Modern Languages

In its Honors Program, the Modern Language Department awards Honors, High Honors, or Highest Honors to student research projects. The projects listed below have been defended successfully, and a copy of the thesis deposited in Swem Library.

Key:

Student, "Thesis" (Honors level)
Committee Chair + Other Committee Members

Modern Languages include: Arabic Studies, Chinese Studies, French & Francophone Studies, Hispanic Studies, Italian Studies, Japanese Studies, and Russian Language & Literature

2023-2024

Pendaar Pooyan, "Paraíso perdido: narrativas de exilio venezolano" (High Honors)
Rebeca Pineda Burgos + Francie Cate, Fernando Galeano Rodríquez, Sowmya Ramanathan, Carlos Rivera Santana

2019-2020

Manasi Deorah, "Schieß, Bruder: Turkish-German Rap and Threatening Masculinity" (High Honors)
Jennifer Gully + Anne Rasmussen, Veronika Burney
Julianna Luecke, "Joan of Archetype: Gendered Images of Joan’s Heroism in French Cinema" (Highest Honors)
Michael Leruth + Magali Compan, Jessica Johnson
Kristen Popham, "The Artist as Archaeologist of the Colonial Archive: Towards a New Political Imaginary" (Highest Honors)
Magali Compan-Barnard + Michael Leruth, Simon Stow
Theodore Wansink, "Modernity Leave: The Sexual Mother of the French New Wave & Beyond" (Highest Honors)
Brett Brehm + Vanessa Brutsche, Liz Losh

2018-19

Sarah Lettau, "« Je suis harki » : les sphères de la mémoire harkie"
Michael Leruth + Deborah Lee-Ferrand, Jonathan Glasser

2017-18

Travis Haycraft, "The Guns of al-Fao: Saddam, the War, and the Weapons That Made it Possible" (Highest Honors)
Stephen Sheehi + Oludamini Ogunnaike, Andrea Wright
Jesse Tanson, "'Keeping It Real': Re-diversification of French hip-hop through Islam, Gender, and Globalization" (Highest Honors)
Michael Leruth + Nathan Rabalais, Anne Rasmussen
Alexandra Wingate, "'A Qué Manera de Libros y Letras es Iinclinado': Las Bibliotecas Privadas de Navarra en Los Siglos XVI y XVII" (Highest Honors)
Jorge Terukina + Noel Blanco-Mourelle, Francie Cate-Arries, Lu Ann Homza

2016-17

Zarine Kharazian, "Yet Another French Exception: The Legal, Cultural, and Political Dimensions of France’s Support for the Digital Right to Be Forgotten" (Highest Honors)
Maryse Fauvel + Michael Leruth, Jaime Settle
Paul Naanou, ""Qui me rendra présent?": Francophone Representations of Lebanese Civil War Memory" (Highest Honors)
Magali Compan + Nathan Rabalais, Sibel Zandi-Sayek
Shihao Du, "Erschaffung interkultureller Identität durch Sprachkontakte in den Texten von Yoko Tawada" (High Honors)
Veronika Jeltsch + Bruce Campbell, Ronald Schechter
Gabrielle Hibbert, "Alternative Notions of Dissent: Punk Rock’s Significance in the Soviet Union and East Germany" (High Honors)
Bruce Campbell + Sasha Prokhorov, Paula Pickering, Jennifer Taylor
Catherine Freund, "Pragmatic Creative Interventions in Latin America" (High Honors)
Francie Cate-Arries + Teresa Longo, Christina Baker, Berhanu Abegaz
Morgan Sehdev, "En Busca de la Alfabetización. Three 20th Century Literacy Movements in Spanish Speaking Countries: Impacts and Implications" (Highest Honors)
Jonathan Arries + David Aday, Francie Cate-Arries, Monica Griffin

2015-16

Kristin Ritchey, "Lieux de Memoire, Lieux d'Amnesie: la Tension Identitaire en Guadeloupe" (Highest Honors)
Magali Compan + Maryse Fauvel, Lynn Weiss
Chantal Houghlan, "Salvador Dalí, Surrealism, and the Luxury Fashion Industry" (Honors)
Francie Cate-Arries + Richard Stamelman, Ann Marie Stock

