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Duke maintains an active list of Undergraduate Honors Theses and student papers within its DukeSpace hub. Here, you can search through and access summaries, full documents, authors, subjects, advisors and more. 

By utilizing this hub, you can learn more about projects related to areas of research you're interested in, plus learn more about the advisor to see if that faculty member could be a good fit for your project.

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Undergraduate Honors Theses and Student papers

Permanent uri for this collection, recent submissions.

• No Thumbnail Available Item Open Access Africatown: Mapping Space and Making Frenchness in the Goutte d'Or ( 2024-04-10 ) Murphy, Zoé Show more My research centers on the Goutte d’Or, a quartier of the 18th district of Paris, commonly flattened by media and academia as a “Little Africa.” Through multimedia methods of walking, journaling, and ArcGIS StoryMaps, I provide a sensory and data-informed analysis of the movement and dynamism of the quartier. I argue that the terminology “Little Africa” misrepresents the space as a restricted island of Africa in the French capital and use frameworks from Chinatown literature to deepen the lens of analysis. Researchers have reframed Chinatowns to consider a multiplicity of both Chinese and other identities in a space that is highly woven into its city. As such, I propose the adoption of the framework “Africatown” for the Goutte d’Or to reveal how the neighborhood is deeply woven into the fabric of Paris and France. By adopting the Africatown framework, I demonstrate the Goutte d’Or’s role and participation in the greater development of identity in France and make a commentary on the evolution of “Frenchness” as the country’s population continues to change. Show more
• No Thumbnail Available Item Open Access Healers and Helpers: Colonial Power Imbalances in Medical Missions and Global Health ( 2024-04-10 ) Purnell, Catherine Show more This thesis is about colonial power imbalances within global healthcare provision. Evangelical Christian medical missionaries and many experts in field of global health both consider themselves to be “helpers” to populations of people they understand to be in need of help. This reinforces the flow of high income countries sending sometimes unwanted “assistance” to low and middle income areas, similar to colonialism. The movement to decolonize global health has added tools to remove colonialism from care, but has not yet been fully successful. I add to the wealth of information about decolonizing global health provision by integrating medical mission care and global health into the same conversation, and asks if it is possible for medical missions to decolonize in a manner that the ‘decolonizing global health’ movement seeks to do. I use the example of Partners in Health and its liberation theology-based method of care as an example of decolonized care. On the other hand, it is not possible to offer decolonized care under the label of “medical missions” as the field is currently defined. Show more

• No Thumbnail Available Item Open Access Characterizing sleep-wake cycles in dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) using daytime activity levels, sex, and temperament: a longitudinal comparison ( 2024-04-12 ) Sandberg, Emily Show more Across many species, sleep patterns are associated with variables such as age, sex, daytime activity levels, and temperament. Yet, current research lacks an in-depth characterization of dog sleep patterns and how they vary according to these variables during the critical developmental period of young puppyhood. Such studies are crucial in order to establish dogs as a model organism for studies of sleep and for additional applications in the realms of dog welfare and training. In the present study, we characterized how often and for how long young dogs wake, as well as their barking patterns during sleep. We evaluated sleep behaviors for dogs aged 8-18 weeks and determined longitudinal patterns using a sample of Canine Companions service-dogs-in-training (N=21). Video recordings of dogs were analyzed using a novel coding scheme to determine duration and frequency of awake bouts and barking. Mixed-effects logistic regression models reveal that awake-bout length (minutes) and frequency did not vary significantly by weeks of age, daytime activity levels, or temperament. However, we did find significant sex differences in awake bout length (p<0.009). These results suggest distinct daytime and nighttime temperaments, as well as the importance of this developmental period for developing adultlike sleep patterns. Further study is required to examine sleep behaviors in puppies beyond 18-weeks to better understand how adultlike patterns emerge and the stability of the patterns observed in this study. Show more
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• Thesis & Distinction

Students who demonstrate excellence in their major area of study may qualify for admission to the department’s or programs honors program. By successfully completing a senior honors thesis/project, the candidate will graduate with distinction in the major. Each academic department and program offering a major, as well as Program II, has established procedures and standards for determining Graduation with Distinction. 

The English department offers its majors two options for earning distinction:

• Critical Thesis option
• Creative Writing option
• Spring-to-Fall theses are due by  December 1.
• Fall-to-Spring theses are due by  March 30.

Either two Independent Studies or a "home seminar" and one Independent Study. (Fall/Spring or Spring/Fall.) Under most circumstances, a completed length of 35-70 pages. Home seminars entail enrolling in a course taught by your thesis adviser closely associated with your topic. You should first get your instructor's permission, and arrange to do extra reading and writing assignments for the class that translate the course work into the terms of your thesis. The home seminar option is only available the first semester you are working on your distinction project.

Distinction courses count toward the major. Students must complete 11 total courses to graduate with distinction in the major instead of the standard 10.

Independent Study Numbers for Thesis:

• Creative Writing Option : ENGLISH 495 and 496 Distinction Creative Writing Independent Study
• Critical Option : ENGLISH 497 and 498 Distinction Critical Research Independent Study

Application

Eligible students must have completed (no later than the beginning of their senior year) at least five 200-level English courses (old 100 level) and must have a GPA of at least 3.5 in English courses.

Eligible students must submit:

• Critical and creative writing thesis application
• one writing sample of approximately 10 pages from an English course
• one letter of recommendation from an English faculty member
• a project description 
• basic bibliography (critical applications only; one page single-spaced)

Applications must be submitted to the Director of Undergraduate Studies Offices (303AA). Applications are due November 15 for a spring-to-fall option and March 15  for a fall-to-spring option.

Evaluation Procedure

Upon approval by the instructor, the completed thesis is submitted to the Director of Undergraduate Studies Office (303AA) by December 1 (for a spring-to-fall honors project) or March 30 (for a fall-to-spring honors project) of the senior year for evaluation by a member of the DUS committee, the thesis adviser, and one other faculty member.  

Please submit an electronic .pdf of your completed thesis via email to  [email protected] .

See samples for help formatting and binding your thesis before submission: ​

Levels of Distinction

Three levels: Distinction, High Distinction, or Highest Distinction. Levels of distinction are based on the quality of the completed work. Students who have done satisfactory work in the seminar or independent study but whose theses are denied distinction will simply receive graded credit for their seminars and/or independent studies. Whereas the standard major in English asks for a total of ten courses, students pursuing honors in English will take nine courses plus either two independent studies or a home seminar to be followed by an independent study.

Class of 2023

• “Ellegua,” Nicholas Bryce Bayer
• "Bastards & Butterflies: Theorizing the Hip-Hop epic During the Woke Era,” Kyle Brandon Denis 
• "I Sailed On/Our Ocean,” Dylan Charles Haston
• “Jaywalking,” Mina Jang
• "Ceramics After Sundown: My Family’s Jewish Diaspora Grief and Resilience,” Lily Eliana Levin
• "Undoing Disneyland: Using the Judaic Cynical Hope Storytelling to Reconnect to Tradition,” Alison Rachel Rothberg
• "A Quiet Between Bombardments,” Rebecca Paige Schneid
• "Writing to Heal: The Expulsion of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Literature,” Katelyn Amy Tsai
• "The Great Blue American Novel: A Story of the Crossroads,” Akshaj Raghu Turebylu
• "Reimagining Reality: The Intersection of Black Science Fiction, Structural Violence, and Trauma on the Body and Environment,” Aiyana Villanueva

Class of 2022

• "bright force: poems,” Margot Armbruster
• “The Psychologization of Reading the Nineteenth-Century British Novel,” Sullivan Brem
• "Weaving Together Women’s Narratives, Composing a Room of My Own,” Margaret Gaw
• "Reforming Retribution: Class Systems, Capital Punishment, and Criminal Justice in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist,” Kari Larsen
• “Tracking Simulacra: Baudrillard, Morrison, Mehretu"
• “Paradise Retold: Changing Cosmologies of the Western Frontier,” Taylor Plett

Class of 2021

• "The Sky is Surely Open," James Benjamin
• "The Way Back Up: Narratives of Downfall and Restoration in Fiction of the American South," Genevieve Beske
• "Bridge and Other Stories," Anthony Cardellini
• "How Does Sciences Communication Vary Among Genres?:  Science Through the Pens of Journalists, Creative Writers, and Researchers," Lydia Goff
• "Stuck on the Spectrum:  A Queer Analysis of Male Heterosexuality in Mid-Twentieth Century American Literature," Clifford Haley
• "Noumenal Word," Joseph Haston
• "The Secret War/A New Life," Jared Junkin
• "Postcolonial Environmental Justice and the Novels of Kiran Desai," Anna Kasradze
• "Tianya Haijiao," Julie Peng
• "I Know the End," Charlotte Sununu
• "The Convergence of Nature and Culture:  Illegitimacy in Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda," Charlotte Tellefsen

Class of 2020

• "Witnessing in African and Diaspora Narratives of Illness," Dorothy Oye Adu-Amankwah
• "Protein Binds: Decoding Factory-Farmed Meat in the American South," Arujun Arora
• "Need is Not Quite Belief:" Spritural Yearning in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton," Bailey Bogle
• "Patriarchl Physicians and Dismembered Dames: Edgar Allan Poe and Nineteeth-Century Representation of Gender," Dahlia Chacon
• "Long Way Home," Alice Dai
• "Denizens of Summer," James Flynn
• "I Would Rather Be a Man Than a God': Myth and Modern Humanity in the Einstein Intersection and American Gods," Grace Francese
• "Embodied History: An Analysis of Trauma Inflicted on Female Bodies in the Fiction of Isabelle Allende and Herta Muller," Savita Gupta
• "Bullets in the Dining Room Table': Reckoning with the South and Its Burdens in Faulkner, O'Connor, and Morrison," Megison Hancock
• "Still Life with Fruit," Rachel Hsu
• "Narrative as Search:  Computational Forms of Knowledge in the Novels of Tom McCarthy," Joel Mire
• "The Roadkill Club," Valerie Muensterman
• Conceits of Imagined Silence: Reconciling Recognition and Acknowledgment in Fiction" Brennen Neeley
• "The Eye of Arctos," Emily Otero
• "Welcome to WackoWorld," Kristen Siegel
• "As a Pidgin: A Brief Memoir on Surviving Between Worlds" Ailing Zhou

Class of 2019

• "The Art of Corporate Takeover," Glenn Huang
• "Language Matters: Exploring Language Politics in Native Speaker and Dictee," Hyun Ji Jin
• "Where's My Family," Hannah Kelly
• "If the Sutures Hold," Nadia Kimani
• The Machinations of Sensation: Stimulus, Response and the Irresistible Heroines of the Nineteenth-Century Novel," Christine Kuesel
• "Paradise in America?" Utopia and Ideology in the Godfather," Madison V. Laton
• "The Treatment Plan," Sarah Perrin
• "Historical Visions: Reinventing Historical Narrative Through Word and Image," Alexander Sim
• "Grandmotherhood: A Memoir," Nichole Trofatter Keegan
• "Lines of Crisis: William Carlos Williams, Robert Creeley and Denise Levertov," Aaron Christopher Van Steinberg 
• "Global Hybridities: Rethinking the "Woman Warrior" and the Third Space of Culture," Zhongyu Wang

Class of 2018

• "Syllabic Heirlooms" Chloe Hooks
• "In waves, tilted" Manda Hufstedler
• "Seattle: A Summer Memoir" Emily Waples
• "Litany (based on Crush, a collection of poems by Richard Siken)" Maria Carrasco
• "The Work of Being Worked (For): Intimacy, Knowledge, and Emotional Labor in the Works of Henry James" Lauren Bunce
• "Something on the Cusp of Hope: The Convent as imaginative Practice" Carolina Fernelius
• "Full of Grace and Grandeur: Theological Mystery in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins" Luke Duchemin
• "Repositioning Home: Performing and Reconstructing Identity in the Migration Narrative"  Catherine Ward
• "Within a Jail, My Mind is Still Free': The Language of Resistance from Plantation to Prison in the Works of Frederick Douglass, George Jackson, and Yasin Bey" Jackson Skeen
• "Arrowsmith as Medical and Scientific Microcosm: The Implications of Shifting Belief Systems During the Scientization of Medicine" Emery Jenson

Class of 2017

• "Full and by the Wind" Louis Garza
• "The Resurrectionist" Ryan Eichenwald
• "Delusions of Controls: The V-2 in Gravity's Rainbow" Sean McCroskey
• "Surface and Symbol: Epigram and Genre in the Works of Oscar Wilde" Sarah Atkinson
• "Woman, Nature, and Observer in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and To the Lighthouses: An Ecofeminist Approach" Elizabeth George
• "Creative Impulse in the Modern Age: The Embodiment of Anxiety in the Early Poetry of T.S. Eliot (1910-1917)" Anna Mukamal
• "Inventions of the Human: Othering Caliban and the Ethic of Recognition" Issac Rubin
• "F. Scott Fitzgerald's Women: Independence, Class, and the Superior Male" Margaret Booz

