RESEARCH PROJECTS

Many American Studies majors choose to complete an Honors project on a topic of their interest. Most or all of the work associated with an Honors project is done in the senior year, though it may be begun earlier, and culminates in a research or critical paper or its counterpart in the creative arts.

Similarly, Senior Seminar is run as a group independent study; each student is asked to pick a topic of their own design with advising from a professor. The students complete a large-scale, (approximately fifty pages) research paper with many academic sources. Some of them are on the scale of an Honors Project.

Honors Topics

• Bradley P. Gordon '09: Access and Education: Retaining Vermont's Human Capital and Social Integrity Through Higher Education
  Adviser: Jack Harris
• Emily K. Pelletier '05: An Exploration of American Identity and its Portrayal in American Literature
  Adviser: Daniel Singal
• Annmarie Yannaco '00: The social history of women as represented in literature
  Adviser: Eric Patterson

Senior Seminar Topics

• Isaac Gilman '10: The political and economic controversy in major cities around subsidized stadium building projects
• Annalise Van Houten '09: Exploring changing constructions of American female adolescence, and how it has been affected by commercialization and mass marketing, focusing on the analysis of advertising and mass entertainment
• Lauren Burke '08: the socialization of women through mass culture and how it has changed since the early 20th C.
• Lauren Gary '08: Developing progressive anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic teaching curricula for secondary schools
• John Kendrick '08: History of the Viet Nam War
• Emma Leslie '05: The economic and social history of Los Angeles
• Audrey Southern '05: The protests around the global economic conferences in Seattle and Miami, the anarchist movements involved in the protests, and the evolution of police/state strategies of repression of protest
• Brie Becker '03: American urban history and policy