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 Reed Library and in the GLAM/Religion student lounge on the second floor of the ETC. Reed community members can browse the Reed Electronic Theses Archive.

Recent GLAM Theses

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"