Class of 2016

• "Upon the Face of the Deep: The Voyage of the Sparkling Wave" Gwen Hawkes
• "Lelén: A Memoir for My Mother" Megan Pearson
• "The Car Wreck Album" Josephine Ramseyer
• "Bury Me at the Body Farm" Gabriel Sneed
• "Push, momentum" Isabella Kwai
• "A Cicada's Sorrow" Madeline Pron
• "He Filled the Darkness with Fantasies" Dimeji Abidoye
• "The Anamorphic ‘Figure in the Carpet’: James, Kafka, Morrison and Mitchell " Jacqueline Chipkin
• "Politics and Poetics of the Novel: Using Domesticity to Create the Nation" Katherine Coric
• "Modern Poetry: A Single Genre" JP Lucaci

Class of 2015

• "How to Run Away Without Moving" Mary Hoch 
• "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Dangers of Metaphorizing Ebola as War in the United States" Roshini Jain
• "Dear Master: A Screenplay" Jamie Kessler
• "A Hawk from a Handsaw:  "How Historical Perceptions of Madness Dictated Portrayals of Insanity in British Literature, 1300-1900" Danielle Muoio
• "Every Dram of Woman’s Flesh: "Paulina’s Role and Remedy in The Winter’s Tale" Bailey Sincox
• "The Violence of Alienation in Morrison and Faulkner: A Study in Family, Religion, and Class" Meredith Stabe

Class of 2014

• “Breaking and Entering” Audrey Adu-Appiah 
• “Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, and the Birth of Modernism” Christopher Broderick Honorable Mention:  Bascom Palmer Literary Prize
• “Forms of Femininity: A Modernist Approach to Female Psychology” Grace Chandler
• “This is the Hour of Lead: Emily Dickinson in 1862" Shibani Das
• “Presidential Persuasiveness in Justifying Use of Force In the Post 9/11-Era” Maureen Dolan
• “A Harvard Man” Amanda Egan
• “A Light in the Stairwell” Sarah Elsakr
• “Women in Medicine: What Medical Narratives Reveal About Patriarchy in the Medical System” Jennifer Hong 
• “In Your Own Bosom You Bear Your Heaven and Earth Interiority and Imagination in William Blake’s Jerusalem: The Emanation of Giant Albion” Emmie Le Marchand
• “A Shakespearean Ecology: Interconnected Nature In A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale” Paige Meier
• “It is I you Hold and Who Holds You: The Persuasive Grip of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in the Age of Slam Poetry” Haley Millner
• “Bright Grey:  an Unfinished Novel” Lindsey Osteen
• “Once Upon Our Time: Five Fairy Tale Retellings” Nicholas William Prey
• “Crumbling” Emily Schon
• “Fashion Cues: Visual Politics of Liminality in Quicksand and Quartet” Allison Shen
• “The Search for Transcendence: W.B. Yeats and His Dance Plays” Caitlin Tutterow
• “Soul Power: The Psychology and Politics of Asian American Melancholia” Katherine Zhang

Independent Study Courses

• ENGLISH 491 Independent Study - Independent projects in creative writing, under the supervision of a faculty member. Open to juniors and seniors. Consent of both the instructor and the director of undergraduate studies required.
• ENGLISH 493 Research Independent Study - Individual research in a field of special interest under the supervision of a faculty member, the central goal of which is a substantive paper or written report containing significant analysis and interpretation of a previously approved topic. Open to juniors and seniors. Consent of both the instructor and the director of undergraduate studies required.

You must apply for approval to register for independent study. The procedure, approval process and application form are posted on the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences website.

Completed applications must be submitted to the Director of Undergraduate Studies by one week prior to drop/add. Please bring to 303AA Allen. The Undergraduate Assistant will give a permission number to students whose applications have been approved by both the professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

Departmental Guidelines

The Faculty of the English Department have agreed on these desiderata: tutorial and independent study must not duplicate available course offerings the subject of study must be in the instructor's general field of professional competence the amount of work required must be approximately equivalent to that required in a regular course the student must have had 200-level course work in the general field of the proposal or otherwise have made acceptable preparation to study independently in that area. 

To maintain a high quality of independent study, the faculty member directing the study must have sufficient time to give the course careful attention. The Department has therefore decided that no faculty member shall direct more than three independent study courses in any semester. No student with an incomplete (I) in a course in independent study will be permitted to enroll in a second course. The application (one page only) must include the following information:

Name; year; mailing address, email, student ID (non English majors), and phone number; Semester of study, English courses taken and in progress (with the instructor's name) and any other courses that bear upon the proposed study; title of the independent study, including an abbreviated title of twenty five spaces (including blanks) that will appear on registration records; description of the proposed study including a tentative plan of reading and procedure; the signature of the supervising professor.

Creative Impulse in the Modern Age: The Embodiment of Anxiety in the Early Poetry of T. S. Eliot (1910-1917) – Anna Mukamal (2017)

My principal concern in this work is to investigate whether, and if so, how anxiety may be worthwhile or particularly constructive for poetic production in the modern context. I have approached this question from a variety of epistemological perspectives, including but not limited to 19 th and 20 th century philosophical theories of anxiety, formalist readings of poetry and fiction from the late Victorian and early modernist periods, and contemporary scholarship engaging with principal figures representing the “inward turn” of modernist literature. At stake is the salient and complex concept of the mental and physical state most conducive to the production of timeless art.

Evoking the fundamental tension between individual desire, predilection, and emotion and universal truth, my work “worries” over what Eliot intends to accomplish by writing worried poetry. I have chosen to focus on the verse written and published between 1910 and 1917 in part because it coincides with Eliot’s most direct engagement with the tormented, self-plagued persona whose persistent self-questioning leads to no future remedial action. In this sense, Eliot’s early verse objectifies—by its very rhetorical embodiment—a crippling array of symptoms of the physical, moral, and spiritual devolution that he observes in European society and in which he takes an ambivalent part.

Limiting my textual analysis to this early period is also a way of treading humbly in the domain of ultimate questions and taking Eliot’s own advice, since “it is easier for a young poet to understand and to profit by the work of another young poet, when it is good, than from the work of a mature poet” (MTP 217). While varying in self-proclaimed literary quality and critical reception, the poems with which I engage consistently probe the question of whether the modern person—facing rapid and seemingly irrevocable political polarization, a materially-oriented consumerist culture, and an increasing distrust of God, among other prevalent and distressing modern developments—must necessarily be sick, miserable, anxious, intellectually stunted, and spiritually vide .

Remarkably, in the first phase of his poetic enterprise Eliot creates personae embodying and refracting the ambient anxieties of an era simultaneously increasing in empirical knowledge and declining in certitude. To provide the historical context of these issues, the first chapter, “Global and Individual Anxiety pre- Waste Land ,” traces 19 th century philosophical inquiry with which Eliot would have been familiar and by which he was likely influenced. Kierkegaard’s concept of global anxiety and Nietzsche’s “man of resentment” constitute two central theories of the modern person’s intellectual and physical predicament. The transition between a faith-based and empirical proof-based society in part explains the pervasive global anxiety, as does the broader spiritual uncertainty engendered by a fomenting distrust of truths subjective, and hence necessarily objectively unverifiable. I argue that the state of mind in which Eliot writes The Waste Land in 1922 cannot be fully understood without tracing the spiritual and moral concerns pervasive in the poet’s early poetic enterprise. Is pain a prerequisite for the modernist artist’s creative impetus?

The first and second chapters demonstrate through close textual analysis that Eliot’s early verse is both generative and remedial of anxiety. The second chapter, “The Rhetorical Embodiment of Anxiety,” further explores the connection between pain and artistic production by analyzing the presence of skepticism, inaction, solipsism, and despair in Eliot’s self-lacerating and overly conscious personae. In poems such as “The Burnt Dancer” and the well-known “Portrait of a Lady,” I analyze the rhetorical means by which Eliot conveys disembodied agency, stunted volition, and seemingly irredeemable self-possession. His evocation of repetitive thought processes—mirroring self-paralysis as actions are dissociated from agents—coincides with his search for an overarching morality to transcend the banal propriety of his sociocultural milieu. Eliot writes, in other words, to discover an authentic communicative mode even while acutely aware of the inherent ineffability of subjective truth and the linguistic limitations of an arbitrary, imperfect system of language. Eliot’s self-locating within the modern petit-bourgeois cultural sensibility renders even more convincing his poetic evocation of the Faustian myth of human love and high artistry. The resonance between his ultimate questions and those of both Nietzsche and Mann indicates that aggression may be a necessary effect of persistent inner doubt and self- loathing. This helps to explain why the age’s pervasive sexual anxiety may correspond with a general decadence of communicability in the context of a transactional consumerist culture in which actions are increasingly devoid of deeper meaning.

Chapter 3, “The Anxiety of Artistic Production,” poses the question of how the modernist artist may presume , to employ an idiom germane to Eliot, to produce art in the modern world. Is it even possible in such a chaotic environment to create ordered art, and must art necessarily denote order or must it instead evolve to fulfill another function more compatible with modern sensibilities? Preceding Chapter 4’s delineation of the physical and psychological health effects once the artist has committed himself to the actual generative process, this chapter traces anxieties with a dilatory function before the art’s conception, relying in part on Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence . Public reception of the work, the elusiveness of finding a cohesive voice, and the near-impossibility of justifying a poetic enterprise as meaningful in the face of national instability and even tragedy: these are just a few of the anxieties plaguing the modernist artist, perhaps preventing him from even attempting to reflect the neuroses of his time. Even if the artist determines that there is something new to be said , he must overcome the metaphysical reality of death—which, for Eliot, represents the ultimate inability to connect with others— believing that timeless art lends meaning to the vast expanse of time beyond his own death.

The fourth chapter extends fluidly into the relationship between sickness and poetic productivity, interrogating the physical and psychological health effects once the poet has sacrificed himself to active artistic production. Does attained artistic sublimity necessarily presuppose perverse health? In this chapter I examine Eliot’s concept of the sacrifice of the self to art, offering a reading of Mann’s Death in Venice (1912), concomitant with Eliot’s early verse, to demonstrate that the artist’s ambivalently divided self—between a bourgeois and bohemian sensibility—manifests at the level of aesthetic form. Both Eliot and Mann create personae representing the “delicate heroism suited to the times” and thus epitomizing the man of the era, for better or for worse (DV 46). I have chosen to incorporate early Mann because both writers subtly lament the modern age’s lost telos of beauty, evoking the tension between the finite body and the (perhaps) immortal mind through a tangible anxiety about mortality and a notable coupling of spiritual sublimation and physical deterioration. I argue that the artists’ depiction of sickness is a commentary on the moral, physical, and psychological downturn of Europe at the turn of the 20 th century. The feckless and sick Herr Spinell of Mann’s “Tristan” and Emma Bovary of Flaubert’s classic novel epitomize, in turn, the potential for a tragically scripted consciousness to devolve into aggression and violence as well as the loss of action and spiritual, rather than material comfort, as meaningful categories of existence.

The final chapter, “Anxiety and the Bourgeois Sensibility,” investigates the purpose or objective of interrogating anxiety through poetry, determining the “work,” in a non-material but rather intellectual and spiritual sense, that Eliot’s early verse accomplishes for his age. What is at stake in Eliot’s poetic unveiling of the volatile psychological state hidden by the placid surface of bourgeois propriety, and how may he address its unsavory effects from within that very culture? Probing the ambivalence of the bourgeois sociocultural marker, I argue that Eliot’s early verse reveals the inauthenticity of scripted communicative modes. Preventing modern people from engaging with eternal truths, moral conformism supplants independence of thought—while material success in a consumerist culture obscures the normative good—and these developments are not only detrimental for social discourse, but also for literature. The modernist artist more broadly, and Eliot in particular, aims to combat the general societal ignorance of the insidious social tyranny that engenders a widespread dissolution of the causative link between feelings and agency. Communication in the modern world, Eliot’s early verse contests, is a parody of authentic interpersonal communion. Yet ever-present in the poetry are glimpses of hope resisting the tempting idea that subjectivity of experience implies the fundamental incommunicability of human souls.

As a developing artist, Eliot relies on the poetic medium to probe the essential question— later adumbrated in Heidegger’s 1927 Being and Time— of whether boredom and anxiety are more authentic affective ways of being in the world than happiness. As a whole, my work continues and honors this question’s seeming insolubility. I hope to show that anxiety—Eliot’s individual anxiety, the ambient anxiety of his era, the accrual of global anxiety over time— constitutes an underexplored and undeniable creative impetus for Eliot and his contemporaries.

