The honors project offers seniors the opportunity to engage in original scholarship under the supervision of a faculty member in their major department or program and results in a written thesis and/or oral defense, artistic performance or showing, depending on the student’s field of study.
The catalog record for each honors thesis can be seen here. Print versions of honors projects created between 1924 and 2019 are available in the Bowdoin College Library’s Department of Special Collections & Archives.
2019
Tension production and sarcomere length in lobster (Homarus americanus) cardiac muscles: the mechanisms underlying mechanical anisotropy, Matthew Maguire
Superhero Ecologies: An Environmental Reading of Contemporary Superhero Cinema, Andrew McGowan
Investigating the Effects of Student Debt on Career Outcomes: An Empirical Approach, Gideon Moore
Salud Callejera: Mobilizing Cuidado at the Margins of Neoliberalism; Reimagining Care for People Experiencing Homelessness in Buenos Aires, Brandon Morande
Active and Passive Spatial Learning and Memory in Human Navigation, Caroline Rice
Beyond Urban Bias: Peasant Movements and the State in Africa, Connor Rockett
Personally Relevant Indoor Nature Imagery’s Impact on Students’ Well-Being, Connection to Nature, and Eco-Conscious Behaviors, Sarena Sabine
“I’m Going to Help You Become a Better You”: Teacher-Student Dynamics in Special Education, Sophie Sadovnikoff
The Sacralization of Absolute Power: God's Power and Women's Subordination in the Southern Baptist Convention, Sydney Smith
Context-specific effects of vasotocin on social approach in the male common goldfish, Carassius auratus, Katharine Torrey
"I Deny Your Authority to Try My Conscience:" Conscription and Conscientious Objectors In Britain During the Great War, Albert William Wetter
2018
Young Authoritarians? Trends and Individual Differences in Preschoolers' Perceptions of Adult Authority, Ava Alexander
Real-Time Object Recognition using a Multi-Framed Temporal Approach, Corinne Alini
Urban Modernity and Turbulent Water: Toward a Transnational History of Expansion in Northern Japan, 1866-1882, Ethan Barkalow
The Epistemology of Observation: Performance, Power, and The Regulation of Female Sexuality in The Duchess of Malfi and The Changeling, Sarah Claudia Bonanno
Using atmospheric O2 and CO2 measurements to determine the stoichiometry of photosynthesis and respiration in a temperate forest, Margaret Marie Conley
Exploring Random Walks on Graphs for Protein Function Prediction, Angela M. Dahl
Non-Naturalism and Naturalism in Mathematics, Morality, and Epistemology, Nicholas DiStefano
Gendered Subjectivity in Refugee Resettlement Processes: From Somalia to Lewiston, ME, Elena Gleed
Visions of Unity, Memories of Violence: American Civil Religion and the Japanese American Incarceration, Brigitte Helene McFarland
Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't: A Logical Analysis of Moral Dilemmas, Samuel Monkman
Women’s Bodies Between Market and State: Lineages of the Transnational Indian Surrogacy Industry, Shea Cristina Necheles
An Output Sensitive Algorithm for Computing Viewsheds and Total Viewsheds on 2D Terrains, Andrew P. Prescott
Disease on the Half-Shell: Prevalence and impact of the protistan pathogen MSX on oyster population health throughout the Gulf of Maine, Madeline Schuldt
Characterization of expression of Sema1a variants in high-plasticity areas of the Gryllus bimaculatus nervous system, Sara Spicer
Plutonic lithics record dynamics in the magmatic system beneath the Akaroa Volcanic Complex, New Zealand, Elizabeth Teeter
Que vivan los estudiantes: Cycles of Contention and the Chilean Student Movement (1906-present), Jonah Watt
Seize the Memes: Community, Personal Expression, and Everyday Feminist Politics Through Instagram Memes, Tessa Westfall
"What's it like to be a lesbian with a cane?": A Story and Study of Queer and Disabled Identities, M.M. Daisy Wislar
2017
Identification of Mutations in WAK Locus in Arabidopsis thaliana, Arman Ashrafi
Hybridization dynamics of a newly discovered parrotfish swarm in the Tropical Eastern Pacific, Robert Barron
Poverty Ends with a 12 Year Old Girl: Empowerment and the Contradictions of International Development, Meghan Elizabeth Bellerose
The Best and the Brightest?: Race, Class, and Merit in America's Elite Colleges, Walter Chacon
Some like it cold: the relationship between thermal tolerance and mitochondrial genotype in an invasive population of the European green crab, Carcinus maenas, Aidan Fisher Coyle
An Investigation of Genetics-Based Machine Learning as Applied to Global Crop Yields, William Gantt
Modeling Strategic Behavior in the U.S. Senate Using Ideal Points with Social Interactions, Tucker Gordon
This is What You Want: Stories, Savannah Blake Horton
The Message, Medium and Messenger: A Study of Political Persuasion Through a Case Study of Planned Parenthood, Jodi Leah Kraushar
Examining the role of GRP and LIK1 in Wall Associated Kinase (WAK) perception of pectin in the plant cell wall, Jack Ryan Mitchell
White Southerners Respond to Brown v. Board of Education: Why Crisis Erupted When Little Rock, Arkansas, Desegregated Central High School, Abby Elizabeth Motycka
Africa and the International Criminal Court: Behind the Backlash and Toward Future Solutions, Marisa O'Toole
DS-PSO: Particle Swarm Optimization with Dynamic and Static Topologies, Dominick Sanchez
Demography of a Collapsing Aerial Insectivore Population, Liam Taylor
