Honors Thesis

Guidelines for Honors Thesis Students and Mentors

• Students and mentors meet as they see fit. The thesis is approximately 25 pages, plus a bibliography.
• It is something like a seminar paper, only longer, better written, and better researched: the closest thing to a publishable paper that the student can produce.
• Once the paper is complete, the mentor simply approves the thesis and gives the student a grade for the Thesis course, Engl 30300. No signatures are required.
• The deadline for submission of a thesis is at the end of the semester.
• Students should submit an electronic copy of their approved thesis to Renee Philippi ( rmphilippi@ccny.cuny.edu ) and to Prof. Janée Moses ( jmoses1@ccny.cuny.edu ).

Creative Writing Thesis

A creative writing thesis may be longer than 25 pages (for prose works) or shorter (for poetry). It must be accompanied by a critical introduction, in which the student reflects on the genre in which he or she are writing, places the work within a certain literary tradition, meditates on literary choices he or she made, or writes about his or her literary influences. For example, a student who writes a coming-of-age memoir may describe the memoirs that influenced his or her work or compare it to contemporary memoirs and meditate on his or her work’s unique contribution to the genre.

English Honors Students’ Sample Thesis Papers

Thesis 1
How to Become Oneself:
The End of the Epic and the Beginning of a Personal Mythology in The Rainbow

Thesis 2
The Voice of Trauma: Collective Memory and History in The Farming of Bones

Thesis 3
The New Refrigerator

Thesis 4
From Novel to Musical: A Study in Adaptation

Thesis 5
“His Own Spirit Unto My Soul”
Political Resistance and Religious Authority in George Eliot’s Romola.