Senior Thesis Presentations, Spring 2021

Welcome to the virtual version of the Literature Program's Senior Thesis Presentations! Below, you will find a video of Dr. Stephannie Gearhart's opening remarks, followed by videos of student presentations.

At BGSU, all undergraduates are required to engage in experiential learning in their major field. Experiential learning, broadly conceived, is a range of experiential activities that occur in and outside of the formal classroom setting. These activities can include community-based learning, public policy projects, undergraduate research, education abroad, practicums, internships, co-ops and clinicals, related to students’ majors and/or coursework. To fulfill this requirement in Literature and to celebrate the work of our students, we ask our majors to conduct literary scholarship in the form of a thesis and to present their work to an audience. Today you will have a chance to listen to our students speak about their signature work in the videos here.

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Opening Remarks: Dr. Stephannie Gearhart, Program Director (stephsg@bgsu.edu)

Sarah Blake: You Taught Me Language: Using Shakespeare to Teach English to Speakers of Other Languages (sbblake@bgsu.edu)  

Kelsey M. Dietrich: Stylistic Choices Rooted in Empathy and Unity Reconceptualize Migration in Mohsin Hamid's Exit West (dietkel@bgsu.edu)

Regan Marie Dilley: For the Record: Bearing Witness to Violence at the Border in Valeria Luiselli’s "Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions" and Lost Children Archive (rdilley@bgsu.edu)

Hannah Sierra Dunn: COVID-Tinted Glasses: Studying the Value of Shakespeare Amidst a Pandemic (hsdunn@bgsu.edu)

Emily Durham: Wayward Trespasses: Race, Sexuality, and Class in Nella Larsen’s Passing (edurham@bgsu.edu)

Sydney Epperson: The Inhumane Violence of Neoliberalism Portrayed in Daniel Borzutzky’s The Performance of Becoming Human (eppersa@bgsu.edu) 


Joniya Gadson: A Deconstruction of How Shakespeare Poses and Answers the Tough Questions about Race, Sex, and Gender (jgadson@bgsu.edu)

Kaylee Hobbs: Japanese American Erasure: An Analysis of John Okada's No-No Boy Reflecting Post World War Two Reintegration Reality and the Progression of Anti-Asian Racialized Hatred in 2021 (hobbsk@bgsu.edu)

Abigail Maggi: Combating Anti-Semitism or Unintentionally Reinforcing It?: Effectively Producing "The Merchant of Venice" on Stage (amaggi@bgsu.edu)

Constance Phillips: Exit West and Lost Children’s Archive Express the Politics Behind Global Migration and Refugees (phillcm@bgsu.edu)

Kiara Phillips: Trauma and Anti-Black Racism: Reading Claudia Rankine Citizen: An American Lyric in Conjunction with Psychoanalytic Methodologies (kiaraap@bgsu.edu)

Gabrielle Sheets: "The Most Insistent Subject of Popular Music": An Exploration of Romeo and Juliet Musical Adaptations and Their Expressions of Modern Cultural Issues (gsheets@bgsu.edu)

Erik Sorensen: Blood on the Badge: Vigilantism, Racism, and the Justified Violence of HBO's “Watchmen" (eriks@bgsu.edu)

Dawson Alexander Wohler: Bortolotti’s Bulldog: Macbeth and Biological Fidelity Discourse (dwohler@bgsu.edu)