2014-15

Elisabeth Bloxam, "Of Myth and Memory: Collective Memory in the French World War II Museum" (Highest Honors)
Michael Leruth + Loic Bourdeau and Ron Schechter
William Brent, "Cooperative Comrades: Contract Marriages and the Chinese LGBT Movement" (Honors)
Calvin Hui + Jennifer Lee and Sophia Hart
Ethan Pearlstein, "Antonio Vallejo Nágera and the Discourse of Eugenics in Francoist Spain" (Highest Honors)
Francie Cate-Arries + Jonathan Arries and David Aday

2013-14

Crosby Enright, "¿Quién amuralla una voz?: Poetry, Resistance, and Memory within Franco's Prisons" (Highest Honors)
Francie Cate-Arries + George Greenia, Lu Ann Homza, Robert Sanchez
Emily Eyestone, "Blurred Lines, Exploring Poetic and Musical Subjectivity in Verlaine and Debussy's Romances sans paroles " (Highest Honors)
Robert St. Clair + Sergio Ferrarese, Brian Hulse, Charles Palermo
Rachel Faith, "One State, One People, One Language: A Comparison of Chinese and Soviet Language Policy in the 20th Century" (Honors) Alexander Prokhorov + Frederick Corney, Elena Prokhorova
Maria Santini, "The Allure and Scandal of Otherness in the Operas of Georges Bizet and their Source Texts" (Highest Honors)
Robert St. Clair + Magali Compan, James Armstrong
Emily Eyestone, " Blurred Lines: Exploring Poetic and Musical Subjectivity in Verlaine and Debussy's Romances sans paroles" (Highest Honors) Robert St. Clair + Sergio Ferrarese, Brian Hulse, Charles Palermo
Maria Santini, "The Allure and Scandal of Otherness in the Operas of Georges Bizet and their Source Texts" (Highest Honors) Robert St. Clair + Magali Compan, James I. Armstrong
Crosby Enright, "¿Quién amuralla una voz?: Poetry, Resistance, and Memory within Franco’s Prisons" (Highest Honors)
Francie Cate-Arries + Geroge Greenia, Lu Ann Homza, Robert Sanchez

2012-13

Daniel Hodges, "The French in Congo/Zaire: A History of Convoitise" (High Honors)
Michael Leruth + Nicolas Medevielle, John Froitzheim
Thomas Bettge, "Über das Verhältnis von Apollo and Dionysos und seinen Belang für den Wahrheitsbegriff bei Nietzsche: zu einer Anerkennung der größeren Bedeutsamkeit von Die Geburt der Tragödie" (Highest Honors)
Robert Leventhal + Jennifer Taylor, Timothy Costelloe, Michael Green
Judson Peverall, "The Political Unconscious of Hannah Arendt: An Encounter with Psychoanalysis" (Highest Honors)
Robert Leventhal + Bruce Campbell, Tuska Benes
Katherine Brown, "Imaginando el derecho "natural" en el imperio espanol: Apropiaciones del discurso cientifico y la posesion de los Andes en la historiografia colonial" (Highest Honors)
Francie Cate-Arries + Jorge Terukina, Lu Ann Homza, Robert Sanchez

2011-12

Stephen Hurley, "Shame of a Nation: The Evolution of Hanjian since the Late Qing" (High Honors)
Yanfang Tang + Craig Canning, Eric Han
Austin Strange, "The Non-Combat Operations of China's Armed Forces in the 21^st Century: Historical Development, Current Drivers and Implications for Military Projection" (High Honors)
Yanfang Tang + Tun-Jen Cheng, Emily Wilcox
Bridget Carr, "Franco-Senegalese Relations through the Lens of Development Aid (1895-2012)" (Highest Honors)
Nicolas Médevielle + Michael Leruth, Dennis Smith
Stephanie Kumah, "Le Front Oublie: Une Analyse de la Representation de la Guerre Par L'Auteur Francophone" (High Honors)
Magali Compan + Jonathan Glasser, Robert St. Clair
Eleonora Figliuoli, "Representaciones de la opresión social y la degradación medioambiental en la poética de Pablo Neruda y César Vallejo que trata la Guerra Civil Española (1936-1939)" (High Honors)
Regina Root + Carla Buck, Maria Costa, Jorge Terukina

