Thesis Title Form - to be filled out
and then signed by your thesis advisor and the graduate deputy before you enroll in English 7810
(Thesis Project)
Thesis Approval Form - to be filled out
and then signed by your thesis advisor and the graduate deputy once you have completed writing
your thesis and are submitting it for official approval
 The M.A. English program
includes a thesis requirement. Writing
the thesis (30-50 pages, not including the bibliography) is a two-step process which normally takes place during the
students' last two semesters. In their second last semester, students
take ENG 7800, which is basically a "thesis proposal" class.
It is highly recommended that, at this point, they should be finishing
up the last of the nine courses under the distribution requirement (see
"Degree Requirements"); ideally, they should have already completed
their foreign language requirement and be currently signed up for the
comprehensive exam.
Upon completing ENG
7800, students must find a professor who will supervise their thesis project;
this is formalized by having the professor sign off on the "thesis
title" form, which is turned in to the Graduate Deputy in order to
obtain permission to register for ENG 7810 Thesis Project the following
semester. Ideally, in their last semester, students are working exclusively
on their thesis, all other requirements having been completed.
The course descriptions
for ENG 7800 and 7810 make the process clear:
English 7800X ..Introduction to Literary Research: Introduction to methods of research as preparation for the MA thesis. Topics include: building a bibliography, using print and on-line research sources; incorporating secondary critical resources; and the varieties of criticism practiced in recent decades. The final assignment is to produce a thesis proposal.
English 7810X ..Thesis
Project: An extensive research project, normally based on the thesis proposal
developed in English 7800X, which is supervised by a member of the faculty,
and which leads to the submission of a master's thesis. Students may receive
credit for this course only after approval of the completed thesis.
To obtain permission,
you must submit to the Graduate Deputy the Thesis Title Form signed by the
faculty member who will supervise the thesis project. Completion of English
7800 is a prerequisite for this course.
For a
copy of the MA Thesis formatting requirements, please
click here (pdf file).
• Click here for a more extensive list of theses from past years.
2010-2011 Approved Master's Theses
Berenstein, Ari (M.A. English)
A Nation of Holdens: The Relevance of Holden Caulfield as a Critical Lens of American Youth in the Twenty-First Century
Advisor: Geoffrey Minter
Clay, Weston (M.A. English)
Material Girl-Killer: Consumerist Discourse and the Sociopathic Narrator in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho
Advisor: Janet Moser
Davis, Annette (M.A. English)
Isabella’s Trial and Execution in Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”: Guilty of Non-Conformance
Advisor: Geoffrey Minter
De Piper, John (M.A. English)
Blood Meridian and Antic Clay: Cormac McCarthy’s Violent Worldview
Advisor: Carey Harrison
Dell’Aquila, Michael (M.A. English)
Writing Against the Dusk: Ethnic Twilight and the Persistence of the Italian-American Sign
Advisor: Robert Viscuisi
DiBerardino, Michael (M.A. English)
The Impersonal Turn: Keats’s Romantic Modernism
Advisor: Rachel Brownstein
Dunn, Andrew (M.A. English)
Mass Perversion: Cinema, the Psyche, and the Possibility of Collective Action in The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West and The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Advisor: Joseph Entin
Feldnov, Amy (M.A. English)
The Wartime Child in Contemporary Children’s Literature: Self-Writing and Sarajevo’s Anne Frank
Advisor: Marie Rutkoski
Friedman, Carly (M.A. English)
Joe Orton: Gender Rebellion of Mythic Proportions
Advisor: Carey Harrison
Goykadosh, Brachah (M.A. English)
Lacanian Desire and Kristevan Abjection in T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Advisor: Karl Steel
Hamilton, Debbie (M.A. English)
Metonymy in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories
Advisor: Geri DeLuca
Janisch, Rebecca (M.A. English)
Making Gold Stay
Advisor: Carey Harrison
JeanBaptiste, Darise (M.A. English)
Toni Morrison’s Trajectory of Death
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Jennings, Rachel (M.A. English)
“What Counts Counts”: Understanding How Media Inspire and Thwart Progress in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things
Advisor: Jason Frydman
Johnson-Harriott, Judine (M.A. English)
Fleeing an Unjust Society or Finding Themselves?: A Study of Two African-American Writers’ Quest for Social Mobility and Personal Dignity
Advisor: James Davis
Katz, Nechama (Nikki) (M.A. English)
Does Biphobia Exist in the Literary Criticism of Shakespeare’s Sonnets?
