Senior Honors Thesis
To earn honors, INTS majors must complete a one-credit Honors Thesis. The thesis is an opportunity for students with a strong academic record in the major to work closely with an INTS faculty member and to pursue independent research beyond the level attained in the Senior Seminar. Students are encouraged to use their language skills, the courses they have taken toward the major, and their experiences abroad to shape their area of inquiry and to determine their methodology. Students pursuing the thesis option will ordinarily take the Senior Seminar in the fall of their senior year and the one-credit Honors Thesis in the spring, although preparation and research for the thesis should begin well ahead of time. Applications for the thesis are typically due to the Director in late October.
2024 Thesis Writers and Titles
Colleen Quinn “Navigating the Inter-American Human Rights System: An Analysis of its Role Mapuche Activism”
Emeline Avignon “Zamrock: Negotiating Masculine Urban Identity in Zambia and Music Success in a Postcolonial World”
Hannah Lorenzo “Mapping Asian and Asian-American Community Formations in Hartford through Culturally-Related Business”
Albert Ananyan “Divergent Pathways: The Dynamics of Rural Political Participation in Dilijan Enlarged Community”
Dansowa Adu “They Have Returned: African Americans, Ghanaians and State Cultivation of Diasporic Desires”
John Li “Oysters in a Half Shell: An Environmental History of Fishing in Shenzhen from 1960-2000”
2023 Thesis Writers and Titles
Anna Trần “Unearthing Buried Narratives: The Vietnamese Diaspora through 21st Century Literary and Cultural Productions”
Karina Amador “Uncovering the Complexities of Migration in Rural Villages: Insights from Ethnographic Research in Hidalgo, Mexico”
Malika Buscaino “Experiencing Seine Saint Denis, A Parisian Suburb: An Immigrant Perspective”
Adyanna Odom “B-Girls Run the World: Global Acts of Resistance through Hip Hop Dance”
2022 Thesis Writers and Titles
Amelia Huba “Climate Refugees: The Rising Case for Immigration Reform”
Sahian Jimenez “Sex Tourism as a Human Rights Issue in Jamaica”
Brooke Samaratunga “The Camera as a Political Tool: Examining Photography and the Sri Lankan Civil War”
Masho Jmukhadze “Russian Intervention in Post-Soviet Ethnic Conflicts in its Near Abroad: A Case Study of bkhazeti (Georgia) and its Implications for Post-Independence Politics”
Carolina Villasenor “Neoliberalism and the Environment: AMLO and Mexico’s Cuarta Transformation”
2021 Thesis Writers and Titles
Courtney Robb “Women in Charge: An Examination of Normative and Non-Normative Islamic Faith Based Gender Justice”
Chang Gao “Filtered Beauty and Cyber-Nationalism in China”
Concilia Ndlovu “The Lottery Ticket” (non-fiction short story) & “The Psychological Consequences of Western and Postcolonial Education in Africa” (short-form essay)
Suyang Wu “Safeguarding Guardianship: Capital and Political Cohesion in the Kettaniyya Order, 1909-1909”
2020 Thesis Writers and Titles
Hamna Tariq “The Permanent Liminality of Pakistan’s Northern Areas: The Case of Gilgit Baltistan”
Kaytlin Ernske “The Dragon’s Neocolonial White Elephant: China’s Urban Infrastructure in Lusaka, Zambia”
Gillian Reinhard “Orientalist Opera: Western Perceptions of the Other in the Early 20th Century”
John Gillespie “Kick it Out & Keep it Out: Racism in the English Premier League since 2014”
Elisabed Gedevanishvili “Embedded Plutocracy: A Spectacle of Reform in Post-Revolutionary Georgia”
2019 Thesis Writers and Titles
Hannah Grosberg “Bodies and Borders: Navigating Colonial and Capitalist Desires in Trinidad and Tobago”
Nicola Kostic “’Go West and Also Go Global’: An Analysis of China’s Double Turn and Convergence at the Dawn of the 21st Century”
2018 Thesis Writers and Titles
Noor Malik “CPEC: Balancing the Benefits and Burdens”
Mallika Khanna “Failure and the Feminist Gaze: Contesting the ‘Female Empowerment’ Narrative in Contemporary Bollywood Films”
Kate Dietrich-Manion “Neoshamanism Now: Condors, Eagles, and Itzhak Beery”
Dominique Ramsawak “‘Indian Gyal Nuh Easy’: Indo-Trinidadian Negotiations of Femininity and Sexuality through Carnival”
Yassine Halila “The Unsung Heroes of the Revolution: Organized Football Fandom and the ‘Ultras’ Phenomenon in Tunisia”
2017 Thesis Writers and Titles
Warren von Weise “The Forgotten Assassinations: Dr. Malcolm H. Kerr & Ambassador Adolph Dubois”
Serena Seaman “The Politics of Hiking in Israel/Palestine: A Colonization Guide”
Francesca Oliveira “How to Prove the Existence of a Ghost”
Chris Filpo “Surviving in Urban Cities: Sociological Perspectives of Black and Latino Americans in the United States’ Era of Mass-Incarceration (1960s-present)”
Elizabeth Valenzuela “Challenging Dominance: The Case of Hindu Musicians, Women, and Youth in Trinidad”
Samantha Constantinou “A Comparative Approach on Latin American Immigration to the U.S., Past and Present: Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua”
Chinmay Rayarikar “Rwanda: Development Towards Authoritarianism”
Jamie Brandel “A Voice for the Voiceless: The UNPO and the Dalai Lama”
Alexa Anderson “From Liberation to Occupation: Orientalism Within the Context of the U.S. Occupation of Iraq”
2016 Thesis Writers and Titles
Lara Abiona “Of Maps, Margins, and Storylines: Sociologically Imagining Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and The Thing Around Your Neck”
Ian Robinson “The Commodity City – Small Business and the State in Yiwu, China”
Schirin Schenkermayr “A Flower Between the Cracks: How Contemporary Theater Defies the Fragmentation of Palestine”
Ichi Ha “Shamanistic Traditions in Vietnam: Comparative Studies of Thai Shamanism and the Mother Goddess Practice”
Jake Villareal “Structural Failure: Identifying the Sites of Resistance in the Partnership Between Israel and Heidelberg Cement”
2015 Thesis Writers and Titles
Alex Brown “Who to Call in Europe”
Alex Hermsen “Violence in Colombian and Cambodian Film: Truth, Past, and Memory”
Caroline Hayes “‘Out’ in the Open: The Price of Visibility in the Queen Boat Scandal”
Carolyn Kimmick “‘Prisoner of a Stunted Progress Model’: Ana Tijoux and her Critique of the ‘Chilean Miracle’”
Fayola Fraser “Jews and Arabs in Argentina: A Study of the Integration, Interactions, and Ethnic Identification of Argentina’s Migrant Groups”
