Honors
About Honors
As a fourth year student in the Honors college, I have completed the core four-semester Civilizations sequence as well as the supplemental courses required for graduating with Honors (HON170: Current Contexts, HON180: A Cultural Odyssey, and HON190: Introduction to Thesis Research). Additionally, I am currently one of the Honors Associates for HON180: A Cultural Odyssey.
In the Civilizations sequence, students read a new text each week, discuss it in class, and write about it. Students planning to graduate with Honors must also complete an Honors Thesis which in some cases replaces a capstone requirement. Here, I have included a couple of papers I wrote analyzing texts from the Civilizations sequence, and my thesis work.
Thesis Work
The Honors Thesis is a (typically) year-long research project that can take the form of either a traditional written paper or a creative project. Additionally, students must submit a "Reading List", a list of texts that have contributed to their intellectual development. Students conduct their research supervised by a faculty member and with the help of a committee, and at the end of the year "defend" their Thesis and Reading List, presenting it to their committee for discussion and evaluation.
My Honors Thesis, tentatively titled "The Otherworld of Morality: Verbal Contracts and Fairies in Medieval Romance" examines the significance of female fairies as moral teachers in medieval romance. I am also using my Thesis research for my McGillicuddy Humanities Fellowship research. Below, I have included the proposals I submitted for each for comparison.
The Fairy Otherworld: Redemption and Morality
This paper, originally written as a final project, served as the starting point for my Honors thesis research. Here, I analyze the language and narrative structure of two Medieval romances to explore the depiction of fairy courts and their interaction with the human world as a foil and didactic tool.