Not in the clinical sense, but rather as a quotidian force with which the thoughtful individual necessarily grapples, modern anxiety is paradoxically both inhibitive and generative. This work, in addition to demonstrating the young Eliot’s engagement with profound existential questions of meaning, affirms that anxiety is a valuable framework for analyzing the conditions of timeless artistic production in the modern world.

The Anamorphic “Figure in the Carpet”: James, Kafka, Morrison and Mitchell – Jackie Chipkin (2016)

How does fiction challenge readers to expand their definitions of human life? For my honors thesis, I want to investigate forms of fiction that approach this question from an eccentric angle. At first, these texts’ unconventional vantage points seem to defy what the reader considers “realism,” aligning his or her view with what Giorgio Agamben says of the contemporary author: those who truly “belong to their time” neither “coincide with it nor adjust themselves to its demands” (Agamben 40). Just so, rather than ignore the reality of their moment, the novels I consider in this thesis question the conventional way of looking at it. The characters whose experiences will shape my study are neither confined to the human body nor limited to its natural abilities and traditional habits of mind; they elude normative notions of form and cognitive faculty. At the same time, the reader cannot dismiss the palpable plasticity of these characters as primitive or fantastic. Alongside their parents, siblings and lovers, these characters inhabit familiar worlds shaped by the same everyday practices and socio-economic force fields that shape the human figure under realism. They exist in relation to, rather than outside of, the world as it is depicted in novels more squarely in the tradition of European realism. These characters push the envelope of realism farther than any traditional work of realism from a position within it.

My love of reading and analysis has been motivated by a desire to understand the world around me. Since childhood, I have been drawn to works that push me to examine and reimagine my environment. The characters I meet are my guides and the fulcrum of my literary experience. My world and a protagonist’s world are components of a reality I imaginatively share with that character and other readers. These characters’ thoughts, emotions, conversations, relationships and actions embody the ebb and flow of human experience across time and space. Through them I inhabit alternative worlds and, in turn, better understand my own.

As I immersed myself in the novels of Hemingway, Melville, Dickens, Austen, James, Woolf and others, I discovered how different novels produced the cultural boundaries within which readers have to live in order to imaginatively inhabit the worlds of fictional characters. Working to reconstruct the essential differences that distinguish culture from nature, I came to understand how the novel contributed to the concept of the modern individual. Once the novel had created this figure, readers understood themselves in terms of a narrative that produced a self-governing subject (Armstrong 25). For me, the novel became the paramount literary form through which I could explore fiction’s varying, shifting definitions of human life. I first encountered and was drawn into this project in a survey course of gothic fiction. From Shelley’s Frankenstein to Wilde’s Dorian Gray , gothic works drove me to question the parameters that define human life and reality.

Similarly, as an aspiring physician, I strive to make sense of my environment through the stories of those who occupy perspectives different than my own. As an avid reader and writer, I have chosen to approach medicine through narratives of illness. From Bolivia to North Carolina, from pediatric hospitals to hospice centers, I have asked the patients I have met to share their medical experiences with me. As they have entrusted me with their memories and emotions, I have strived to honor their stories with my words. Just as a character’s world is not my world, I must recognize that a patient’s experience is not my experience. As a doctor interacting with patients—like a reader interacting with characters—I must understand the “literary” rules governing the patient’s world in order to understand how the patient feels and what his or her “normal” condition is. These narratives drive me to pursue a career in medicine—to partner with patients to write stories shaped by their notions of health and recovery.

Though in strikingly different ways, all of the eccentric novels I will analyze in my thesis make the same formal variation on traditional realism; namely, they bind together two absolutely incompatible views of the same literary world. These works challenge readers to confront incompatible perspectives—that expected of the normative reality and reader and that of the eccentric character—simultaneously. These novels consequently make us see the same world as two worlds that cannot be synthesized. Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw , presenting two incompatible perspectives, models this phenomenon. From one perspective, the novella is a traditional British ghost tale, a chilling account of an unnamed governess’ fantastic delusions and psychotic demise. But from another—that of the governess—the story is factual recount of a lived experience that defies scientific explanation. James begins to layer these perspectives within the novella’s first pages. The Turn of the Screw is a story thrice told: first from the governess to Douglas, then from Douglas to the narrator, and finally from the narrator to the reader. The narrator describes these types of stories as a form of entertainment, intending to “hold” an audience and render listeners “breathless” (James 1).

James warns us that storytellers do not necessarily adhere to fact, but rather strive to elicit emotional reactions. The governess’ tale, however, is a “written” document (3), a permanent record that lays claim to archival credibility. While the narrator assures readers that “this narrative” is an “exact transcript” of that evening (3), James does not clarify whether the original story—rather than merely its repetition—is the product of empirical observation or bad affect. Holding the governess’ perspective beside that of the story’s narration, James’ novella is simultaneously a ghost tale and a “manuscript” documenting the preternatural events at the country estate where she was the chief guardian of two privileged but orphaned children (3). The author’s cues do not indicate whether we are to regard this tale as true to the facts to which it testifies, true to what the governess feels, or both.

As the novella unfolds, James’ irreconcilable perspectives continue to clash. The governess asks how she will “retrace…the strange steps of [her] obsession” (80). She frequently mentions her vivid imagination and the emotions that she allows to actively control her thoughts, admitting that she is “rather easily carried away” (31). If the spirits that once inhabit Bly can still be detected there, self-doubt and mania are reasonable responses for these extenuating circumstances. Under these conditions, readers can justify why the governess tries to discredit these apparitions by invoking “obsession” and “imagination” (80). If we take the governess’s descriptions of herself as true, then the ghosts are creations of her imagination. But can we trust the words of a woman who claims that her own words are untrustworthy? James’ protagonist is not inherently an unreliable narrator; rather, she is only unreliable in that readers cannot assess whether she is reliable or not. Thus, James’ text neither supports nor refutes the governess’s judgment by indicating what is actually there to be seen; rather, he embeds her story within a landscape of normative reality so that it not only calls the governess’ view into question but calls the normative view into question as well.

Most criticism from 1921-1970 approaches James’s text psychoanalytically. Overall, these theorists argue that the ghosts and attendant horrors are figments of the governess’ neurotic imagination. The reasoning goes that because “there is never any evidence that anybody but the governess sees the ghosts” (James, Esch and Warren 172), the ghosts must be delusional, arising from factors implied but not established by her tale. A number of readers in this tradition, such as Edna Kenton, bring Freudian analysis to bear on this account, transforming it into a case history. Kenton state that the governess is “trying to harmonize her own disharmonies by creating discords outside herself” (169). The literary critic argues that the governess’ story stems from the trauma of unrequited love; the ghosts represent the governess’ repressed sexual passion for her master. Alternatively, Harold Goddard accredits the governess’s psychosis to an unwholesome childhood, as “the young woman’s home and early environment…point to its stifling narrowness” (161).

While there is no evidence that anyone besides the governess sees the ghosts, neither is there any evidence that the children she supervises do not see or communicate with the ghosts of their former governess and groundskeeper. Given the lack of evidence to show that the governess is insane, and thus the ghosts imaginary, these critics almost uniformly begin by declaring that the ghosts are imaginary in order to classify the governess as psychotic. On the assumption that the ghosts cannot be real, they lace their arguments with diagnostic diction. They label the governess a “victim of insomnia” (161). They declare that her “overwrought condition” leads to “insanity,” “hallucinations” and “mania” (163-64). These terms and the conditions they label (for example, a manic episode) are all clearly defined by bodies of medical literature. In this context, however, criticism uses these terms rhetorically; they are technical terms that, albeit persuasive, are not substantiated by the text. Because James does not provide textual evidence for the governess’ psychosis, we cannot establish her insanity; indeed, we cannot even prove that the ghosts are “exquisite dramatizations of her little personal mystery” (170). The critics succeed in normalizing one view of the world by delegitimizing another. They apply psychoanalysis to a fictional character in order to establish the authority of modern secular realism as if to insist that there can only be one reading of reality. Any reality that resists that reading is consequently reduced to the status of ignorance or pathology, if not unreliability. This interpretive imperialism refuses to acknowledge that at any point in time, the same world may be an entirely different world for a different person bearing different cultural baggage. Through the interpolation of discrete perspectives within one another, James’ novel form works to equip readers with more flexible, critical cultural tools.

In order to develop such an approach, I use the figure of anamorphosis as a way of explaining how novels such as The Turn of the Screw employ eccentric characters to revise the novel form. Anamorphosis is an image that appears distorted when viewed from a normative perspective, requiring specific viewpoints or tools to reconstitute its true form. This true form is not one of a single, stable reality. Rather, it is a composition of multiple frameworks and embedded perspectives—the artist’s interpolative machinery. Hanneke Grootenboer, art historian and author of The Rhetoric of Perspective, stresses the paradoxical etymology of anamorphosis. In classical Greek, anamorphosis literally translates as “distortion,” while in Modern Greek, ana- functions both as the English prefixes dis - , as in “distortion,” and re- , as in “reformation” (Grootenboer 101). Anamorphosis can thus be understood as “that which lacks a proper shape” and the “restoring of that which has been out of shape” (101). Its meaning refers to the actual image in addition to the process of its reshaping—that is, the viewer’s search for the right point of view.

Anamorphism began as a series of perspective experiments in the 1500s and 1600s (Castillo), and its appearance as a consciously applied technique in art history corresponds to the invention of linear perspective (Collins). As Renaissance artists began to master traditional methods of perspective, they also learned to manipulate those methods and distort the object they produced accordingly. The geometry of anamorphic images was considered revolutionary in the sense that it did not strictly conform to the Cartesian coordinate system, which localizes points in space through their relative distances from perpendicular intersecting lines (Collins). It is easy to see how the Cartesian system alone is inadequate to capture the multiple perspectives that simultaneously occupy a common reality. In anamorphic art, artists interpolate an image that is not oriented according to the normatively positioned spectator within an image that is indeed oriented according toward the ideal spectator in a Cartesian system. Undermining the orthodox principles of perspective upon which it depends, anamorphic art can be considered a counterpart of both Cartesian rationalism and doubt. By challenging the Cartesian system from within it, artists who produce anamorphic art challenge the notion of a single, normative reality. I will demonstrate that novelists as well as visual artists think in terms of the figure of anamorphosis when they embed an eccentric perspective within a normative one. These writers strive to honor multiple, legitimate perspectives that coexist at any moment within a shared reality.

Anamorphic art pushes readers to linger in the uncomfortable intersection of incompatible perspectives. Donald Preziosi, art historian, states that in anamorphic art, “relationships among units in the archive are visible (that is, legible) only from certain prefabricated stances, positions, or attitudes toward the system” (119). Anamorphic images are the product of carefully calculated angles; their forms and desired effects are rooted in the experimentation of mathematics as well as art. Typically, in drawings and paintings, viewers would be required to physically shift their positions in order to see an alternate image within the portrait or scene, usually rendered along an alternate geometrical plane. In addition to anamorphic images created on two-dimensional surfaces, artists also employ tools such as mirrors and conical surfaces to guide viewers to the desired images. Regardless of the medium, an artist’s craftsmanship and ingenuity stem from his or her ability to engineer the interpolation of conflicting perspectives.

The perceptual doubling of anamorphosis produces a rupture in the viewer’s gaze, as Hans Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors famously demonstrates. As viewers move to the right, glancing back at the portrait, they glimpse not the iconic representation of the two ambassadors they saw from the front view, but rather, a skull (Holbein). Holbein’s painting appears to look back at the viewer, to demand that the spectator actively engage the artwork’s virtual affects. Viewers must move from the center of the image to the margins in order to understand the image in front of them. The gymnastics necessary for the successful apprehension of the anamorphic image casts observers in active roles. A crucial aspect of the anamorphic experience in art, therefore, is the way in which it requires that the experience be performed by the body. Unmoored from its perceptual anchors, the body must practice a form of spectatorship beyond that of the normative perspective. Stephen Greenblatt, American scholar of Renaissance and Shakespearean studies, argues that in demanding this movement, Holbein’s portrait threatens to undermine “the very concept of locatable reality upon which we conventionally rely in our mappings of the world, to subordinate the sign systems we so confidently use to a larger doubt” (20-21). How does literature accomplish this same subordination of the sign systems on which we conventionally rely as readers of “a larger doubt” (20-21)?

