Thesis Board 2025

Congratulations, Reed College seniors! Completing the thesis is a capstone of the Reed experience and a tremendous academic accomplishment.

Megan Riepe - History

Thesis: The King is Dead: A Comparative Analysis of European Revolutionary Regicides

Ashley Schlipp - Neuroscience

Thesis: The Role of the Dorsomedial Striatum In Stable Information Seeking Behavior

Kalin Mattern - Psychology

Thesis: Perceptual Learning of Sine-Wave Speech: Exploring, Generalization, Efficiency, and Individual Differences

Cedar Wilson - Neuroscience

Thesis: Exploring Individual Differences in the Information Preferences of Rats

Bella Hopewell - Biology

Thesis: A Complex Situation: Towards Structural Characterization of MntR-DNA-RNAP

Emilie Kelly - Anthropology

Thesis: Changing of the Guards/Changing of the House: Nationalism and Memory at Berlin's Neue Wache

Sydney Wegener - Art: Studio Art

Thesis: The Detachable Pocket

Simon Atwill - Economics: Quantitative Economics

Thesis: Road to Nowhere: The Impact of Wage Inequality on Interstate Labor Migration

Demi Uiterwyk - International and Comparative Policy Studies: Political Science

Thesis: The CFA Franc and ECOWAS: A case for economic sovereignty

Zoe Pittenger Kyriacopoulos - Linguistics

Thesis: Hot /tʉ/ /go͡ʉ/: Queer Women's Participation in Back Vowel Fronting

Faolan Cadiz - English

Thesis: Jorge Luis Borges: Refashioning the Argentine Literary Tradition

Catherine Hoyle - Psychology

Thesis: Peptide Power: Effects of Exendin-4 on Transitive Inference Learning in Rodents

Nicole Li - Biology

Thesis: Ouch! My Wound! — Interrogating The Effects of Microtubule Polarity Regulators on Cellular Migration in Drosophila

Asta Rossi - Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies: History and Archaeology

Thesis: The Rhetoric of Sex and Gender in Politics: A Close Reading of Aeschines’ Against Timarchos and Apollodoros’ Against Neaira

Anahi Sanchez Marcial - Neuroscience

Thesis: Why is Fentanyl so Deadly? The Non-MOR Mediated Effects of Fentanyl at α₂-Adrenergic Receptors

Naomi Smith - Linguistics

Thesis: “In the most humblest way possible, it’s not me”: The role of addressee and the indexicality of creaky voice on Love Island

Grace Anderson - Linguistics

Thesis: Enacting Debater: Style-Shift(ing) Practices in High School Competitive Deba/t/e

Karina Lucero - Art: Art History

Thesis: A Feminist Art History of Horror

Peyton Moineau - Psychology

Thesis: COVID-19 Safety Precautions: Self-Interest and Communal Orientation

Victoria Collie - Psychology

Thesis: Characterizing Eating Disorders in Treatment-Seeking Older Adults

Malcolm Oehler - Biology

Thesis: Expanding Majesty: Exploring Bacterial Control Over Endoreduplication in the Soybean-Bradyrhizobium Endosymbiosis

Maya Galvin - Theatre

Thesis: Playing Privileged: Examining Subversive Casting as a Tool for Marking White Patriarchy in Matt & Ben

Lemon Mastel - Political Science

Thesis: Gone to Market: Arendt, Debt, and Community

Maeve Lichtenberg - Linguistics

Thesis: You BATcha, Minnesotans BOUGHT a TOTE BAG: Supralocal sound change, local ideology, and the indexical construction of geographical identity

Aidan Mokalla - Computer Science

Thesis: Language-Independent Concept Spaces Found in Large Language Models

Prasiddhi Thapaliya - Environmental Studies: Political Science

Thesis: Turbulent Flow: The Role of State Capacity in Transboundary Hydropolitics

Ayah Sibai - Biology

Thesis: The Stripes of Optic Morphogenesis: Gene Expression Patterning in Zebrafish Development

Lindsey Gulbrandsen - Psychology

Thesis: Influences of Gender Dynamics and Sexual Orientation on Alcohol Offer Acceptance in Emerging Adults

