Candidates for honors in American Studies will undertake a year-long project during their senior year (a senior thesis). Independent Studies are one-semester projects. Please see the AMST Senior Thesis Q & A for complete, up-to-date information on doing a senior thesis or Independent Study in American Studies.
The following are some of the most recent theses projects in American Studies:
2024: Sunny Hu, span style=”font-weight: 400;”>:吃苦, 诉苦: the (un)passing & dying asian american student
2024: Shenba Vairavan, Sorry I Meant It
2023: Ajay Chatha, “Porous Lands and Bodies: The Scientific, Political, and Subject Formations of Toxicity in Bayview-Hunters Point, San Francisco.” (Advisor: Jan Padios)
2023: Ethan Dincer, “The Transit of Palestine: American Studies, Gendered Power, and the Chronopolitics of Palestinian Material and Visual Culture.” (Advisor: Mark Reinhardt)
2023: Melissa Leon Pons, “Saturated Bodies, Policies, and Media: A Crip Reading of the Opioid Epidemic in Appalachia and South Florida.” (Advisor: Maria Elena Cepeda)
2023: Abby Scott, “Colonialism and Power in A.P. United States History Textbooks: Indigenous Histories and a Colorado Case Study.” (Advisor: Stefan Aune)
2023: Erin Vasquez, “Reimagining Repatriation: A Critique of Settler Colonial Science and Property in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.” (Advisor: Jan Padios, Kevin Murphy)
2022: Emma Tapscott, “Disrupting the Racialized and Gendered Logics of American Poetics: the Poetry of Eunsong Kim and Prageeta Sharma” (Highest Honors; Advisor: Dorothy Wang)
2021: Audrey Koh, “‘Kill the time that is oppression itself’: Hauntings of Korean/American Womanhood” (Highest Honors; Advisor: Dorothy Wang)
2021: Arselyne Cherry, “Countering Narrative Silence: Writing on and about Haitian Refugee Experiences in the United States, 1970s-1980s” (Honors; Advisor: Jan Padios)
2021: Quess Green, “The Beat Was My Salvation: A Creative Exploration of Vogue Fem Via Sound Production & Embodied Performance” (Highest Honors; Advisor: Dorothy Wang))
2020: Suiyi Tang, “A Sense of Ourselves: The Poetics of Racial Dissociation in Babel-17” (Highest Honors; Advisor: Dorothy Wang)
2019: Molly Murphy “The Shape Makes the Black”: How Black Artists and Activists Remake the Spaces of “Homeplace” (Honors, Advisor: Cassandra Cleghorn)
2017, Justice Namaste, “Using Our Strength in the Service of Our Visions: The Role of Media as Activism in Struggles for Black Liberation” (Honors, Advisor: María Elena Cepeda)