Ernest Gilman first applied the concept of anamorphosis to literature. In his book on seventeenth-century English literature, Gilman proposes that displays of wit in poetry are like displays of “visual wit in what the seventeenth century called the 'curious perspective,' pictures or devices which manipulate the conventions of linear perspective to achieve ingenious effects” (248). In Shakespeare’s Richard II , Gilman interprets Bushy's witty speech of comfort to the queen (qtd. in Gilman 248), which plays on terms of perspective vision, and by analogy with Holbein's double portrait, The Ambassadors . Gilman argues that the play must be interpreted from two places, “one facing straight, the other oblique,” and states that anamorphic texts challenge “multiple conceptual and perspective registers at once” (249). Gilman finds, in conclusion, that

Two modes of explanation in the same historical event…The play neither endorses nor denies the Tudor myth but builds on its premises to show that the providential theory of the king's double nature necessarily requires a complex kind of doublethink for which the curious perspective is the visual model. (249)

Beyond Gilman’s Shakespearean criticisms, anamorphosis is rarely referenced in literary analysis.

However, as I researched this project, I became convinced that anamorphosis should be applied to literary analysis. Indeed, I discovered that principles of anamorphosis resonated with the very novels featuring eccentric perspectives that I have always found compelling. I asked myself: what form does anamorphosis assume in prose? How does literature examine two conflicting realities? Wielding words in place of paintbrushes, authors, too, interpolate one viewpoint within a normative framework with which it is incompatible. Through the voices of their characters, novels produce readings that can challenge readers to stand at the crossroads of two conflicting perspectives and consider an order of things and events that is off-center in relation to their own. Most interpretive systems attempt to produce a unity which subordinates the minority point of view, such as critics who aim to silence the governess’ perspective through diagnoses of insanity. These systems aim to render culturally variant views of the world illegitimate by classifying them as either delusional or merely fictional. Novels that have been so marginalized, for whatever reason, actually belong to a tradition that deliberately inserts eccentric viewpoints within a normative world so as to naturalize the abnormal and broaden the conceptual boundaries of realism. These works require readers to struggle with conflicting definitions of human life. To argue that anamorphosis identifies an important tradition of fiction, I will show how select novels use what we dismiss as “magic,” if not “delusion,” to challenge us to redefine boundaries of realism, our capacity for sympathetic identification and parameters of human life itself.

To test this hypothesis, I will investigate Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis , Toni Morrison’s Beloved and David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten. Kafka’s novella insists that Gregor Samsa is physiologically—not allegorically, metaphorically, or symbolically—transformed into an insect. Yet despite his revolting antennae and cravings for rotten food, Gregor maintains the cognitive and intellectual depth he possessed in typical human form. In Morrison’s novel, Beloved is neither an intangible memory nor a translucent ghost; she is a corporeal figure waiting on the steps of 124. Finally, in Mitchell’s Ghostwritten , a disembodied character called the noncorpum transmigrates from one specifically located host to another, crossing the span of humanity from a psychotic terrorist in Tokyo to a late-night DJ in New York. Gregor is typically human in cognitive faculty but not in biological form.

Beloved possesses a typical human form but an extra-human cognitive faculty. The noncorpum remaps the brain’s codification as it moves from body to body. By looking closely at these novels—which feature a broad range of character forms and cognitive abilities—in relation to one another, my purpose is to show how each novel remodels the formula of one mind to one body that defines the modern individual.

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2024 Senior Theses - Graduated with Distinction

Angikar ghosal.

Representation Theoretic Formulation of Quantum Error Correcting Codes Advisor: Robert Calderbank

Benjamin Goldstein

Soap-Film-Like Surfaces of Revolution Advisor: Demetre Kazaras

Noah Harris

Black Hole Thermodynamics, Large N Gauge Theories, and Deriving the AdS/CFT Correspondence Advisor: Paul Aspinwall

Long-Time Behavior of Some ODEs with Partial Damping Advisor: Kyle Liss

Aram Lindroth

Towards a Functional Equation for the $\mathbb{A}^1$-Logarithmic Zeta Function Advisor: Kirsten Wickelgren

Emmanuel Mokel

Monitoring Nonstationary Variance to Assess Convergence of Markov Chain Monte Carlo Advisor: Jonathan Mattingly

Nathan Nguyen

Towards Solving Variational Graphon Problem for Random Hypergraphs Advisor: Nicholas Cook

Nathanael Ong

On the Betti Numbers of Rank 2 Compact Locally Symmetric Spaces Advisor: Mark Stern

Jean-Luc Rabideau

Random Restrictions in the p-Biased Measure Advisor: Henry Pfister

Riki Shimizu

Unveil Sleep Spindles with Concentration of Frequency and Time (ConceFT) Advisor: Hau-Tieng Wu

December 2023

Quantum State Tomography via Tensor Ring Representation Advisor: Jianfeng Lu

Jesse Zhang

Answer Filtration with Filtration: Toward a Theory of Lifetime Filtration for Multiparameter Persistence Modules Advisor: Ezra Miller

Alex Burgin

The Schrodinger Maximal Function and Generalizations Advisor: Lillian Pierce

Nick Chakraborty

Improve Accuracy and Speed of Manifold Reconstruction and De-Noising from Scattered Data in R 2 Advisor: Hongkai Zhao

Jeffrey Cheng

Mixing in Measure Preserving Dynamical Systems Advisor: Tarek Elgindi

Carson Dudley

A Mathematical Model of a Peritoneal Staphylococcus Aureus infection Advisor: Anna Nelson

Riley Fisher

Pattern Formation in Evolving Domains Advisor: Tom Witelski

Multitaper Wave-Shape F-Test For Detecting Non-Sinusoidal Oscillations Advisor: Hau-Tieng Wu

Diffusing on multiple fibers Advisor: Ingrid Daubechies and Shira Faigenbaum

December 2022

Symmetric Formulas for Products of Permutations Advisor: Benjamin Rossman

A homotopic variant of policy gradients for the linear quadratic regulator problem Advisor: Andrea Agazzi

Nathan Geist

Homological algebra of modules over real polyhedral groups Advisor: Ezra Miller

Braden Hoagland

Percolation Processes on Dynamically Grown Graphs Advisor: Rick Durrett

Daniel Hwang

Analyzing the bistability of the minimally bistable ERK network using the discriminant locus Advisor: Maggie Regan

Wallace Peaslee

Dolbeault Cohomology of Non-Compact Metric Graphs Advisor: Joseph Rabinoff

Mathematical Modeling of TIE1 and Endothelial Metabolism Advisor: Michael Reed

December 2021

Some Mathematical Problems in Quantum Computing and Quantum Information Advisor: Robert Calderbank

Anuk Dayaprema

Solitons for the closed G2 Laplacian flow in the cohomogeneity-one setting Advisor: Mark Haskins

Ziyang Ding

At the Intersection of Deep Sequential and State-space Model Framework Advisor: Sayan Mukherjee

Lucas Fagan

Schur Polynomials and Crystal Graphs Advisor: Spencer Leslie

Resolving Simpson’s Paradox in NC Public School Grading System Advisor: Greg Herschlag

Phoebe Klett

Implementing non-canonical Sylvan Resolutions Advisor: Ezra Miller

Jianyou Wang

Deep Reinforcement Adaptive Computational Processor Advisor: Vahid Tarokh

Alex Damian

Theoretical Guarantees for Signal Recovery Advisor: Hau-tieng Wu

Blythe Davis

The Spherical Manifold Realization Problem Advisor: Faramarz Vafaee

Onkar Gujral

Khovanov Homology and Knot Concordance dvisor: Adam Levine

Xiayimei Han

Hodge Representations of Calabi-Yau 3 Folds Advisor:  Colleen Robles

Remy Kassem

Symmetry Detection of Unknown Volumes from Projected Variations Advisor: Xiuyuan Cheng

Joey Li

Algebraic Data Structures for Decomposing Multipersistence  Modules Advisor: Ezra Miller 

Evaluating Bayesian Convolutional Neural Networks in the Clinic Advisor: Paul Bendich

Jonathan Michala

Uniqueness of Ranked Pairs Advisor: Hubert Bray 

Benjamin Nativi

An Analogue of Gauss Composition for Binary Cubic Forms Advisor: Aaron Pollack

Computing Values of Symmetric Square L-Functions using Ichino's Pullback Formula Advisor: Aaron Pollack

Junmo Ryang

Embedding Lagrangian Surfaces Advisor: Robert Bryant

Irina Cristali

Poisson Percolation on the Square Lattice Advisors: Rick Durrett, Matthew Junge

Creating Musical Rubato Using Deep Learning Advisor: Ezra Miller

Zhenhua Liu

Stationary One-Sided Area Minimizing Hypersurfaces with Isolated Singularities Advisors: William Allard, Hubert Bray, Robert Bryant

Xueying Wang

Unfolding High-Dimensional Convex Polyhedra Advisor: Ezra Miller

Claire Wiebe

Analyzing the Effects of Partisan Correlation on Election Outcomes using Order Statistics Advisor: Jonathan Mattingly

Gaitling Zhou

Elliptic Curves over Dedekind Domains Advisor: William Pardon

(you can search for archived versions of these theses here )

