Honors Theses
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According to the 2010-2011 Washington and Lee University Catalog (undergraduate), all "honors programs require an honors thesis during the senior year, involving six credits (no more, no less) of independent work, such as a significant report based upon field or laboratory research, a creative accomplishment in the arts, or a comparable scholarly undertaking, demonstrating more than simply a mastery of subject matter." This site provides access to honors theses the University Library has included in a digitization project beginning in 2010. In many cases, these records include online access to the complete contents of theses, but, at the authors' wishes, some of these records limit online access to current W&L researchers. For similar reasons, some records allow no online access at all.
This material is made available for use in research, teaching, and private study, pursuant to U.S. Copyright law. The user assumes full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used should be fully credited with the source. Permission for publication of this material, in part or in full, must be secured with the Head of Special Collections and Archives.
Preferred citation: [Identification of Item], Record Group 38, Student Papers, Special Collections and Archives, James G. Leyburn Library, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA.
In some cases the citation format may vary. Please contact the staff of Special Collections and Archives to verify the appropriate format.
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"To muddy death": The Link Between Sexual Deviancy and Suicide in Hamlet, The Waves, and Looking for Alaska
(2020)At first glance, Shakespeare's Hamlet and Virginia Woolf's The Waves do not seem texts ripe for a new, deep examination of their themes. Both stories, penned by two geniuses from two different eras, have been poked and ... -
Impacts of Low-Head Dam Construction and Removal with Little Channel Sediment Storage: Case Study from the Maury River, Virginia
(2020)Dam removal projects are becoming more frequent as awareness of the negative ecological consequences increases and dams begin to fail. However, due to the potential threats of post-removal channel migration, bank erosion, ... -
"Wound That Can't Be Bandaged": The Imperfect Translation of Women's Suffering in The Tale of Kieu and The Sorrow of War
(2020)In my thesis, I compare and contrast the two figures of Kiêu and Phong to divulge the unchanging patriarchal oppression experienced by women in Vietnam in the course of one and a half centuries despite a radical ... -
The Missing Gender Frame: The Unspoken Tension Around Sexual Violence Crimes in The International Criminal Justice System
(2020)In the subsequent pages, I will explore the phenomenon of sexual and gendered violence during war. When I began this venture, I set out to answer the question, "What is it about sexual violence crimes that makes them ... -
On the Essay: A Gendered Evolution of Narrative Presence in the Personal Essay
(2020)The unassuming power behind the essay is what makes modern attempts so crucial. Overt forms, obvious attempts lend themselves to criticism and censorship. These are the violences that are often silenced by the oppressor, ... -
Fools for Christ's Sake: The Intent to Edify found in the Writing of Leontius and Flannery O'Connor (thesis)
(2020)The Life of Symeon is classified as Christian hagiography, capturing a saint's journey of practicing ascetism in both the desert and city. Leontius of Neapolis wrote this text with the main intent to edify his audience. ... -
The Effect of Preference for Sons over Daughters on Women's Agency and Empowerment Within a Household (thesis)
(2020)While studies have shown how son preference negatively affects life outcomes of both born and unborn daughters, there is limited research examining how it, in turn, affects women who do not give birth to the desired number ... -
Journey from the Baroque to the Modern: The Viola in Public Performance and Musical Analysis, Featuring works by Bach, C. Stamitz, Weber, Bloch, and Brahms
(2020)When I was in Vienna, studying music for a semester abroad, I began to think seriously about my senior recital and the pieces I should consider playing. This program was shaped largely by the viola lessons I took while in ... -
Directed Self-Assembly: A Study of the Effect of Electric Fields on Silica Monolayers (thesis)
(2020)In this thesis, we describe, analyze, and extend ionic self-assembly of monolayers (ISAM), a bottom-up nanostructure production technique designed to coat surfaces in uniform layers of charged nanoparticles. Using mean ... -
Pleasure and Pain: The Connection Between Opioid Prescriptions and Social Security Disability Insurance in the U.S.
(2020)I examine the connection between prescription opioid use and Social Security Disability Insurance in the United States. Previous research has found that a correlation exists between opioids and disability rates, but little ... -
Recovering Women's Canonical Voices: Sixteenth-Century Women Psalmists' Shaping of English Literature (thesis)
(2020)Through an analysis of the Biblical Psalter, the poetry of Mary Sidney Herbert, Anne Vaughan Locke, and Elizabeth Melville as well as sixteenth-century perception of these poets and the Psalms, this thesis explores the ... -
The Great Migration and Education: How African American migrant flows impacted Northern cities' finance decisions (thesis)
(2020)Ethnic fragmentation influences local preferences and the provision of public goods, such as education. I examine the effect of changes in racial composition for Northern and Western cities between 1940 and 1970 on city ... -
Recession Severity and Lagging Employment (thesis)
(2020)This paper uses the Current Population Survey to examine the differential experiences of demographic groups following the Great Recession. Geographic variation in recession severity is used to asses the effect of recession ... -
Social Identity and the Take-Up of Healthcare: Exploring the Intersection of Caste, Gender, and Public Policy in Nepal (thesis)
(2020)To reach equality in health outcomes, Nepal -- in concert with most developing countries -- has focused on the decentralization of healthcare. Although accessibility to health services is now relatively uniform, health ... -
The Effect of Community Trauma on Student Achievement: Evidence from the Boston Marathon Bombing
(2020)This paper evaluates the hypothesis that the Boston Marathon bombing was such a traumatic experience for youth living in Massachusetts that it harmed their math standardized test scores and that this effect was larger the ... -
Is Detection of Colon Motility Waves Possible?: An Investigation of Two Spatial Filtering Techniques with Electrocolonography (EcolG)
(2020)Electrocolonography (EcolG) is the study of colon motor activity via non-invasive, body surface electrical recordings, analogous to electrocardiography (ECG) for study of cardiac motor activity. EcolG was very recently ... -
Statistical Physics and Network Theory as an Interdisciplinary Approach to Legislative Forecasting
(2020)The current field of American politics, particularly within the legislative branch, is considered highly polarized and signi cantly inscrutable. In the face of this shifting political landscape, attempts to rigorously ... -
Procedural Generation of Metroidvania Style Levels (thesis)
(2020)Video game maps can become dull with repeated play-throughs and handcrafting a variety of maps can be a tedious and time consuming process. This is especially true for games of the Metroidvania genre, games which focus on ... -
Heaven in a Wild Flower: William Blake's Spirituality of Imagination, Mysticism, and Apocalypse (thesis)
(2020)The following paper is interested in the spirituality and religious beliefs of the 18th-19th c. poet and artist William Blake. It is composed of three chapters: an introduction to Blake and the historical and thematic ... -
The American Pantheon: The Competition for Civil War Era Memory in National Statuary Hall (thesis)
(2020)A history of memory in National Statuary Hall is therefore necessary to begin the process of transforming the collection from a site of memory into a site of better historical interpretation. Chapter One of this thesis ...