Faith Roche - Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies/Theatre

Thesis: Transgressive Rejoicing: Re-incorporating the Dionysiac into Aeschylus' Agamemnon on the Contemporary Stage

Adelaide Graham - English

Thesis: A Study in Wishful Thinking: A Feminist Reading of the Conjunction of Affect and Magical Realism in One Hundred Years of Solitude and The House of the Spirits

Ella Crotty - Environmental Studies: Biology

Thesis: Utilizing Environmental DNA to Investigate the Effects of Hypoxia on Copepod Abundance

Lucas Allam - History

Thesis: Class in the Maelstrom: Class Conflict and Nationalism on the Lebanese Campus from the Six-Day War to the Civil War (1967–1975)

Isabelle Hansen - Psychology

Thesis: Examining the Validity and Prevalence of Mastery Avoidance in Higher Education Settings

John Ebinger - Economics

Thesis: Testing for Inefficient Spreads: An Analysis of Relative Accuracy of Spreads in the National Football League Betting Market

Quinn Deeming - English

Thesis: Butch Blues: Solidarity, Community, and Oppression as Explored through a Literary Analysis of Intersectionality

Andi Lucksinger - History

Thesis: Students and “The Scars of a Democracy": Political Possibilities at the West German Campus from 1967-1969

Galen Kelly Adolph - Art: Studio Art

Thesis: Still Life with Warm Beer and Cold Regards

Elaina Weakliem - English

Thesis: Grief Brought to Numbers: The Phenomenology of Grief in Contemporary Lyric Poetry

Astor Redhead - Political Science

Thesis: Democratic Backsliding in El Salvador

Max Opitz - Neuroscience

Thesis: At the Threshold of Consciousness: Investigating the Patterns of Neuronal Activity Events in an EEG No-Report Paradigm

Elena Geffen - Mathematics

Thesis: A Topological Analysis of Neurodegeneration in MR Images

Zemirah Kamanya - Neuroscience

Thesis: "Progress Towards the Total Synthesis of des(dimethyl)-ɑ-CPA"

Eden Kalaj-Rice - Political Science

Thesis: Running Towards Oblivion: Examining the Conditions of Capitalist Accumulation that Construct the Anthropocene

Ashley Oliver - Sociology

Thesis: Compliance Versus Support: Competing Priorities Affecting Peer Campus-Based Advocacy Programs in an Era of Increased Legal Regulations

James Barry - Anthropology: Science, Environment, and Technology Studies

Thesis: Invisible Lines & Hands that Bind: The Social Lives and Power of Maps in the Pacific Northwest

Rowan Soeiro - Psychology/Religion

Thesis: Death and Divine Order: Religion and Prosocial Responsibility in Presbyterian Communities

Holden Doherty - Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Thesis: Progress Towards the Solid Supported Total Synthesis of 6-Deoxyerythronolide B

Chloe Cornell - Mathematics

Thesis: Tiling Space by Translation

Siara Edwards - English

Thesis: “I Give You My Word, A Permanent Impermanence”: Promises for an Unreliable World in Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being

Dean Banas - Environmental Studies: Biology

Thesis: Quantifying Historic Drought Tolerance in the White fir (Abies concolor) x Grand fir (Abies grandis) Hybrid Complex

Nana Branker-McLean - Psychology

Thesis: We Are Not Your Jezebels: The Impact of the Jezebel Stereotype on College Aged Black Women

Violet Burns - Chemistry

Thesis: Verification of a Nitric Acid Permeation Source for Use in Calibrating a Continuous Analyzer for Total Oxidized Nitrogen in Air

Joaquin Fernandez Odell - Physics

Thesis: A Continuum Model for Physical Billiards

Chloe Hsy - Biology

Thesis: Bacteria in the Mix: Exploring Microbial Recycling of Post-Consumer Plastic Waste

Ella Kraus-McLean - Biology

Thesis: Intraspecific Variation in Fitness Under Acid Stress in Daphnia magna

Cassie Minicucci - English

Thesis: "I am the enemy you killed, my friend": Trauma and Moral Injury in the Great War Poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon

Daniel Yogi - Theatre

Thesis: "Normal is a Myth": An Examination and Guide to Accommodating Performers with Invisible Disabilities in Theatre

Shuyu (Carol) Zhou - Psychology

Thesis: Decoding Neural Dynamics in Inattentional Blindness: A Temporal Generalization Approach

Inez Gallant - Psychology

Thesis: Insight or Inference? A Modern Look at Transitive Inference in Rats

Elizabeth Beaver - English

Thesis: Listening to Trauma and Memory in Science Fiction/Horror Cinema: The Soundscapes of Paul W. S. Anderson’s Event Horizon and Alex Garland’s Annihilation

Kevin Thomas - Mathematics

Thesis: Some Mathematical Foundations of Convolutional Neural Networks

William Scott Clouse - Economics

Thesis: Walkabiltiy in Portland Oregon

Alonzo Ortiz-Sanchez - Computer Science

Thesis: Do you understand logging well enough for automation? A comprehensive introductory survey on logging

Aakash Mishra - Anthropology

Thesis: The Poison is in the Medicine: Illness, Refuge, and Humanitiarianism in Paris, France

Sophia Subramanian - Neuroscience

Thesis: The Effects of Estradiol on Xenopus laevis Vocal Behavior

Julio Edwin Medina - Music

Thesis: Genre, Gender, Performance, and Power in the Music of BABYMETAL

Sophie Garthoff - English: Creative Writing

Thesis: Contortion: A Collection of Short Fiction

Arianne Lin - Linguistics

Thesis: Maybe Retroflex is Kinda Retro: Exploring the Status of Sibilant Production in Taiwan Mandarin

Yik Yin Cheuk - Art: Studio Art

Thesis: My Life in U+2588

Ivo Nalefski - Biology

Thesis: A New Drosophila Activity Monitor: Image-Based Video Tracking of D. melanogaster Allows for Circadian Rhythm and Social Behavior Characterization

Enzo Lee-DiVito - History

Thesis: Japanese-American Postwar Literature and Wartime Incarceration from the 1940s-1970s

Mohamed Jassim Munavar Hussain - Physics

Thesis: An exploration of the Earth-Ionosphere System as a waveguide

Blix Ratliff - History

Thesis: The Life and Legacy of Andreas Vesalius's Fabrica and Being an Author in the Renaissance

Gus Grossman - Biology

Thesis: Old Growth, Hot Topic: Investigating Crown Fuels and Epiphyte Fire Risk in Douglas-fir Forests

Fiona Noble - Neuroscience

Thesis: 11-Ketotestosterone and Aggressive Behavior in Julidochromis transcriptus

Sofia Roberson - Environmental Studies: History

Thesis: The Myth of Mining as Sustainable Development: Mining Conflict in the Andes Mountains, 1992-2018

Patrick Dóñez - History

Thesis: There Is No Future Here: Drug War Violence and Depeasantization in Cold War Mexico

Basil-Anne Stackpole - Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies: Greek and Latin

Thesis: An Unserious Epic? Sexual Violence in Statius's Achilleid

Gwendolyn Olson - Neuroscience

Thesis: OPC-Ya Later! Investigating the Role of Precursor Cells in Response to Neurodegenerative Injury

Kiana Fields - Environmental Studies: Biology

Thesis: Hooked on Reed Lake: Competitive interactions between non-native pumpkinseed sunfish (Lepomis gibbosus) and native threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) with consideration of barriers to establishment

Sydney Stitt - Environmental Studies: History

Thesis: Tick, Tick, BOOM! The Doomsday Clock, Environmental Catastrophe, and the Cold War, 1939-1991

Laura Smith - Physics

Thesis: Bioeffect Modeling of the Response of Cancer Cells to Targeted Alpha Therapy Using OpenTOPAS

Will Thayer - Anthropology

Thesis: Many Birds, No Stones: Abandonment, Value, and Care in a Maltese Horse Sanctuary

Kate Mitchell - Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Thesis: Genetic Regulators in Plastic Degrading Bacteria

Miles McCall - Neuroscience

Thesis: Is Seeing, Perceiving? A Look at Visual Awareness Using Dichoptic Color Fusion

Olivia Grace Mazur - English

Thesis: Notebooks That Bear Witness to Life: Writing, History-Making, and the Marvelous Real in Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits and Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sierra Kalua - Psychology

Thesis: Communication and Affective Responsiveness: Examining the Influence of Family Functioning on Adolescent Eating Disorder Severity

Aidan Mokalla - Linguistics

Thesis: Modulated Signal Filtering: Wouldn’t it be Noise?

