Professor Laura Leibman, Reed College

THESIS STUDENTS

The capstone of a Reed College education is the Senior Thesis, a year long independent study project. I have had the pleasure of working with the following students as listed by year:

[2006-07] [2005-06] [2004-05] [2003-04] [2002-03] [2001-2002] [2000-01] [1999-2000] [1998-99] [1997-98] [1996-97] [1995-96]

2006-07

Stephanie Larson, The American Attraction to the Cowboy Hero (English)
Andrew Nusbaum, Unpardonable Heresy: the Excommunication of Sholem Asch (English)
Stephen Ronkowski, Moral and Literary Ambiguity in the Post-Modern Western (English)

2005-06

Katherine E. Bruens, The realization of horror : the British "Fin-de-siècle" and the development of a Gothic (English)
Ben Levine DuPree, Romanticism, realism, and satire in Bret Harte's Gilded Age "The story of a mine" (English)
Lurline Sweet, Jewish-American absurdist tragicomedy : Saul Bellow's "Humboldt's gift" and Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" (English)
Tavia Quaid, American Frontiers: Historical and Literary Representations
of Gauchos and Cowboys (MALS)

2004-05

Amber Grasmick, A woman's place is in the poem : enclosure and the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Adrienne Rich (English)
Amber L. Kingery, Jewel Kilcher and her literary tradition : a case for popular culture as high art (English)
Jessica Stroia, Native American women's poetry -- a new blend of the mythic and modern (English)
Vonda L. Van Farowe, The history of the Portland story : looking for Native Americans in the popular historiography of Portland, Oregon (MALS)
Susan Benson-Zoref, A sense of doubleness in twentieth century literature by two Jewish American writers (MALS)

2003-04

Jessica Barbata, Cotton wool, kinky hair and historical contradictions : an autobiographical study of memory in Woolf, hooks and Wilkomirski (English)
Elaine Joy Uy Lucero Basa, Frank Bidart's poetry : still life images (English)
Ana L. Cooke, Identifying resistance in the work of Charles Bernstein (English)

2002-2003 (on leave)

2001-2002

Yesica Hurtado, "Gammy Birds" : a Dialogue of Narrative and Nations in E. Annie Proulx's "Postcards" and "The Shipping News" (English)
Claire Stafford McCabe, True Fiction : Myth, History and Apocalyptic Discourse in Gabriel García Márquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (English)

2000-2001
* Simon Hill, Imperialism Means Never Saying You're Sorry : Ego, Assimilation and Identity in Bharati Mukherjee's "Wife," "Jasmine," and "Leave it to Me" (English)
* Melinda Erin Kausek, "Point-counterpoint" : Untangling the Contrapuntal Relationship of Reading and Writing in Borges and Nabokov (English)
* David Clark, Silence Inflected : Reading the Elegies of Li-Young Lee (English)
* Katia Dunn. "What it Says Isn't Special" : an Exploration of Kinesis and Identity in C.S. Giscombe's "Giscome Road" (English)
1999-2000
* Nathan Roberts [MALS], The Bean Counter
* Rachel Bengston, Coaticle, Malitzin, Guadalupe: Identification of Self and Community in Chicano Poetry (English)
* Allison Notter, The Creation of Chicano Cultural Consciousness (History-Literature)
* Bridget Cross, Lumen: A Collection of Poems (Creative Writing, Poetry)

1998-99 (on leave)
* Martha Horst [MALS], The Role of Women in the Grass Dancer

1997-98
* Ben Bradley [MALS], Cultural Resistance in Sherman Alexie's Fiction
* Eli Barakat, Poetry in Advertising (English)
* Serena Newhall, The Muse in Twentieth Century Women's Poetry (English)
* Heather Gates, Sympathy for the Devil: A Woman's Journey to Hemingway's Fiction (English)
* Tina Brinton-James, Nana i ke kumu (look to the source): Representations of Ethnicity in Native Hawaiian Nationalist Literature (English)
1996-97
* Amanda Levinson, Mujeres, Chingadas and Atravesdas : the Virgin of Guadalupe, La Malinche and the Creation of an Alternate Chicana Aesthetic Tradition (American Studies)
* Sharilyn Smith, In The Spaces Between(Creative Thesis, Poetry)
* Stacy Westbrook, H.D.'s Trilogy (English)
1995-96
* Sylvia Gale, Working to Read the Poetry of Joy Harjo (English)
* Ben Harris, Ambivalence and Multivalence: Christopher Columbus in the contested Historical Memory of Nineteenth-Century America (American Studies)
* Kit Heller, The Dream of the Gnaw (Creative Thesis, Poetry)
* Mira Rosenthal, Toward Wholeness: Poems Revisioning the Body Through the Dialogue and Embrace of Movement (Creative Thesis, Poetry)