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Thesis

As part of the GLAM major, all students will complete a senior thesis. The senior thesis is a year-long research project on a topic of the student’s choice. The thesis provides the opportunity for students to engage in deep and sustained work on a topic of particular interest to them, in close collaboration and consultation with a faculty adviser. 

Past GLAM theses have covered a wide range of topics that reflects the diversity and richness of the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean; we encourage students to consult past theses for inspiration and ideas. Past theses can be found in the Thesis Tower in the ºìÌÒÊÓƵ Library and in the GLAM/Religion student lounge on the second floor of the ETC. ºìÌÒÊÓƵ community members can browse the .

Recent GLAM Theses

2023-2024

• Ariel Cooper, “Performing the Lover: One Solution to Two Crises of Masculinity in the 1st and 12th Centuries”
• Elizabeth Rollison, “Who is Ethnicity For? A Comparative Archaeological Investigation of Ethnicity in Teotihuacan and Ostia Antica”
• Anna Wilson, “Kleos through the Oikos: Women as Household Managers in the Odyssey”

2022-2023

• George Crooks, “Narratives of Roman History in Salvian’s De Gubernatione Dei”
• Celia Garb, “Ancient DNA An Unfit Arbiter of the Indo-European Debate”
• Rose Gatlin, “From Pen to Palace: Examining Roman Britain Through Literary Sources and Archaeological Discoveries at Fishbourne and Vindolanda”
• Alisa MacDonald, “A Comparison of Homeric and Virgilian Similes”
• Michael Quinn, “The Examination of Virtus, Slavery, and Civil War in the Third Servile War in Appian's Civil Wars”
• David Rothfels, “Hoping to Smash DNA with Rocks and Pickaxes”
• Freya Schlaefer, “Gastric Heroics: Towards a Grammar of Eating in Archaic Greek Poetry”
• Amir Weksler, “Love’s Coming for your Head!”

2021-2022

• Elin Hansen, “The Image of Augustus in Tacitus' Annals”
• Aemann Lin, “The Literary Form of the Dialogue and the Ethics of Philosophy in Plato's Gorgias”
• Cayden Price, “A New Model of Heroism for Roman Epic”
• Elliot Rydell Galarraga, “Lucretius and the Elite Roman Outlook”

2020-2021

• Emma McNeel, “Conversing with Mute Ash: The Capacity of Classical Reception”
• Kyle Nash, “De Rerum Repatriatione, or On the Repatriation of Things”
• Elliott Rosenthal, “Agamemnon and Political Crisis in the Iliad”

2019-2020

• Hayley Curtis, “The Cento Probae: Creative Appropriation in Late Antiquity”
• Liam Dulany, “Singing the Unspeakable: Metapoetics and Multivalence in Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile”
• Duncan Feiges, “On the Ruin of Britain: Reassessing the End of Roman Britain 400–700 CE”
• Wenqian Liu, “Medical and Cosmetic Tools and Implements from Gabii”
• Alexander Poston, “Traces of Stoic Philosophy in Cicero’s De Legibus and De Re Publica”
• Yeşim Yilmaz, “Penelope, Klytaimnestra, Helen”

2018-2019

• Lex Ladge, “Memory Objects: A Study of Attalid Memory and Object Creation under Philetairos and Attalos I”
• Marnie Leven, “Knowledge Is Power: An Examination of the Roman Empire's Rhetorical Imperialism of the Chinese Empire”
• Rikki Liu, “The Epistula ad Floram: Appealing to an Intellectual Woman in the Competitive Religious Marketplace of Second Century Christianity” (Classics/Religion)
• Kaylee Ma, “Imagining and Imaging the Past: Archaeological Reconstructions of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Oplontis”
• Elliot Menard, “Ovid is Divo Backwards: the Ovidian Orpheus' Influence on the Birth and Evolution of Opera”
• Kirk Svensson, “Hesiod's Works and Days: A Discourse on Ethics”

2017-2018

• Olivia Churchwell, "Of Ignorance, Equally Fatal: Re-examining Aeschylus' Iphigenia as a Political Body"
• Shin Dickens, “Identifying Seth: An Examination of Curse Tablets in the Ancient Mediterranean” (Classics/Religion)
• Griffin Hancock, ”Ego Mulier: The Construction of Sacred Gender Non-Conformity in the Roman Empire”
• Lina Neidhardt, “Sulpicia on Her Own Terms”
• Costanza Rasi, “Theatricality in Tacitus' Neronian Annales”
• William Wu, “Superbia and the Roman Disease in Sallust's Bellum Iugurthinum”

2016-2017

• Genevieve Marie Hook, “Making Italy Great Again: the Aeneid as Mythological Justification for Roman Power and Land Occupation”
• Ying Ying (Amelea) Ng, “Poetic Justice: Declamatory Rhetoric and Poetry in the Songs of Orpheus”
• Lewis Sears Sherman, “The Endurance of Truth: Views on Law and Knowledge in Plato and al-Farabi”

2015-2016

• Bailey Rose Boatsman, "Sticking it to the Men: Transgressive Women on the Greek Tragic Stage"
• Yelena Jeanne Erez, “It’s the Thought that Counts: Living in Accordance with Reason In Stoic Philosophy"
• Carolyn Louise Foerster, "Caesar et suos: Charisma, Pietas, and Discipline in the Gallic War" (Classics/Religion)
• George Walter Johnson, "Medicine in the Iliad"
• Anya Elizabeth Logan, "The Honeyed Cup: Lucretius’s Use of Myth"
• Alex Joseph McGrath, "Gangsta’s Paradise: Popular Politics and Gang Violence in the Late Roman Republic (63–52 BCE)"
• Warren James Peterson, "Omens and Intertexts: Interpreting Signs and Language in the oἰωνοϲκοπικά"
• Haley Jean Tilt, "Living and Dying Young: Conceptions of Child Development in Africa Proconsularis"

2014-2015

• Nicholas Brancaccio, “Life in Second Exile: Xenophon’s Reconception of Panhellenism in the Anabasis”
• Marilyn Carlin, “Tragic Gender Performance in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon”
• Christopher Embrey, “Social Unity, Class Conflict, and Aristotelian πόλις”
• Zachary Garriss, “Acerrimus”
• Laura Moser, “Madness and Meaning: Signs of Epic and Tragedy in Sophocles’ Ajax”

2013-2014

• Johanna Burgess, "The Management of Artistic and Architectural Heritage as a Base of Power in Early Imperial Rome"
• Jaye Whitney Dale Debber, "Forces in Opposition: The Polis and the Dionysiac in Euripides' Bacchae"
• Heather Hambley, "Gender and Genre in Ovid's Heroides 16 and 17"
• Benjamin Stephens, "The Social and Economic Reforms of Diocletian"