Senior Project

Every Alleghenian completes a Senior Project—a significant piece of original research, designed by the student under the guidance of a faculty advisor, that demonstrates to employers and graduate schools the ability to complete a major assignment, to work independently, to analyze and synthesize information, and to write and to speak persuasively. The following are some recent examples of Senior Projects completed in the English Department.

  • “Manipulating the Margins: the Social and Historical Relevance of Jane Austen’s Widow Figures”
  • “Discovering ‘Universal’ Truths with Adolescents through English/Language
    Arts Adaptation Studies (Case Study: Pride and Prejudice)”
  • After Years of Stillness, collection of poems
  • “A Poststructuralized Analysis of Identity in Jackie Kay’s Trumpet
  • “One with the Sea: An Analysis of the Sea Imagery in Pablo Neruda’s Poetry”
  • The Seizure and Other Poems
  • “Discovering the Magic within the Familiar: Harry Potter”
  • “The Progression of Film Comedy from the Silent to Modern Era”
  • “So it Goes: A Deconstruction of Black Humor in the “War” Novels of Heller and Vonnegut from the 1960’s”
  • “Rap: A Powerful Body of Literature Misused and Misunderstood in America”
  • “The Invention of the Beat King and On the Road: Analysis of the Common Misreading of Jack Kerouac’s Celebrity and Beat Generation”
  • “The Enormous Silent Poem of Color and Light: Lafcadio Hearn and Paul Gauguin in the Tropics”
  • “Speaking with the Dead: The New Historicism and Two Renaissance Plays”
  • “Reconstructing the Southwest: The New Mexico Novels of Willa Cather and Mary Austin”
  • “The Complications Regarding Free Will in John Milton’s Paradise Lost
  • “James Joyce’s Ulysses: Teaching the Reader How To Read”
  • “The Romantic Tradition in Contemporary American Fiction: An Examination of Selected Novels by Anne Tyler”
  • “Antigone: Performance, Persuasion, and Politics”
  • “A Raid on the Inarticulate: The Linguistic Legacies of World War I and Vietnam”
  • “A Legacy Wrought in Blood: Paule Marshall and Toni Morrison, Preservers of Black Culture”
  • “Experimental Journalism, 1950–2000: From Tom Wolfe to Matt Drudge and Beyond”
  • In the Presence of Non-Being, collection of poems and short stories
  • “Theologizing Shakespeare: Late 19th- and 20th-Century Definitions of Bardolatry”

Browse through past senior projects on D-Space here.

Senior Project Submission instructions can be found HERE.