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.
2018
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
Lie to Me: Linguistic Markers of Deception in Relation to Individual Differences in Executive Control, Lauren Pashkowski
Application of the Landau-Zener Model and Fermi's Golden Rule to Estimate Triplet Quantum Yield for Organic Molecules, Nathan D. Ricke
A Neighbor’s Impact: The Influence of Emotional Valence on Visual Word Processing, Marissa C. Rosenthal
The Role of Pectin Methyl Esterase in Pectin Activation of WAK Regulated Stress Response in Arabidopsis thaliana, Nicholas J. Saba
Mathematical Modeling of the American Lobster Cardiac Muscle Cell: An Investigation of Calcium Ion Permeability and Force of Contractions, Lauren A. Skerritt
Gateway to the Forest City? Portland, Maine's Bayside Neighborhood, 1866-2014, Alexander J. Tougas
Reconsidering Operation Condor: Cross-border Military Cooperation and the Defeat of the Transnational Left in Chile and Argentina during the 1970s, Georgia C. Whitaker
The Federal Disproportionate Minority Contact Mandate: An Examination of Its Effectiveness in Reducing Racial Disparities in Juvenile Justice, Hanna Leigh Wurgaft
2013
The Role of Competition and Patient Travel in Hospital Profits: Why Health Insurers Should Subsidize Patient Travel, Joseph S. Durgin
Identification of MPKs Involved in the Wall Associated Kinase Regulated Stress Response in Arabidopsis thaliana, Patrick J. Lariviere
Who We Are: Incarcerated Students and the New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein
From Left to Right? White Evangelical Politicization, GOP Incorporation, and the Effect of Party Affiliation on Group Opinion Change, Devon B. Shapiro