2010-11

Eve Grice, "La Cité Nationale de l'Histoire de l'Immigration : une crise des valeurs républicaines?" (Highest Honors)
Maryse Fauvel + Nicolas Médevielle, Suzanne Raitt
Philippe Halbert, "'Heretofore Considered Legendary': The Harpy of 1784 and the Meaning of Monstrosity in Eighteenth-Century France" (High Honors)
Giulia Pacini + Nicolas Medevielle, Gail Bossenga
Michael Smith, "Le Déracinement de l'Utopie: Haussmannization and the Disciplining of the Revolutionary Imagination" (Highest Honors)
Giulia Pacini + Michael Leruth, Suzanne Raitt
Casey Lesser, "The Guernica Efect: The Power and Legacy of Picasso's Guernica" (Highest Honors)
Francie Cate-Arries + Carla Buck, Susan Webster

2009-10

Kathryn Hansen, "Dancing for Distinction: Pierre Beauchamps and the Social Dynamics of Seventeenth-Century France" (Honors)
Giulia Pacini + Margaret McColley, Ronald Schechter
Elizabeth Wheless, Die deutsche Besetzung Serbiens: Entwicklung und Umsetzung von Hitlers Politik der Gewalt (High Honors)
Nathan Hoback, "Hooray for Hollywood: Postwar Cinema and Trauma in Franco's Dictatorship in Spain" (Highest Honors)
Francie Cate-Arries + Carla Buck, Timothy Barnard

2008-09

No Honors students this year

2007-08

Kelsey Green, "Women Defining Politics: Women and Government in Revolutionary France" (High Honors)
Giulia Pacini + Michael Leruth, Leisa Meyer
Olga Grosh, "Discursive Opposition to Symbolic Violence in the Nobel Lectures of Latin American Laureates" (High Honors)
Teresa Longo + Ann Marie Stock, Betsy Konefal

2006-07

Kristina Walton, "Privatized Public Space and the Construction of Bourgeois Identity in the Nineteenth-Century French Shopping Arcade" (High Honors)
Michael Leruth + Margaret McColley, Ronald Schechter

2005-06

Alex Gochenour, "From Stone Gate to New Heaven and Earth: Imagining Modernity in Twenty-First Century Shanghai" (Honors)
Xiaobin Jian + Rachel DiNitto, Craig Canning
Mary Cashell, "Cross-Currents of Culture: Exoticism and Identity in an Occidental Setting" (Honors)
Ron St. Onge + Margaret McColley, Tim Barnard
Shannon Daily, "'We are all Americans': French Perceptions of the United States in the Post 9/11 Era" (Honors)
Michael Leruth + Ron St. Onge, Ron Schechter
Katherine Spatz, "Logique et Crise Identitaires: Alterite et Identite Dans La Litterature Francophone" (Highest Honors)
Magali Compan + Michael Leruth, Ron Schechter
Carrie Fox, "Weaving Memory and Identity in Santiago del Estero, Argentina: Restructuring Centers and Peripheries, Representing a Hybrid Culture" (Honors)
Regina Root + Teresa Longo, Bill Fisher
Adriana Harvey, "Telando identidades multiples: Re-fabricating identity through artisan production and translation in the contemporary global market" (Highest Honors)
Teresa Longo + Janice Jaffe, Jennifer Bickham-Mendez

2004-05

Elena Tsiaperas
Bruce Campbell + Beatrice Guenther, Tuska Benes
Sara Gilmer
Regina Root + Teresa Longo, Kris Lane
Sara Norman
Carla Buck + Teresa Longo, Colleen Kennedy
Sarah Smith
Regina Root + Teresa Longo, Carla Buck, Kris Lane