• Surabhi Beriwal  Statistical analysis of fruit fly wing vein topology  (2018) [with E. Miller]
• Trung Can  The Heisenberg-Weyl Group, Finite Symplectic Geometry, and their applications   (2018) [with R. Calderbank]
• Feng Gui  On Calibrations for Area Minimizing Cones  (2018) with [H. Bray]
• Neel Kurupassery   Cryptographic Primitives in Artin Groups of Type I k (m)    (2018)  [with M. Abel]
• Eric Peshkin  T he quantification of markers of economic development from time-series satellite imagery using deep learning   (2018) with [with P. Bendich and D. Thomas]
• Weiyao Wang   Understanding Operator Reed-Muller Codes Through the Weyl Transform   (2018) [with R. Calderbank]
• Alexander Pieloch  The Topology of Moduli Spaces of Real Algebraic Curves  (2017) [with R. Hain]
• Samadwara Reddy  The Vietoris–Rips Complexes of Finite Subsets of an Ellipse of Small Eccentricity  (2017) [with H. Adams]
• Lindsey Brown  An Application of Abstract Algebra to the Neural Code for Sound Localization in Barn Owls  (2016) [with M. Reed]
• David Builes  The Large Cardinal Hierarchy  (2016) [with R. Hodel]
• Kyle Casey  Siegel Modular Forms  (2016) [with L. Saper]
• Bryan Runjing Liu  Modeling the Effects of Positive and Negative Feedback in Kidney Blood Flow Control  (2016) [with A. Layton]
• Francois Thelot A Maximum Entropy Based Approach for the Description of the Conformational Ensemble of Calmodulin from Paramagnetic NMR (2016) [with M. Maggioni and B. Donald]
• Will Victor  Efficient algorithms for Traffic Data Analysis  (2016)[computer science with P. Agarwal]
• Paul Ziquan Yang  Morphisms with Only Mild Singular Fibers and Bertini Theorems over Finite Fields  (2016) [with C. Schoen]
• Rex Zhitao Ying  Approximation Algorithms of Dynamic Time Warping and Edit Distance  (2016) [computer science with P. Agarwal]
• Roger Zou  Deformable Graph Model for Trackng Epithelial Cell Sheets in Florescence Microscopy  (2016)[computer science with C. Tomasi]
• Anne Talkington  Modeling the Dynamics of Cancerous Cells in vivo  (2015) [with R. Durrett]
• Rowena Gan  Geometry of Impressionist Music  (2015) [with E. Miller]
• David Hemminger  Augmentation Rank of Satellites with Braid Pattern  (2015) [with L. Ng and C. Cornwell]
• Mandy Jiang  Dynamic random network model for human papilloma virus transmission  (2015) [with M. Ryser]
• Hunter Nisonoff  Efficient Partition Function Estimatation in Computational Protein Design  (2015) [with M. Maggioni]
• Eugene Rabinovich  The Conformal Manifold in N=(2,2) SCFTs    (2015)  [physics  with R. Plesser]
• Marshall Ratliff  Introducing the Cover tree to Music Information Retrieval  (2015) [with P. Bendich]
• Brett Schnobrich  Heisenberg-Weyl Group, Subspace Packings, and Image Processing  (2015) [with R. Calderbank]
• Christy Vaughn  Stochastic Study of Gerrymandering  (2015) [with J. Mattingly]
• Aashiq Dheeraj  A Stochastic Spatial Model for Tumor Growth  (2014) [with R. Durrett]
• Joshua Izzard  Rank p 2  Representations of Semisimple Lie Algebras  (2014) [with J. Getz]
• Kathleen Lan  Coalescing random walks on n-block Markov chains  (2014) [with K. McGoff]
• Leslie Lei Lei  Infinite Swapping Simulated Tempering  (2014) [with J. Lu]
• Julia Ni  A convex approach to tree-based wavelet compression  (2014) [with A. Thompson]
• Jiarou Ivy Shen  Merge times and hitting times of time-inhomogeneous Markov chains  (2014) [with D. Sivakoff]
• Daniel Stern  Low-Order Lagrangians Depending on a Metric and a Matter Field of Arbitrary Rank  (2014) [with H. Bray]
• Daniel Vitek  Knot Contact Homology and the Augmentation Polynomial  (2014) [with C. Cornwell]
• Alexander Wertheim  Complex Multiplication on Elliptic Curves  (2014) [with L. Saper]
• Luxi Wei  Modeling Credit Risk using Rating and Environmental Factors  (2014) [with R. Durrett]
• Timothy Chang  On the existence of a simple winning strategy in the T(4.3) knot game  (2013) [with D. Herzog]
• Conrad de Peuter  Modeling basketball games as alternating renewal-reward processes and predicting match outcomes  (2013) [with R. Durrett]
• Bryan Jacobson  A practical approximation of persistent local homology  (2013) [with P. Bendich]
• Kara Karpman  Simulating mucociliary transport using the method of regularized Stokelets  (2013) [with A. Layton]
• Carmen Lopez  Modeling the folate pathway in Escherichia coli  (2013) [with A. Layton]
• James Mallernee  Strategy and honesty based comparison of preferential ballot voting methods  (2013) [with H. Bray]
• William Zhang  Evolutionary dynamics in host pathogen model  (2013) [with R. Durrett]
• Ben Bellis  Investigation of a Local Computation of the Signature from the Triangulation of a Manifold  (2012) [with M. Stern]
• Adrian Chan  Pricing financial derivatives with multi-task machine learning and mixed effects method  (2012) [with J. Bouvrie]
• Kyu Won Choi  Relative contributions of common jumps in realized correlations  (2012) [with A. Petters]
• Veronica Ciocanel  Analysis of the nonlinear dynamics of the forced planar string pendulum  (2012) [with T. Witelski]
• Kaveh Danesh  A branching process model of ovarian cancer  (2012) [with R. Durrett]
• Theo Frehlinghuysen  Carbon sequestration via forest management techniques  (2012) [with D. Kraines]
• Yingyi Shen  A study of edge toric ideals using associated graphs  (2012) [with S. Mapes]
• Daniel Thielman  Complex-balanced steady state of chemical reaction networks that contain an Eulerian cycle  (2012) [with C. Berkesch]
• Kaitlin Daniels  Noise driven Transitions between stable equilibria in stochastic dynamical systems  (2011) [with A. Athreya]
• Alan Guo  Lattice point methods for combinatorial games  (2011) [with E. Miller]
• Nils Hultgren  Centrality and network analysis: A perturbative approach to dynamical importance  (2011) [with I. Matic]
• Hans Kist  Estimating carbon sequestration potential in the boreal forests  (2011) [with D. Kraines]
• Misha Lavrov  Invariants in Legendrian links in the solid torus  (2011) [with D. Rutherford]
• Philip Pham  Tubuloglomerular feedback signal transduction in the loops of Henle  (2011) [with A. Layton]
• Thames Sae Sue  A simple cardiac model exhibiting stationary discordant alternans  (2011) [with D. Schaeffer]
• Max Tabachnik  An analysis of preferential ballot voting methods  (2011) [with H. Bray]
• Bo Waggoner  A model of the foot and ankle in running  (2011) [with E. Bouzarth]
• Wutichai Chongchitmate  Classification of Legendrian knots and links  (2010) [with L. Ng]
• Jason D. Lee  Multiscale analysis of dynamic graphs  (2010) [with M. Maggioni]
• Jeremy Semko  Statistical analysis simulations of coarsening droplets coating a hydrophobic surface  (2010) [with T. Witelski]
• Amy Wen  Model of feedback-mediated dynamics of coupled nephrons with compliant thick ascending limbs  (2010) [with A. Layton]
• Jason Ferguson  Factorization of Primes in Biquadratic Extensions of Q  (2009) [with C. Schoen]
• Jared Haftel  A Closer Look at ADC multivariate GARCH  (2009) [with M. Huber]
• Mark Hallen  Improving accuracy and scope of quantitative FRAP analysis  (2009) [with A. Layton]
• Andy Ng  Retinoid Transport in the Vision cycle  (2009) [with J. Mercer]
• Aaron Pollack  Relations between special derivations arising from modular forms  (2009) [with R. Hain]
• Jesse Thorner  Simplicial homology and DeRham’s theorem  (2009) [with W. Allard]
• Barry Wright III  Objective measures of preferential ballot voting systems  (2009) [with H. Bray]
• Michael Bauer  Existence and stability of patterns arising from square wave forcing of the damped Mathieu equation  (2008) [with A. Catlla]
• Tirasan Khandhawit  On Legandrean and transverse knots  (2008) [with L. Ng]
• Aalok Shah  An overview of fast marching and optimal control methods for trajectory optimization  (2008) [with W. Allard]
• Charles Staats III  Application of discrete geometry to the construction of Laurent-rational zeros  (2008) [with S. Sharif]
• Elliott Wolf  Computational pathways to Godel’s first incompletness theorem  (2008) [with R. Hodel]
• Lingen Zhang  The motion of sets of vortices  (2008) [with T. Witelski]
• Morgan Brown  An algorithm for tracking persistence pairing of a discrete homotopy of Morse functions on S 2   (2007) [with J.Harer]
• Brandon Levin  Class field theory and the problem of representing primes by binary quadratic forms  (2007) [with L. Saper]
• Stepan Paul  Lines and conics relative to degenerating divisors in CP 2   (2007) [with J. Davis]
• James Zou  3-D reconstruction and topological analysis of root architecture  (2007) [with J. Harer]
• Pradeep Baliga  Dynamic cellular automata model of toll plaza traffic flows  (2006) [with W. G. Mitchener]
• Adam Chandler  Dynamic cellular automata model of toll plaza traffic flows  (2006) [with W. G. Mitchener]
• Matthew Fischer  Mapping model of cardiac-membrane dynamics  (2006) [with D. Schaeffer]
• Qinzheng Tian  Simulation of Newtonian fluid flow between rotating cylinders  (2006) [with T. Witelski]
• Yee Lok Wong  Models of instant runoff voting  (2006) [with J. Mattingly]
• Oaz Nir  Mechanical arms and algebraic topology  (2005) [with J.Harer]
• Mayank Varia  Explicit calculation of the L invariant for Kummer surfaces  (2005) [with J. Hanke]
• David Arthur  On the higher Hasse-Witt matrices and related in variants  (2004) [with W. Pardon]
• Suzy Borgschulte  A mathematical approach to the panting of dogs  (2004) [with M. Reed]
• Lauren M. Childs  Scaling population dynamics from the macroscopic to the microscopic  (2004) [with T. Kepler]
• Ryan Letchworth  Wavelet methods for numerical solutions of differential equations  (2004) [with S. Roudenko]
• David Marks  Coadjoint orbits and geometric quantization  (2004) [with M.R. Plesser]
• Lori Peacock  Distributions of the small eigenvalues of Wishart matrices  (2004) [with B. Rider]
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• Marie Guerraty  Controlling alternans in a cardiac map model  (2003) [with M. Romeo]
• Meredith C. Houlton  Classification of critical curves and preliminary analysis of caustics  (2003) [with A. Petters]
• Steven R. Nicklas  Envy and satisfaction in the public goods game  (2003) [with D. Kraines]
• Dane R. Voris  A numerical approach to the M t /M t /N t  queue with abandonment  (2003) [with B. Rider]
• Melanie Wood  Invariants and relations of the action of the absolute Galois group on dessins d’enfants and the algebraic fundamental group of the punctured sphere  (2003) [with R. Hain]
• Thomas W. Finley  Efficient Myrinet routing  (2002) [with W. Allard]
• Samuel W. Malone  Alternative Price Processes for Black-Scholes: Empirical Evidence and Theory  (2002) [with A. Petters]
• Carl Miller  Exponential Iterated Integrals and the Solvable Completion of Fundamental Groups  (2001) [with R. Hain]
• Daniel Neill  Optimality under Noise: Higher Memory Strategies for the Alternating Prisoner’s Dilemma  (2001) Computer Science [with D. Kraines]
• Luis Von Ahn  Models of the language of set theory and Zermelo Frankel axioms  (2000) [with R. Hodel]
• Christopher Beasley  Superconformal theories from Branes at Singularities  (1999) Physics [with R. Plesser]
• Alexander Brodie  Measurable Cardinals  (1999) [with R. Hodel]
• Jeffrey DiLisi  The Biology and Mathematics of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Testicular Axis  (1999) [with M. Reed]
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HISTORY 495S/496S: Honors Thesis Seminar 2024/25

• Thesis Writers & Duke Libraries

Borrow Books at Duke Libraries

Get additional benefits for honors thesis writers, request books and articles from other libraries, use the david m. rubenstein rare book & manuscript library, deposit your thesis at duke libraries.

• Browse all Guides at Duke Libraries
• Define Archival Materials and Primary Sources
• Appreciate the "Finding Aid" for Archival Material
• Search Across Finding Aid Portals
• Organize and Cite Your Sources
• Topic: The West and the Soviet Union
• Topic: France Colonialism
• Topic: NAZI Germany Persecution US Perceptions
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• Topic: Child Welfare Legislation
• Topic: Reagan to 9/11: Impacts on American Muslim Communities
• Topic: Impact of Rabbinical Teachings on Israeli Settlers Violence 1967-1980
• Topic: Anti-imperialist music of Colombia
• Topic: China and Opium

Borrowing Print Books from the Circulating Collection  - See a Guide to the locations of all Libraries at Duke.

• Perkins & Bostock Libraries
• David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library 
• Duke University Archives
• Lilly Library
• Music Library
• Marine Lab Library
• Library Service Center
• Divinity School Library
• Duke Kunshan University Library
• Ford Library, Fuqua School of Business
• Goodson Law Library
• Medical Center Library
• Get access to Bostock 312, a quiet study room available only to students writing senior theses (ask for the code at the Perkins Service Desk)
• Have books delivered to the library of your choice; the Bishop's House is the library location on East Campus while Lilly is being renovated
• Get access to study carrels for 4-hour blocks; check out a key at the Perkins Library Service Desk
• Get access to  yearlong assigned lockers  (limited availability on a first-requested, first-accommodated basis). 

If you come across an interesting article or book, and the article or book are not held at Duke, you can enter an Interlibrary Loan request for the material with your Interlibrary Loan Account . 

Rubenstein Library holds Duke's Special Collections and Archives. Create a  Special Collections Account to request materials for use in the reading room. Once set up, the account allows you to use collections in the reading room at Rubenstein and at the Wilson Special Collections library at UNC. 

Deposit Your Honors Thesis (And Make it Visible on Social Media)

The Duke University Archives accepts departmentally-approved honors papers (also called senior honors theses) for permanent storage and makes these honors papers available to scholars throughout the world. The University Archives also collects those graduate theses produced by students of the University's professional schools. Finally, the University Archives collects those theses and dissertations submitted to the Graduate School and published via ProQuest/UMI. These papers, theses, and dissertations are preserved in the  DukeSpace  repository.

The following information refers to undergraduate honors theses.

Find electronic undergraduate honors theses

Since 2007, honors theses are submitted electronically and are not collected in print. Electronic honors theses can be accessed via the DukeSpace repository's  Undergraduate Honors Theses  collection (Select department).

Find (older) print undergraduate honors theses

Before transitioning to electronic theses, the University Archives catalogued print honors papers (also called senior honors theses) by academic discipline. The links below will show catalog records for honors papers from several disciplines.

• Cultural Anthropology
• Political Science
• Public Policy
• Women's Studies

Please note that you may view honors papers in the  Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library's Reading Room , but you may not borrow them. 

Detailed instructions about submitting your honors thesis to Duke University Libraries can be found on Duke University Libraries'  Digital Repositories help documentation webpage .

Contact information

With any questions or problems submitting your thesis to DukeSpace, contact  Digital Collections and Curation Services .

• Next: Browse all Guides at Duke Libraries >>
• Last Updated: Aug 19, 2024 5:57 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.duke.edu/history_honors_thesis

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• Awards & Past Theses

Honors Thesis Poster Session

Every spring, students have the opportunity to present their honors research in a poster format at the poster session. Other students and faculty are welcome to attend.

Those interested in viewing all past theses may do so via the Honors Theses Archive .

Edward Tower Best Thesis Prize

The Department of Economics is pleased to be able to offer the Edward Tower. Best Thesis Prize, given yearly in recognition of outstanding research by an undergraduate and through the honors program. All theses that earn Distinction are published and available through  Perkins Library . Another quick source is the  Duke Journal of Economics .  Each year it publishes top undergraduate theses, including Best Thesis Prize winners.

First awarded in 2024. 

