今日吃瓜

Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies

Thesis

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

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

Recent GLAM Theses

2023-2024

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

2022-2023

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

2021-2022

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

2020-2021

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

2019-2020

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

2018-2019

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

2017-2018

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

2016-2017

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

2015-2016

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

2014-2015

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

2013-2014

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