Isabella Montano - Neuroscience

Thesis: Obstructive Sleep Apnea is a risk factor for Parkinson’s Disease and CPAP mitigates risk of PD: an EHR- based cohort study in military Veterans

Ashwin Dev - Mathematics: Statistics

Thesis: Dyanmic Volatility in Financial Markets: An Evaluation of the GARCH Model

Angelica Nicolacoudis - Neuroscience

Thesis: Decoding EEG Bifurcation Dynamics Around Visual Detection Threshold in No-Report

Doga Ayar - Philosophy

Thesis: A Naïve Realist Theory of Perception

Armaan Sood - Mathematics

Thesis: Brahmagupta and Bhaskara II's solution to Pell's Equation

Beier Li - Dance

Thesis: The Personal is Political: Autobiographical Performance in Contemporary Dance

Julian Jacklin - Mathematics: Statistics

Thesis: Understanding Undergraduate College Admissions: A Causal Framework

Ram Nordahl - Neuroscience

Thesis: The Effect of Gender & Transness on the Self- & Peer-Directed Protective Behavioral Strategies of Emerging Adults

Robyn Leaf - Psychology

Thesis: “Society has no clue what to do with my gender”: The mediating effect of transgender/gender non-conforming pride/shame on passing beliefs and mental health outcomes

Lixing Yi - Mathematics

Thesis: Hilbert-Kunz Functions of Powers of Diagonal Hypersurfaces

Omar Youssif - Mathematics: Statistics

Thesis: Reassessing the DHS Wealth Index as a Proxy for Socioeconomic Status: Insights from Large-Scale Surveys in the Middle East and North Africa

Gabriel Sasu - Computer Science

Thesis: Constrained Reinforcement learning using Lagrange Multipliers

Jewel Colitre - Religion

Thesis: The Board is Set, and the Pieces Are About to Move: Evangelical Apocalyptic Thinking, QAnon, and the Sense of an Ending

Kali Zaffrann - Art: Studio Art

Thesis: The Slipping

Juniper White - English: Creative Writing

Thesis: Unnamed House Story

Zihang Peng - Philosophy

Thesis: Mere Moral Stability or Moral Imperviousness? --- Stability of Virtue in Aristotle's Ethics

Matthew Redford - English

Thesis: Layers of Allegory: Interpretation and Meaning Within The Faerie Queene

Sam Gauck - Computer Science

Thesis: Bit by Bit: Implementing the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol

Nadav Schul-Kutas - Economics

Thesis: Effects of Psychological Affect on Tipping

Haven Davis - English: Creative Writing

Thesis: Home is Where the Sun Crosses the Horizon: A Collection About a Mixed-Asian Experience

Barrett Heyer - Neuroscience

Thesis: Model-free learning activity in the lateral intraparietal (LIP) area in Rhesus macaques

Maud Neeley - Biology

Thesis: Keeping It Cool: Effects of Spatial Variation on Thermal Tolerance Evolution in Phytoplankton

Amelie el Mahmoud - Mathematics

Thesis: Branching Out: Phylogenetic Tree Construction and the Method of Invariants

Daniela Buchillon-Almeida - Psychology

Thesis: Linguistic Shifts and Emotion Regulation Across Languages: The Case of "Estar" in Spanish

Maggie Topel - English

Thesis: Surprising Song: Music in Tolkien's Legendarium

Anna Spollen - Environmental Studies: History

Thesis: Indians At Work: The Civilian Conservation Corps “Indian Division” as Federal Reform in Depression-Era Washington State