Each year at the Honors Poster Session, students and faculty vote for their choices for best poster.  Best Poster--Faculty Choice and Best Poster--Student Choice are awarded at the Economics Recognition Ceremony each May and usually carry a cash award. 

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• Thesis Guidelines

A thesis for Distinction in Biology is a wonderful way for you to close the loop on your undergraduate research experience and showcase your scientific scholarship. Your thesis will be evaluated by the Faculty in Biology and answers the following questions: What did you do? Why did you do it? What is the significance of your results? What else would you do, were you to continue the project?

In answering the above questions, you have an opportunity to demonstrate your understanding and intellectual ownership of a project; not simply your productivity in the lab. The volume of results or completeness of the study is not critical for a successful thesis. Instead, we will be looking for the following:

• An argument for the significance of your research, contextualized within the scientific literature;
• A review of appropriate literature as evidence in support of claims you make in your argument;
• A statement of your research goals, i.e., a meaningful question of biological importance;
• A description of experimental approaches and methods ;
• Appropriate presentation of results through tables, figures, and images;
• A discussion of the meaning and significance of your results;
• A description of limitations and future directions for the project.

Expanded guidelines can be found in the Biology Thesis Assessment Protocol (BioTAP):

Format of the Thesis

The basic format of the thesis should resemble that of any scientific journal article that is common in your subdiscipline. It generally includes the following sections: Introduction & Background; Methods; Results; Discussion; Acknowledgements; and References. In some instances, it may be useful to sub-divide the Methods & Results section to correspond to multiple aims. However, if you chose to take this route, remember that there should still be a general Introduction and Discussion sections that address the project as a whole. The thesis should not consist of several "mini-papers" that are unconnected.  

Submission Guidelines

The format of the final copy should follow these guidelines:

• Cover Page ( sample ): Title; student's name; supervisor's name; date of submission; 3 signature lines at bottom right (Research Supervisor, DUS, Reader). Please follow the format and language of the sample.
• Abstract Page: single-spaced, roughly 250 words.
• Thesis should be double-spaced
• Pages should be numbered at the top right corner of the page
• It is preferred that figures are embedded within the document instead of all at the end
• There is no minimum page requirement or limit, although most are approximately 25 pages. 

Sample Theses

Examples of Distinction papers from previous years are available for examination in the Undergraduate Studies Office (Rm 135 BioSci).  Several samples are also available below as PDF files.

• Tracing the origins of antimalarial resistance in Plasmodium vivax
• Interaction network optimization improves the antimicrobial efficacy of phage cocktails
• Identifying how ufmylation of RAB1B regulates IFN-β signaling

Additional Resources

• Library Resources for Students Writing Theses
• How to write and publish a scientific paper by Barbara Gastel and Robert A. Day
• Biology 495(S): Scientific Argument in Writing . This course is particularly appropriate for seniors working on an undergraduate thesis or major research paper and is recommended, although not required, for all candidates for Graduation with Distinction in biology. The course is writing intensive and carries a “W” designation and, in the fall semester only, is a seminar and carries an “S” designation.
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• Building a Dynamic Nervous System: Dr. Pelin Volkan
• Investigating a Key Plant Hormone: Dr. Lucia Strader
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Honors thesis and distinction, honors program director :  professor philip stern, [email protected].

Applications due March 8, 2024 .  Application is here .

Students pursuing distinction normally apply for a year-long senior honors seminar (HISTORY 495S/496S) in March of the junior year.  In special circumstances, students may also prepare a thesis outside this sequence. Either way, most students begin their thesis research during the summer before the senior year, and all students pursuing distinction work closely with a faculty thesis advisor, usually through an independent study each semester.

Thesis writers are expected to produce a well-written research essay substantially engaged with primary sources and engaged with ongoing historiographic conversations. Most theses run 80-120 pages.

Upon its completion, the thesis will be evaluated by a committee of at least three faculty to determine the honors level of the thesis:  Distinction, High Distinction or Highest Distinction.  The department also recognizes senior theses with two prizes:  the William T. Laprade Prize for most outstanding thesis, and the Raymond Gavins prize, awarded to an outstanding thesis in African-American history, the history of Civil Rights movements, and/or the history of the US South.  Both prizes are accompanied by a $250 cash award.

Students will also have the opportunity to archive their thesis work in the Duke University Library.

The Graduation with Distinction program is the most challenging – and rewarding – undergraduate experience that the History Department offers.

What is a Senior Thesis?  

The thesis is your own work of original scholarship. The process begins when you select a question that you wish to explore in more detail and that promises larger insights into an historical time period, event, or issue. While much of the research and writing is done on your own, you work in consultation with your advisor – usually a history department faculty member – and receive critical direction and feedback from the thesis program director (another history faculty member) and other thesis writers in the weekly honors seminar (HISTORY 495S and 496S).

The benefits are both professional and personal. Writing a thesis demonstrates your capacity to become an expert in your chosen topic, develop extensive independent research skills, and to make an original contribution to historical scholarship. Just as important, the senior thesis program offers the rare opportunity to engage in a creative process that will challenge you to both gain and produce new knowledge.

The thesis is due in April of the Senior Year.

Thesis writers usually begin research during the summer before senior year. It is important to have some research in hand by the start of the fall semester because the seminar begins with writing assignments that require a significant research base. A first draft of the thesis is usually due in March and the final version in April, but you will be informed of submission deadlines.  Duke  and the History Department offer ample funding opportunities, such as for travel to archives or the acquisition of required research materials.  

To maximize the creative process as well as provide intellectual and emotional support, thesis writers will take the year-long Senior Thesis Seminar.  This seminar substitutes for the Capstone Seminar that all History majors are required to take.  Students participating in the Senior Thesis program must also take at least one independent study with their thesis advisor.  They may also take up to one additional independent study with the same advisor or (after consultation with the History DUS) a separate faculty member.  While the thesis seminar will provide a general framework and deadlines to shepherd you through the various stages of the project, thesis writers should take advantage of these independent studies to continue research and work on their writing.

The Thesis Seminar Experience

1) Full-year admits to the thesis seminar:

• Thesis proposals will be subjected to highly rigorous standards
• Advisors must have affiliation with the History department or have a History Ph.D.
• Enthusiasm of advisors will play an important role in considerations, so early consultation with advisors is important

2) Second-semester admits to the thesis seminar:

• Students whose proposals were deemed not complete enough to merit acceptance into the thesis seminar during the first round of applications are invited to work with an advisor and submit a revised proposal in the Fall in order to join the seminar for Spring
• Students whose proposals were successful but who cannot make the Fall semester because they will be abroad are invited to the join the seminar for Spring. 
• Note: in both cases, the initial proposals must be made Spring semester of the Junior Year, i.e. with all other thesis proposals (see schedule tab for information on deadlines) 

Enhanced Research Experience

Most students pursue Distinction through the Honors Thesis Seminar. However, there are some circumstances in which students may need instead to work independently on a research project. For these students, the History Honors program offers a separate track known as the Enhanced Research Experience.

What qualifies as an ERE project?

• A conventional thesis produced outside the Seminar. These may include theses submitted on a different timetable from the Seminar (for example, for December graduation), or theses produced in Independent Studies without participation in the Seminar.
• Other projects – including digital projects, documentaries, exhibits, forms of creative writing – conducted under the auspices of the History department and its sponsored labs.

ERE candidates will be invited to present at one or more of the Honors seminar workshops so that they can benefit from group feedback.  The timing will be determined by the nature of their project.

Requirements of ERE

• A student who develops a project that does not take the form of a research paper must submit a fifteen-page paper on his or her project, demonstrating how it is a contribution to historical knowledge .
• Candidates must inform the Honors Program Director  that they will be submitting an ERE project for Honors.  The notification must include a proposal for the intended project, accompanied by a letter of recommendation by the advisor, and it is subject to the approval of the Honors program.
• ERE projects will be considered for Distinction, High Distinction, and Highest Distinction. They may also qualify for the La Prade prize (note though that the prize is awarded annually in May).
• ERE projects will be evaluated based on the same criteria as theses produced in the Seminar.

Please submit your proposal well in advance of the semester in which you plan to complete your ERE project, and no later than the end of the previous semester.

If you have a question about the ERE, please write to the Honors Program Director .

How your thesis will be evaluated?

Submitted theses will be evaluated by the Honors Committee, based on the following criteria:

For Honors with Distinction, students are expected to: 

• Create new historical knowledge through a significant, original historical intervention based on extensive primary-source based research.  
• Develop an original, source-based argument that both engages with and extends the existing historiography.  
• Present information and argument with clarity and concision.
• For ERE projects in a non-traditional format, creativity and impact may be given greater weight than other factors. However, engagement with primary and secondary sources is still required.

Exceptional theses may be granted High or Highest Distinction, and they will be considered for the annual LaPrade Prize. On top of the basic expectations, these theses must meet one or more of the following criteria:  

• Demonstrate exceptional significance and relevance to larger debates on topics of historical importance 
• Show originality, creativity, and technical mastery in the interpretation and use of sources 
• Develop an argument that reflects the complexity of human experience 
• Present information and argument with elegance, originality, and emotional/intellectual resonance.

Get to Know Your Professors

The more you interact with your professors, the better sense you will have of their interests and approach, which are important considerations in selecting an advisor. In turn, professors are more likely to take you on as an advisee if they know your work.

Explore Historical Research

To write a history thesis, you'll need to conceptualize a historical problem, to identify primary sources that can help you answer that problem, to contextualize and assess the evidence contained in those sources, and to construct an effective analytical argument based on that evidence. Gateway seminars and the upper level research seminars furnish great opportunities to learn the historian's craft and see whether you like this kind of work.

See Study Abroad as an Opportunity

While abroad, you can define new interests and pursue research far from Duke’s campus. Before you go, you might schedule an appointment with the librarian at Perkins who specializes in your area so that you can use your time abroad to take maximum advantage of archives and resources unavailable through Duke.

Develop Competency in a Foreign Language

Many prospective thesis writers in history would like to tackle a historical problem concerning the non-English speaking world. In many cases, students without extensive foreign language skills are able to do just that, either by relying on English-language sources, sources translated into English, or some combination of the two. But your range of options will be far, far greater if you come into the senior year with a solid ability to read a foreign language.

Identify and Frame a Question

You should choose a topic, question, or set of issues that matters to you. You will then refine that question into something that is feasible with the time and sources available.

The best honors theses generally consider very focused topics, through which authors can explore broader questions of historical and contemporary importance.  You can see a wide range of past theses   here .

You will need to ground your thesis in primary sources, which may be written (such as documents), visual (such as posters), aural (such as recordings), or a combination (such as films). For topics in recent history, you might also consider collecting oral histories, although in most cases you will need to seek approval from Duke Institutional Review Board (IRB) before you begin your interviews.  The librarians at Perkins-Bostock can provide indispensable guidance for tracking down primary sources at Duke and beyond.  Many thesis students also take advantage of the vast archival holdings in Duke's Rubenstein Rare Books & Manuscript Library .

Your thesis should make a contribution to historical knowledge. If you frame your research appropriately — by choosing a compelling historical question for which adequate sources are available — your thesis will meet this standard. In some cases, you may look at sources that no one has considered before. In other cases, you make look at the same sources used by numerous other historians, but extract evidence from them that they have overlooked, or ask questions of them that no one has previously thought to pose.

The Proposal

Your proposal should take the form of an application essay,  approximately three to four pages in length.  Please include your name, phone number, email address, and the name of your faculty advisor. Make sure that your proposed advisor is both willing and able to oversee your research.  The completed application can be submitted here .  Faculty advisors should send their letters of recommendation directly to [email protected] . See top of this page for current deadlines.

The body of the proposal should cover the following main elements:

• Descriptive title succinctly defining your topic.
• Brief description of your topic, including your principal research question.
• Brief description of the primary sources that you will use to answer your questions.
• Brief description of the scholarly literature that bears on your topic.
• One-page bibliography listing the most relevant primary and secondary sources to your inquiry.
• (Optional) Funding application (1-2 pages)

(1, 2) Your title and topic

In two to three paragraphs, identify the historical problem that you propose to investigate, suggest how you propose to investigate it, and explain why anybody should care about it. In doing this, you should be able to craft a title for your overall project.


(3) Your primary sources

Here, in a further two to three paragraphs, you should show that you have begun to identify accessible sources that will allow you to answer the questions you would like to pose. Will your research be rooted in a particular archive or archives? Digital collections? Bodies of printed or visual sources?You should also indicate how you intend to make use of those sources. You can find leads to possible sources can come from several places, including the bibliography and footnotes of relevant historical scholarship, online databases and catalogs available through the Duke library portal, and consultations with your faculty advisor as well as library or archival staff.