"Cooperate with Others for Common Ends?": Students as Gatekeepers of Culture and Tradition on College Campuses, Pamela Zabala
2016
Modeling and Testing Consumer Engagement in the U.S. Organic Food Market, John L. Anderson
Components and Mechanisms of Total Alkalinity Variability in an Intertidal Salt Marsh, Lloyd B. Anderson
Impacts of eelgrass (Zostera marina) on pore-water sulfide concentrations in intertidal sediments of Casco Bay, Maine, Sabine Y. Berzins
Effect of Mindfulness Meditation on Long-Term Memory, William Andrew Engel
Fact vs. Faction: Polarization in the Information Age, Noah Finberg
The Rising Tide of Indigenous Mobilization: Identity and the Politics of Refusal in Mexico and Ecuador, Kelsey J. Freeman
Bamboo Corals as Climate Archives: Radiocarbon-based Chronologies and Evaluation of Mg/Li as a Temperature Proxy, Megan M. Freiberger
Characterizing Proteins of the Wall-Associated Kinase Signaling Pathway in Arabidopsis, Emily M. King
Characterization and distribution of allatostatin type-C (AST-C) neuropeptides and receptors in crustaceans, Tess Lameyer
Attentional Inhibition of a Distractor on Memory Facilitation, Jacob M. MacDonald
Robot Detection Using Gradient and Color Signatures, Megan Marie Maher
Bondi Accretion in Trumpet Geometries, August J. Miller
"One Never Knew": David Foster Wallace and the Aesthetics of Consumption, Jesse Ortiz
Giving on the Margin: The Power of Donor Recognition, Jordan W. Richmond
Looking Ahead With the World in Their Hands: The Postsecondary Aspirations of East Island Youth, Abby E. Roy
Political Polupragmones: Busybody Athenians, Meddlesome Citizenship, and Epistemic Democracy in Classical Athens, Harry D. Rube
"This people which I made": The Character of King Arthur as a Mechanism of Unification in Medieval Arthuriana and the Idylls of the King, Hallie Schaeffer
Stretch Feedback in the Lobster Heart: Experimental and Computational Analysis, Katelyn J. Suchyta
Benchmarking Ab Initio Computational Methods for the Quantitative Prediction of Sunlight-Driven Pollutant Degradation in Aquatic Environments, Kasidet Trerayapiwat
Examining Functional Roles for Anthocyanins in Plant Leaves, Benjamin M. West
CRISPR Mutagenesis of the WAK Locus, Cody P. Woods
2015
Selective Attention and Memory: Event Related Potentials and the IOR Effect, Leigh A. Andrews
The Roles of ROG1, REM1, and REM2 in a WAK Mediated Pectin Response, Joshua A. Benton
The development of begging calls in Yellow Warblers, Jackson F. Bloch
Characterizing the exhumation path of the first ultrahigh-pressure terrane in North America, Zachary FM Burton
Extreme Value Theory and Backtest Overfitting in Finance, Daniel C. Byrnes
Caring like a state: The elaboration of a care ideology in Peru and Sri Lanka in the 20th century, Katharine Herman
Characterization and Quantification of AST-C Peptides in Homarus americanus Using Mass Spectrometry, Amanda Howard
Music Streaming Services, Programming Culture, and the Politics of Listening, Walker Kennedy
Albert Camus: An Ethical Politics in the Absurd World, Stephanie Lane
Mathematical Notions of Resilience: The Effects of DisturbanceI in One-Dimensional Nonlinear Systems, Stephen Ligtenberg
The Lay Judge System: Following a Tradition of Maintaining the Status Quo or Forging a Path Towards More Reformation of the Justice System?, Alexandra Mathieu
The Price of Carbon: Politics and Equity of Carbon Taxes in the Middle Income Countries of South Africa and Mexico, Bridgett C. McCoy
Characterizing the influence of Atlantic water intrusion on water mass formation and primary production in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard, Courtney Michelle Payne
The Structure and Unitary Representations of SU(2,1), Andrew J. Pryhuber
Palimpsestuous London: Spatial and Temporal Layering in Fin-de-Siècle Victorian Fiction, Elisabeth A. Strayer
Hunter-Gatherers: The Survival of the Foraging Practice In Modern States, Tristan C. Van Kote
Peace Be Dammed? Water Power and Water Politics in the Tigris-Euphrates Basin, Camille E. Wasinger
Assigning Legal Punishment: Individual Differences in Justice Sensitivity and Selective Attention, Emily C. Weinberger
"A Doula Can Only Do So Much": Birth Doulas and Stratification in United States Maternity Care, Kaylee S. Wolfe
The Role of Protein Kinases ROG1 and SRF6 in the WAK Stress Response Pathway, Jaepil E. Yoon
2014
Dendrites of Cardiac Ganglion Regulate Heartbeat of American Lobster, Homarus americanus, Through Stretch Feedback, Mara R. Chin-Purcell
Convexity Properties of the Diestel-Leader Group Γ_3(2), Peter J. Davids
A "Peculiarly American" Enthusiasm: George Bellows, Traditional Masculinity, and The Big Dory, James W. Denison IV
Geochemical and Stratigraphic Analysis of the Linnévatnet Sediment Record: A Study of Late Holocene Cirque Glacier Activity in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Graham Harper Edwards
Changes in chiropteran community structure associated with the white-nose syndrome epidemic: evidence for competitive release?, Adam Eichenwald
The role of the ROG1 protein in pectin perception, Divya Hoon
Re-formando cuerpos: Las identidades femeninas en escritoras cubanas durante el Período Especial, Amanda M. Montenegro
The Photodegradation of Endocrine Disrupting Compounds in Aqueous Solutions, Peyton C. Morss
The Effects of Temperature on the Cardiac System of the American Lobster, Homarus americanus, Elizabeth A. Owens