Advisor: Carey Harrison
Klein, Tamara (M.A. English)
On the Edge: Woman and Marginality in the Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Marquez, Patricia (M.A. English)
Intentionality and the New Signification: Language Theory from Saussure, Barthes, and Searle
Advisor: Mark Patkowski
McCarthy, Eileen (M.A. English)
The Function of Geography in Paule Marshall’s The Chosen Place, the Timeless People
Advisor: Renison J. Gonsalves
McLinden, Cameron (M.A. English)
The Banks of Poverty: Lack and the Threat of Lack in Continental Drift
Advisor: Joseph Entin
Mulcahey, Laura (M.A. English)
The Loss of Anonymity: Public Exposure from Tabloid Reporting to the Pages of Facebook
Advisor: Robert Viscusi
Nance, William (M.A. English)
Duality in Dialectics: Uncertainty in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy
Advisor: Carey Harrison
Orlando, Anthony (M.A. Fiction)
The Strange Stranger: Isolation and Guilt in the Lyrical Ballads
Advisor: Karl Steel
Othman, Rihab (M.A. English)
“Isnad” The Islamic Chain of Narrators: Adherence to the Cultural Echo
Advisor: Karl Steel
Parasram, Shoba (M.A. English)
A Barbaric Civilization: A Look at Blacks and Whites in Behn’s Oroonoko and Earle’s Obi
Advisor: Ana Acosta
Pazmino-Martinez, Ivette (M.A. English)
Sarah Stickney Ellis: Angel and Antagonist
Advisor: Geoffrey Minter
Pierluigi, Melanie (M.A. English)
Trauma in the Body: Memory and Dissociation in Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces
Advior: Geoffrey Minter
Pike, Stephanie (M.A. English)
On the Waterfront: Modernity and Modernism in South Brooklyn
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Ralph, Aubria (M.A. English)
Time and Creativity: Defining the Relationship Between Time and Creativity
Advisor: Nicola Masciandaro
Reilly, Abby (M.A. English)
Seeing and Remembering September 11th in Post-9/11 Literature
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Roy, Suklima (M.A. English)
Language Bytes: Linguistic Changes Arising from Electronic Communication
Advisor: Mark Patkowski
Siskind, Andrew (M.A. English)
Motions of Abstraction and Entropy: The Ecology of A. R. Ammons’ Garbage
Advisor: Ben Lerner
Sotirakis, Sia (M.A. English)
Jane Eyre: Adaptability and Ascendancy
Advisor: Wendy Fairey
Spencer, Stephen (M.A. English)
Matter and Metaphor, Memory and Narrative: A Study of John Milton’s Paradise Lost
Advisor: Kate Haley
Tekten, Tutsak (M.A. English)
“An Incurable Imperfection in the Very Essence of the Present”
Advisor: Janet Moser
Telesford, Nadine (M.A. English)
Whiteness in The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon
Advisor: James Davis
Truscello, Joseph (M.A. English)
The Commodified Self: Identity in Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and John Updike’s Rabbit, Run
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Vogl, Raquel (M.A. English)
An Examination of Voice, Class, and Gender in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale and The Owl and the Nightingale
Advisor: Karl Steel
Waller, Samantha (M.A. English)
The Construction of Sexual Identity in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours
Advisor: Geoffrey Minter
Walsh, Trevor (M.A. English)
Dining from His Plate: Union with God in Angela of Foligno
Advisor: Nicola Masciandaro
Warsager, Allegra (M.A. English)
“It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City”: Negotiating Race and Class in Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude and Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities
Advisor: Martha Nadell
Washington, Donna-lyn (M.A. English)
The Theme of Diaspora in the Edwidge Danticat Novel
Advisor: Renison Gonsalves |