As you think about available primary sources, remember that nothing inherent in the source makes it “primary” — it all depends on the questions you ask of the source.

(4) Your secondary sources

Writing a piece of original research involves joining a conversation already taking place about your topic. You want to familiarize yourself not only with what already has been said but also with the terms of the discussion. Engaging some of the relevant scholarly debates distinguishes a more engaged, analytical research project from a merely descriptive one.

(5) Your bibliography

List the primary and secondary sources you have identified to date.

The proposal you submit constitutes only a starting point; a way to show your seriousness of purpose and viability of your task. Research likely will take you in unexpected directions and topics may shift significantly, but the proposal offers a good vantage point from which to begin.

Finding that vantage point need not be a lonely task. Enlist the help of librarians, the honors program director, and other faculty members in addition to your advisor. One of the most rewarding aspects of the thesis experience is the chance to work closely with other scholars. Those students who make the most of the advising process generally craft the best proposals, and get off to the best start with their research.

(6) Your Funding Application

If you would like to apply for departmental research funding—for example, to undertake archival travel over the summer—please include (a) a detailed budget, (b) a 1-2 paragraph description and justification of your request, and (c) if applicable, a list of other funding sources for which you have applied (and whether they have been received).

Relevant Deadlines

Junior year, spring semester.

• Discuss research interests with faculty and subject area librarians
• Consult with relevant faculty and identify thesis advisor
• You may apply for departmental research funding along with your thesis application, or subsequently. You should also explore funding opportunities elsewhere and inform the History department if you receive grants from other sources at the university.  See https://undergraduateresearch.duke.edu/opportunities for information on those grants.
• Apply here .
• Early April (course registration): If you are admitted to the thesis program, you will enroll in the thesis seminar (HISTORY 495S) and an independent study with your thesis advisor (HISTORY 393) for the following Fall.

Summer after Junior Year

Thesis research, senior year.

• Take HISTORY 495S (Thesis seminar)
• Take HISTORY 393 (independent study) with your thesis advisor
• Take HISTORY 496S (Thesis seminar)
• Take HISTORY 394 (independent study) with your thesis advisor (optional)
• Late April:   Submit completed thesis

Every year many History Senior Honors Seminar students conduct research away from Durham, including travel outside the United States. Rising seniors often undertake such trips during the summer before the senior year with additional research travel undertaken while enrolled in the honors seminar (during Fall and Spring Breaks, as well as between semesters). Even if your sources are concentrated in Durham, it may be advisable to stay to begin your research in early summer or to apply for support to return at some point over the summer. Additionally, almost all History honors students will incur non-travel related research costs (such as photocopying) that can be covered by the program.

There are several opportunities for funding that students can pursue to support their research. A good place to begin is with the Undergraduate Research Support Office  . 

The History Department has funds for summer research as well – both for rising seniors to do thesis research and for rising sophomores and juniors interested in exploratory research.  All applications and expenses must be approved prior to expenditure; if awarded funding, the department will work with you on the best way to disburse funds for your particular request.

Pre-Thesis Research

We invite students who might be considering a thesis earlier in their junior years, as well as students in their first and second years, to submit proposals to pursue preliminary research on a topic that might develop into an honors thesis. We will prioritize proposals to pursue primary research (such as archival or library research, oral history projects, developing digital resources, or obtaining access to primary sources held by private individuals and organizations), but also will consider proposals for training in languages or methodologies that might further your future research. We also will prioritize declared History majors, although the competition is open to non-majors. Please submit a two-page proposal describing your research and/or training plans and a one-page budget including travel, living, and research expenses as well as a note indicating any other funding for which you have applied. You should also arrange to have a History faculty member submit an email supporting your research plan.  Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and should be submitted to [email protected] with the subject line "Pre-Thesis Funding Request"

The Honors Program strongly encourages applicants to pursue such support. The application process will not only sharpen the thinking behind your honors project, but also prepare you for planning and writing proposals in the future. Receiving support for your research will both enhance your thesis and provide concrete evidence of achievement for your resume. Please note that deadlines for many Duke competitions are in early March. The Honors Program Director is available to offer comments and suggestions on your applications.

• An important aspect of the Honors program is the scholarly links it forges between students and the History faculty who agree to serve as their advisors.  Your participation in the program is greatly appreciated.
• Students are required to submit a proposal that is supported by a letter from their thesis advisor.
• Advisors must have an affiliation with the History department (or have a History Ph.D. if they are members of a different department or program).
• Enthusiasm of advisors will play an important role in the consideration of proposals, so early consultation between student and advisor is important.
• To that end, advisors must communicate the value of the project in their initial letters.
• Students must take at least one independent study (and up to two) with the thesis advisor either in the Fall or Spring of their Senior year.
• If they will be on leave for either semester, advisors should include that information in their letter of support
• Faculty may not advise Honors theses if they will be on leave for the entire academic year; they may do so if they will be on leave for one semester.
• In the event that they have to take leave unexpectedly, advisors should inform the Honors program as soon as possible

Evaluation process for Thesis Seminar Experience: 

Thesis advisors may:

• Recommend simple Honors (cum laude) by a simple email to the DUSa, who will forward it to the Honors Program Committee.  There is no need to submit a letter of justification. 
• Choose not to recommend Honors.  In this case the advisor must write a letter to the Honors Program Committee explaining the decision.
• the advisor must write a detailed letter to the Honors Program Committee in support of their recommendation.   The Honors Committee retains the prerogative to make an award that diverges from the advisor recommendation.
• if an advisor considers that the thesis merits a departmental prize, the advisor must write a detailed letter to the Honors Program Committee in support of this recommendation.
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Honors thesis & graduation with distinction, eligibility and application process.

To be eligible to apply to the Honors Thesis Track, students must have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 and a 3.5 GPA for core course work in the Global Culture and Theory major. Applicants should ideally have completed two or more classes with faculty holding appointments in the Program in Literature. In order to assess the applicant's readiness for the work, it is also strongly recommended that the applicant have completed at least one seminar course with and have written at least one term paper for his/her/their Prospective Thesis Advisor. This advisor must hold an appointment in the Program in Literature.

Students apply via an application form (updated annually by the department) and a one-page written proposal with a one-page bibliography submitted to the Prospective Thesis Advisor no later than the Monday after Spring Recess of their junior year. The Spring 2025 deadline is  March 25, 2025 . The application form will be emailed to the Global Culture and Theory Major listserv.

Following the Prospective Thesis Advisor's review, the complete application is advanced for a committee's review and assessment. The decision to extend or decline admission to LIT 495 Honors Thesis I is made by the committee before fall term registration begins.

Expected Product

A 60-page thesis is required by the deadline stated on the annual application form. The page count may include its bibliography.

Evaluative Body

A committee comprised of the thesis advisor, the DUS, and a third reader chosen from among the members of the Literature faculty and affiliated faculty.

Evaluation Procedure

The student’s committee evaluates the thesis. In addition, the student meets with the committee for a one-hour defense.

Levels of Distinction

Three levels: Distinction, High Distinction, and Highest Distinction. To graduate with distinction, the student must receive an honors thesis grade of B+ or above.

Special Courses, Other Activities Required, Comments

Candidate must take the two-semester honors seminar sequence 495 and 496 with their thesis advisor.

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Guidelines for writing a senior thesis.

Except as noted below, each thesis should be about 20-25 pages in length (12 pt font, double-spaced except for abstract which may be single-spaced) and written in the style of an article to be published in a journal in the area of the research. Students should, of course, consult with their research directors about the structure of their theses; however, a suggested outline which may be used as a default follows. [Comments in brackets apply to research publications in primary literature and are generally based on material in  The ACS Style Guide .]

Title; names of student and research director; date.

[The title should be brief, grammatically correct, and accurate enough to stand alone. The purposes of the title are to attract the potential audience and to aid retrieval and indexing services. The latter is facilitated by using several keywords in the title. In a journal publication, the title is followed by the names of the authors, the address of the institution where the work was conducted, and the date on which the paper was received by the journal editor. The names of the authors are each listed in the order: first, middle initial, and surname; and include all who made substantial contributions to the research. An asterisk is placed on the name of the author to whom correspondence should be addressed.]

One-half to one page (single-spaced); a succinct summary of objectives, methods, results and conclusions.

[The purposes of the abstract are (1) to allow the reader to determine the nature and information given in the paper and (2) to allow editors to pinpoint key features for use in indexing and retrieval. State briefly the problem or purpose of the research if it is not adequately conveyed by the title. Indicate theoretical or experimental plan used, accurately summarize the principal findings, and point out major conclusions.]

Statement of objectives and significance and a review of pertinent literature, carefully cited. This section should generally be more detailed than allowed for a journal article.

[The introduction should contain a clear statement of the problem and why you are studying it. Outline what has been done before by citing truly pertinent literature. Indicate the significance, scope and limits of your work. In journals, this section is frequently not labelled.]

Methods used; instrumental, synthetic and analytical, as well as computational. Also, description of equipment built, compounds synthesized, computer programs written, etc.

[This section should include sufficient detail about the materials and methods that you used so that experienced workers could repeat your work and obtain comparable results.]

The data, complete and detailed, with sufficient description to be understood — but without interpretation.

[Summarize the data collected and the statistical treatment of them. Use equations, figures, and tables where necessary for clarity and conciseness.]

The interpretation, analysis and explanation of the results, both positive and negative; what does it all mean?

[In journal publications, the Results section is sometimes combined with the Discussion section of the paper.]

Final wrap-up statement.

[Have you resolved the original problem? If not, what exactly have you contributed? Conclusions must be based on evidence presented in the paper. Suggest further study or applications, if appropriate. This section may be omitted and its contents presented in the Discussion section.]

[The last paragraph of a journal article frequently contains acknowledgements of people, places, financing, etc.]

In the style indicated by your research director. If your research director does not indicate a specific style, use the following.  Book references.  Author or editor (last name followed by initials),book title in italics or underlined, publisher, city of publication, year of publication, page number(s). Dodd, J.S., Ed.; The ACS Style Guide, American Chemical Society:Washington, DC, 1986, pp 108-111.  Journal references.  Author (last name, followed by initials), abbreviated journal title in italics or underlined, year of publication (boldface), volume number in italics or underlined, and initial page of cited article (the complete span is better). Fletcher, T.R.; Rosenfeld, R.N. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1985, 107, 2203-2212.

Any extensive tabulations of raw data, additional spectra not needed for illustration of the main text or listings of computer programs written or modified. That is, if there is just too much data to include in the Results Section or if much of the raw data have been abstracted and/or tabulated, these abstracts and/or tables may go in the Results Section along with only representative spectra (or chromatograms, etc.), and the bulk raw data put in Appendices. NEW: An  appendix on safety  should be added to the thesis.

• All pages should be numbered consecutively.
• Each table should be on a separate sheet, be consecutively numbered, and have a caption at the top. Columns must be labeled and all labels should be explained in the caption or in footnotes.
• Each figure should be carefully drawn on a separate sheet, consecutively numbered and accompanied by a legend. The legend should normally appear below the figure but may be placed on a separate sheet, if necessary. Figures should be carefully prepared using a drawing program such as ChemDraw or ISIS. Graphs are treated as figures, i.e., they should not be labeled as "Graph 1," "Graph 2," etc. Each axis of a graph must be clearly labeled as to the variable represented and its value along the axis. Each curve on a graph should be clearly identified. Raw data displayed in graphs may also appear in separate tables. All symbols and conventions, such as broken lines or dotted lines, should be explained in the legend.
• Insofar as is practical, mathematical equations, Greek letters, special mathematical symbols, and chemical reaction schemes should be typed in the text.
• Reprints or preprints of any publications that have already arisen from the research being reported may be appended.
• Further details may be obtained from  The ACS Style Guide .
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• Senior Thesis: Frequently Asked Questions

What kinds of topics do students explore?

Students writing theses in the department work on a broad range of issues, including health care; migration and refugees; gender and sexuality; photography and material culture; social media and politics. For some students, ethnographic research lies at the core of this project.  Others may choose to work chiefly with documents (popular or mass media, photography, film, digital texts, social networks, etc.). Some students conduct thesis research over the previous summer. Others base their study on a prior study abroad experience, fieldwork methods project, or final paper for a CA class. Alternately, you may certainly choose to work on something completely new.

Why should I write a thesis?

The senior thesis is a chance for you to put your classroom studies to work on something you care deeply about. Many writers attest that the experience is among the most rewarding in the course of their college career. 

Who is eligible to write a thesis?

Qualified juniors will be notified each year by DUS about their eligibility.

Can I join the CA thesis class as an IDM or Program II student?

Yes, with DUS approval .

How does thesis advising work and how do I select an advisor?