Surabhi Kannappan - Neuroscience

Thesis: The Book of (Neuro)genesis: Exploring Interactions Among BMP, MAPK, and RA Signaling Pathways During Eye Development

Patrick Norton - Mathematics/Computer Science

Thesis: Extending Zero-Knowledge PCPs Beyond NP

Patricio Palomino - Biology

Thesis: A Tale of Two Species: Uncovering the Interactions Between Bacillus and Pseudomonas on PET Plastics

Finn Mueller - History

Thesis: An Unstoppable Labor Force Meets an Immovable Political Machine: The 1886 Electoral Battle Between Organized Labor and the Tammany Hall Machine in New York City

Janey Thogmartin - English: Creative Writing

Thesis: I Can Feel The Echoes Reaching

Maggie Miklas - Environmental Studies: Biology

Thesis: Education's Role in the Conservation of Southern Resident Killer Whales

Bram Schuijff - Mathematics/Computer Science

Thesis: Landlord & Context Switches

Taylor Maxwell - Comparative Literature

Thesis: Blank Spaces: Poetry and History in Baudelaire, Valéry, and Char

Kenna McCauley - Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies: History

Thesis: "Our History, Our Way": The Dynamics of Race and Ethnicity in the Social Movements of the Hawaiian Renaissance

Audrey Lambert - English: Creative Writing

Thesis: Post from the Aimless Road

Bettina Broyles - Religion

Thesis: Indonesian and Malaysian Mak Yong: Making and Remaking Culture, Ritual, and Identity

Joshua Ogawa - Psychology

Thesis: First Impressions Matter? How Initial Exposure to a Film Sequence Shapes Subsequent Understanding of Cause and Effect

Sophia Maxine Lenczowski - Comparative Literature

Thesis: From the Screen to the Self: How Feminist Video Transforms the Spectator

Ella Arnold - Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies: History and Archaeology

Thesis: In Pursuit of the Saffron Gatherers:   Developing a “Complete” Understanding of Minoan Women

Lily Hahm - Art: Art History

Thesis: "Against Forgetting:" Care, Performance, and Dissensus in "Comfort Women" Memorials

Allison Jefferis - Biology

Thesis: Investigating the Role of the SPECC1L Homolog, Split Discs, in  Non-Muscle Myosin II Contractility Dynamics in Drosophila

Kahaan Parikh - Neuroscience

Thesis: Chemogenetic Inhibition of the Basolateral Amygdala in a Modified Risky Decision Task: A Model of Gambling Disorder

Jules Camden - Neuroscience

Thesis: Examining Model Robustness for Treatment Efficacy Prediction in Major Depressive Disorder

Adrian Keller Feld - English: Creative Writing

Thesis: Baile Seanáchaí / Ballyshanachie

Lucas Binder - Biology

Thesis: Exploration of Xenopus laevis Vocal Evolution using Computational Modeling

Claire Navratil - English: Creative Writing

Thesis: To Reap What Was Sown

Cliodhna O'Connell - International and Comparative Policy Studies: Political Science

Thesis: Whatever You Say, Say Nothing: A Discourse Analysis of Plural Voting in Northern Ireland

Mattie Mcneil - English

Thesis: Peering into the End of the World: Time Travel Science Fiction

Auden Oliveri - Chemistry

Thesis: Illuminating Neutrons: Investigation of Quantum Dot-Based Scintillators for Full Spectrum Neutron Detection

Luiz Felipe de Souza Lobo Morgado Horta - Philosophy

Thesis: Aristotle's Empeiria in Legislation

Abri Carnathan - English

Thesis: “Whut ‘n Gawd’s name’re yew sayin’?” : Exploring Ideas of Race, Gender, and Labor in the Dialect of Early Twentieth-Century Southern Short Fiction

Olivia DeStefano - Environmental Studies: Political Science

Thesis: Dammed If You Do, Dammed If You Don’t: The Clash of Coalitions Over the Lower Snake River Dams.

