examining Twenty First-Century Autobiographical Experiences of Sierra Leonean American Women in the United States
Faculty Advisor: Richard Yarborough
Seggman, Samuel
Setting the Land in Order: Descriptive and Prescriptive Allusions in The Waste Land
Faculty Advisor: Michael North
Sousa, Lauren
Joan Didion’s “The White Album” as a Search for a Truth
Faculty Advisor: Jeffrey Decker
Tamposi, William
Emersonianism Epitomized: Henry David Thoreau as the Quintessential “American Scholar”
Faculty Advisor: Christopher Looby
Tran, Ann
Seinfeld: A Show about Something
Faculty Advisor: Caroline Streeter
Wu, Elissa
Empowering Debasement: Freeing Agency from Neoliberal and Postfeminist Binds in 50 Shades of Grey
Faculty Advisor: Blake Allmendinger
2016
Creative
Burrows, Vera
The Scholarship
Faculty Advisor: Mona Simpson
Cronin, Natasha Larisa
The Dranko Chronicles: In the Land of Dragons
Faculty Advisor: Christine Chism
Lawson, Tina
Madre Natura: Poems, Prose, and Art
Faculty Advisor: Anahid Nersessian
Livier Nunez, Ruth
Maricruz
Faculty Advisor: Mona Simpson
Kapralau Romanchuk, Maryna
The Drake
Faculty Advisor: Sarah Kareem
Noh, Daniel
Samulnori
Faculty Advisor: Fred D’Aguiar
Schindler, JoAnna
Sundays in Santa Monica
Faculty Advisor: Mona Simpson
Research
Abolail, Sarah
Out of Time Men: Capitalism, Violence and the Aesthetics of Temporality in Breaking Bad
Faculty Advisor: Mitchum Huehls
Caguioa, Abner
The Norman Trinity: A Study on the Development of the Norman Bates Character from Psycho
Faculty Advisor: Blake Allmendinger
Cox, Michael
Shaping Biopolitics from Richard III to House of Cards
Faculty Advisor: Arthur Little
Gallardo, Gloria
Contemporary Chicano Novels and the Politics of Place: Re-Forming Spaces of Resistance and Representation
Faculty Advisor: Marissa Lopez
Ghoogasian, Aram
My Heart’s in the Highlands: William Saroyan and the Diasporic Condition
Faculty Advisor: Michael North
Giron, Mario
Riding Reality: The Attempts to Rewrite Trauma and Nation to Form New Histories and Identity in Salvadoran Diasporic Novels
Faculty Advisor: Rafael Perez-Torres
Hays, Toni
Within Genre: On the Post-Genre Mode in China Miéville’s Railsea and Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting
Faculty Advisor: Christine Chism
Highfill, Holly
Engineering Optopia in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy
Faculty Advisor: Ursula Heise
Jafari, Syeda
The Language of Love: A Comparative Analysis of the Dialectics of the Divine of Jalal Al-Din Rumi and Julian of Norwich
Faculty Advisor: Christine Chism
Kang, Catherine
The Unquiet Unclean Undead: Drowned Women in Legend and Folklore
Faculty Advisor: Joseph Nagy
Morgan, McKenna
Oh Say Can You Scream: Nachträglichkeit and Performativity in American Horror Story: Asylum
Faculty Advisor: Blake Allmendinger
Seifert, Celeste
William Blake and Creating a Narrative Against Social Injustice within Selected Poems from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Compared with his Contemporaries Charles Lamb and Mary Robinson
Faculty Advisor: Saree Makdisi
Silverman, Evan
William Blake and the Beat Generation
Faculty Advisor: Stephen Dickey
Tan, Wayne
Sue Bridehead and Female Subjectivity: A Rousseau-ian Perspective
Faculty Advisor: Sarah Kareem
Wheatley, Jordan
“Who Can I Become?”: The Significance of Sex, Sexuality, and the Generational Shift in the Works of Sam Selvon, Buchi Emecheta, and Hanif Kureishi
Faculty Advisor: Yogita Goyal