When you enroll in the seminar, you will work closely with a faculty advisor to design an independent program of original research culminating in a senior thesis. We encourage you to discuss your ideas with professors who know your work and who can help you think realistically about the feasibility of the research. These prior relationships generate the best advisor-advisee relationships.

What kind of approval is required for my research?

Ethnographic research often entails seeking “human subjects” approval through the Duke IRB, institutional review board. 

Is funding available for summer fieldwork?

Yes, it is available, on a competitive basis, through the  Undergraduate Research Support Office .

The two-semester senior seminar (CULANTH 498S and 499S) is open to students with an overall 3.0 GPA in their academic record and a 3.3 GPA in the major. Qualified juniors will be notified each year by DUS about their eligibility.

Do thesis writers need to take the two-semester class?

Thesis writers must complete both terms of the course to receive credit. Students who wish to exit the Senior Seminar Distinction Program sequence after completion of 489S, must petition the course instructor, their advisor and the DUS. The student will be given course credit and a final grade given the instructor, their advisor and the DUS determine the student has done adequate work. 

Do thesis writers receive distinction?

The thesis must be judged to be of at least B+ quality by the student’s supervisory committee to receive distinction. In addition, the student must pass an oral examination on the thesis, which is given upon its completion by the supervisory committee. Students must also maintain their requisite GPAs.

How is the thesis evaluated?

The student forms a supervisory committee for the thesis during the fall of the senior year. It should consist of three faculty members who offer the student advice and support in preparing the thesis. At least two of the members must be faculty from the Cultural Anthropology department.

When is the thesis due?

In April of the senior year.

How do I apply? 

If you are interested in writing a thesis and taking the requisite courses (CULANTH 498S and 499S), please submit the following materials (hard copy, in box) to the current DUS in the spring of your junior year: 

• A 500-word proposal that outlines the direction of the thesis including topic; central research question; possible findings or hypothesis about the material; designation of the fieldwork site (where relevant) or primary materials that will be used as the basis of this analysis.  Please indicate whether your research will be based on ethnography. 
• Provisional bibliography of 10 works (essays or books) that will be drawn on during this project.
• Name and signature of the Cultural Anthropology faculty member who has agreed to direct your thesis and mentor you during the writing process.
• A one paragraph reference from a Cultural Anthropology faculty member attesting to your preparedness to carry out the thesis (someone other than your advisor for the thesis). 
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Dissertations & Theses @ Duke University

Access to Duke University doctoral dissertations by Duke University users. View 24-page previews of Duke doctoral dissertations from 1996 forward, with a growing number available dating from 1995 and earlier. Download the full text of all Duke dissertations available within the database. Master's theses written at Duke University are not represented in this database.

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Undergraduate research.

Summer research opportunities offered by the Physics Department are an excellent introduction to scientific research. Most Physics majors do research during their time at Duke, and many do senior thesis to graduate with distinction . Students are encouraged to contact potential faculty research advisors , to inquire about possible projects. A good time to do this is early in the spring of sophomore year, but earlier or later can work out as well.

The Physics department offers a limited number of research awards to enable students to participate in research over the summer.

In addition to the individual Physics research groups, research opportunities are available in the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory and the Free-Electron Laser Laboratory. These facilities are located behind the Physics Building.

Research opportunities can also be found with scientists with physics backgrounds working outside the Physics Department, such as the Engineering School, the Medical School, and the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Environmental Science, Mathematics, Neuroscience, and Psychology. It is also possible to find research opportunities at UNC, at NC State, at other colleges and universities, at private and government laboratories, and at colleges and labs outside the US.

The following is a representative list of possible summer opportunities for research away from the Duke campus.

• NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Physics: Application deadlines: late February through Mid March
• NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Other Fields: Application deadlines: late February through Mid March
• SPS Internships (Society of Physics Students): Application deadline: February 1
• Summer Internships at Fermilab: Application deadlines: early January through early April
• ORISE Undergraduate Research Opportunities
• The NIST Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program
• High Energy Density Physics Program at Lawrence Livermore National Lab: Application deadline: mid January
• CERN Summer Student Program in Geneva, Switzerland
• Department of Energy's Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI)
• More Research Internships in Physics and other sciences at the Nucleus
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A glimpse into undergraduate research at Duke

For 53% of undergraduate students , research is a core component of their Duke experience.

As an R1 institution, the University spends at least $50 million on research annually and awards at least 70 research doctorates per year in any academic field.

Duke provides students with many pathways to become involved with research on campus across STEM fields and the humanities. The Chronicle spoke with four students who reflected on their experiences navigating the undergraduate research scene.

Research at Duke, by the numbers

In the 2022-23 academic year, the University surpassed $1.39 billion in total research expenditures, submitting 5,925 proposals and 11,390 publications. Through Duke’s Office for Translation & Commercialization, 15 startups and 325 new invention disclosures were launched, resulting in 104 issued patents.

“Our scholars and researchers continue to build new understandings of the human condition and enrich our future through their creative output,” wrote Jennifer Lodge, vice president for research & innovation, in a statement accompanying the 2022-23 OR&I Annual Report. 

Many of the University’s research and learning centers also received major awards and grants this year.

In 2023, the University received $10 million from Beth Schiff, Trinity ‘81 and Law School ‘85, and Jim Schiff, Trinity ‘81, to advance initiatives and labs in the humanities. Duke was awarded another $10 million by the Margolis Family Foundation to support the work of the Margolis Institute for Health Policy .

This month, the University received a $30 million award to support a historic faculty hiring initiative for promoting research in artificial intelligence and computing.

The School of Medicine also received more than $551 million in federal funding from the National Institute of Health in 2023, the seventh-largest sum awarded to an academic medical center. For 20 of the last 23 years, the University placed among the top 10-highest NIH-funded medical institutions in the nation.

Supporting student research

Many of Duke’s undergraduate research opportunities are administered through the Undergraduate Research Support Office led by director Jessica Harrell.

To help navigate Duke’s research scene, the URS Office acts as a starting point by bridging students with faculty, organizations and campus partners. It serves as a hub of information that guides students to initiatives like Muser , while providing extensive funding opportunities ranging from independent study grants to summer fellowships.

“We have increased the number of students we provided funding support to over the last year, and that is likely indicative of an increase in the number of students that are engaging in research,” Harrell wrote in an Aug. 16 email to The Chronicle.

Harrell emphasized that these resources are open to all Duke students on a first-come, first-served basis, regardless of whether they have prior research experience.

For students who want to discuss research experiences with their peers, the URS Student Advisory Council — an undergraduate committee — serves as a liaison between the URS Office and students. The council meets monthly to discuss the best ways to promote research among students, such as by tabling on campus.

“The advisory council is a collection of students from different walks of life, different grades and different research experiences that provide a holistic view of how to get involved in research at Duke,” said senior Rani Jones, a URS Student Advisory Council member. 

Harrell added that she has noticed a recent increase in undergraduate engagement beyond traditional STEM-related fields.

“We are seeing more exciting engagement in undergraduate research in the arts and humanities disciplines, and we rolled out a new arm of our Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program this summer for students interested in engaging in arts and humanities and social science research,” Harrell wrote.

This observation goes against the tide of a nationwide decline in humanities enrollment, a trend similarly faced by Duke within the last decade.

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Harrell noted that the URS Office is brainstorming ways to assess the success of undergraduate research. Tactics include administering surveys, quantifying the number of students in various disciplines and tracking the number of students pursuing an honors thesis.

Navigating research opportunities

For many Duke students, research has been an integral part of their undergraduate experience. 

Rose Naderi, Trinity ‘24, was a member of the Duke Identity & Diversity Lab for over two years while completing an independent study and honors thesis, where she investigated how language impacts children’s understanding of social groups as they age. Outside of the lab, she participated in a Bass Connections team that provided social support to antepartum patients at Duke Hospital and surveyed the effectiveness of social support methods.

Naderi, who is now pursuing a master’s degree, believes that Duke has set her up for success for future research. In particular, she said she feels prepared to present her future research and break it down in terms that can be understood by a broader audience.

She also identified mentorship as a key component of her research experience. 

“Dr. [Sarah] Gaither, [Nicholas J. and Theresa M. Leonardy associate professor] and my graduate student mentors have influenced my research career so much and have been so inspiring to me to even want to pursue a thesis and master’s [degree],” Naderi said.

However, she believes that undergraduate research experiences at Duke are not equally accessible to students, viewing some students as benefiting from prior connections and research experiences.

Junior Karina Lu has had extensive research experience at Duke, from studying Tibetan dialects to considering “historic corollaries” for imagining “future space settlements” and their governance.

As a history and French & Francophone studies major, Lu considered her only avenues for conducting research to be applying for a Bass Connections team — which emphasizes interdisciplinary research — or asking a professor if she can join their lab.

Lu appreciates that the culture surrounding undergraduate research at Duke does not feel competitive, but views it as more difficult for humanities students to find research targeted to their specific area of study.

“Duke doesn’t advertise a lot of the more granular research opportunities, and I had to go seeking for them, such as talking with the [directors of academic engagement] and my humanities professors,” she said.

To help students find opportunities, Lu suggested that the University explain research opportunities during first-year orientation and at events such as Sophomore Spark.

Senior Allie Brown, a URS Student Advisory Council member, noted that the council is available to answer any questions students have about getting involved in research.

Lu believes having an open mind is an important trait for students interested in pursuing research at Duke.

“Doing research is an exhausting thing that you have to balance with your schoolwork and your extracurriculars,” she said. “But it can be extremely rewarding and eye-opening if you find something you are passionate about.”

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Andrew Bae is a Trinity junior and an editor-at-large of The Chronicle's 120th volume.

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Theses and Dissertations

Defense and submission.

Below is an overview of the main steps in preparing, defending, and submitting your thesis or dissertation. For detailed instructions on each step, see The Graduate School's  Guide for Electronic Submission of Thesis and Dissertation (PDF) , in addition to this video recording from a workshop given on the subject. 

• Schedule your defense and apply for graduation in DukeHub ( defense and graduation deadlines ).  
• At least 30 days before your defense: Confirm or update your defense committee.  
• Give your thesis/dissertation to your advisor for inspection, and prompt your advisor to send a letter to [email protected] stating that it is complete and ready to defend. Note: For students in School of Medicine Ph.D. programs, their advisor letters are generated through T3.  
• Request your DGSA to send a departmental defense announcement to  [email protected] . Note: For students in School of Medicine Ph.D. programs, their departmental defense announcements are generated through T3.  
• At least 2 weeks before your defense: Submit your complete, correctly formatted dissertation/thesis to ProQuest (initial submission). Also provide it to each member of your committee.  
• Optional: After you receive an email through ProQuest from the Graduate School administrator who reviewed your thesis/dissertation format, you may make an appointment for a brief, virtual meeting with the administrator to discuss any questions you have about the defense process or the recommended formatting revisions.  
• A few days before your defense, The Graduate School will generate your final examination certificate and email it to the chair/co-chair(s) of your examination committee and the DGSA of your department. Note:  For students in School of Medicine Ph.D. programs, their final examination certificates are generated and released through T3.  
• Defend your dissertation. After your final examination, your committee members will vote on whether you passed or failed. Your chair and DGS will record the votes on your final examination certificate, sign it, and submit it to The Graduate School. Your committee may vote that you passed but still require minor edits or corrections before final submission.  
• As soon as possible after your defense, submit to [email protected] the Non-Exclusive Distribution License and Thesis/Dissertation Availability Agreement (“embargo agreement”) signed by yourself and your thesis/dissertation advisor.  
• Within 30 days after your successful defense, or by the established final submission deadline (whichever is first): Submit the final version of your dissertation/thesis to ProQuest.

Guide for Electronic Submission of Thesis and Dissertation (PDF)

We provide the following templates for your convenience and to help you eliminate common formatting errors. However,  all submitted theses and dissertations must meet the specifications listed in the ETD guide . The manuscript must be a completed document, formatted correctly, with no sections left blank.

• Word Template for Thesis/Dissertation (Word)
• LaTeX Template for Thesis/Dissertation (ZIP)

Notes about the LaTeX Template

• This LaTeX template is for both master's and Ph.D. students. Master's theses must also have an abstract title page.
• Neither The Graduate School nor OIT supports LaTeX beyond providing this template.

Ph.D. and master’s students are required to apply for graduation in  DukeHub  by the established application deadline for the semester in which they plan to graduate.

Review the full graduation guidelines on the  Graduation Information and Deadlines  page. 

When you submit your thesis or dissertation electronically, you will also permit Duke University to make it available online through  DukeSpace  at Duke Libraries. See the pages below for more information about ETDs:

• ETDs Overview
• ETD Availability
• ETD Copyright Information 
• ETD Technical Help 

Check out the writing support  offered by The Graduate School, such as writing spaces, consultations, and access to online writing workshops, communities, and resources.