Ava Bonney - Anthropology

Thesis: Cultural Life, Cultural Death: Ritual, Tourism, and Indigenous Revival in Yucatán, Mexico

Gillan Campbell - Art: Studio Art

Thesis: Overgrown:  How Colonial Perception Affects our Valuation of Illustrated Graphic Media

Hannah Xie - Political Science

Thesis: Storytime! Congress and the Little AI That Could

Madelyn Tarara - Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Thesis: Towards reCYPlable PE plastic: Isolation and Characterization of a putative PE-degrading enzyme from B.thuringiensis

Yours Truly Buschini - English: Creative Writing

Thesis: Metafiction (And Its Many Uses)

Taliah Churchill - Economics

Thesis: A New Age of Technology and Flexible Intellectual Property Protections: An Economic Analysis of the Developing Discord Between Generative AI and Copyright Law

Jefferson Ratliff - Politcal Science

Thesis: High Dysfunction, Low Trust: Federalism, Political Trust and COVID-19 Policy in Four US States

Max Ongbongan - Chemistry

Thesis: A Formal Synthesis of Corynoxine

Lindsay Worrell - Political Science

Thesis: The Politics of Fatness and its Influence on Voting Preferences Among White Men in Rural Wisconsin

Tianyi 'Emma' Fan - Art: Studio Art

Thesis: Creativity Entangled: A Posthumanist Perspective on AI Art

Parker Doran - History

Thesis: The Color of the Kit: Football Supporters and the Politics of Identity in Late 20th and Early 21st Century Europe

Parker Miraldi - Anthropology

Thesis: Camas and Carbon: Collaboration, Comparative Collections, and Using Archaeology for Good

Jojo Hartman - Linguistics

Thesis: I Like Us but You Might Not: Local Partial Coreference in Mexican Spanish

El Johnson - Comparative Literature

Thesis: The Cyborg at the End of the World: A Theory of the Gendered Grotesque, from Female Oppression to Queer Liberation

Alyssa Bradley - Environmental Studies: Economics

Thesis: WARPing Environmental Preferences: Green Nudges and Rationality

Carmen Simons - Environmental Studies: History

Thesis: "The 73ʼ Chevy Impala of Rivers:" Ruin, Restoration, and Indigenous Futures Along Johnson Creek

Rosalie Imbimbo - Biology

Thesis: Taking a Lichen-ing to Heavy Metals: A Comparison of the Biosorption Efficacies of Two Lichen Species Towards Heavy Metals

Kes Vounzi - Sociology

Thesis: Culture and Compliance: Identifying Reed's Coupling Processes with its Alcohol and Other Drug Policy

Beier Li - Psychology

Thesis: The Role of Solitary Cannabis Use and Coping Motives in Depression and Anxiety Among Emerging Adults: A Longitudinal Study

Lindie Lewis - Anthropology

Thesis: Icelandic Formations of National Identity through the Ownership of Material Culture in a Post Colonial Context

Miranda Ulloa Estrada - Biology

Thesis: CRISPR/Cas9 Targeted Disruption of tshz1a Reveals New Role in Axial Patterning and Extension

Laura Estridge - Physics

Thesis: The CUBE: Using Virtual Reality to Visualize Electromagnetic Fields in Real-Time

Dani Peterson - Dance

Thesis: [Dancing] with Dance: Investigating Liminality Through the Lens of Butoh

Vivian Petersen - History

Thesis: Dollars and Saints: Mormon Articulations of Shifting Economic Ideology at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Evan Heintz - Mathematics: Statistics

Thesis: Statistical Modeling of atoh7 in the Developing Zebrafish Retina

Gillian Votaw-Leventhal - Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies: History and Archaeology

Thesis: "When Philoi clash with Philoi in Strife": Familicide in Greek Tragedy and Fragility of the Family in Athens

ChloƩ Fling - Religion-Ancient Mediterranean Studies

Thesis: "Your riches rot, your clothes are moth-eaten": The Letter of James's Use of Wisdom Literature to Spur Social Upheaval

Linda Lu - Sociology

Thesis: Community Owned Community Solar in the United States: Emergence and Organizational Strategies for Success