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Honors Program

The American Studies Department at Macalester encourages students to undertake an honors project in their senior year by offering students the opportunity to pursue advanced work in the field through the Honors Program. Participation in the Honors Program involves the completion of a rigorous thesis on a scholarly issue of the student’s choice. The program offers American Studies majors a chance to take an in-depth look at an issue important to the field and allows them to take their undergraduate work to a new level in terms of research and length. The department suggests that students begin planning for their honors projects in their junior year and advises them to begin work on it as early as is practical.

The Thesis

The Thesis required for successful participation in the American Studies Honors Program is to be focused on a single scholarly subject in one of the departments three areas of emphasis: Racial Concepts and Theories; Cultures, Histories and Practices; and Activism and Social Justice. The department expects that the normal final product will be a substantial written thesis, which demonstrates independent critical thought and original research. It differs from a senior seminar paper (the normal capstone) in its breadth, depth, and scope. The senior capstone may not be used for this thesis.

Typically, a thesis is composed of an introduction and several chapters, with the total length of the paper normally exceeding fifty pages. The paper must be backed up by well-documented research. The project is to be done in English. The honors project should be in the form of a typed thesis, but other formats may be used to support the thesis during the oral defense. Final projects may include literary scholarship or pedagogical studies and may be interdisciplinary in their approach.

A committee of three faculty members will evaluate each honors student. At least one committee member must come from the American Studies department. This committee will read the honors thesis and will engage the student in an oral discussion of her/his project. The committee will decide whether to recognize the student’s work with “honors.” The individual project advisor will be responsible for assigning the student a final letter grade for their independent study course.

Eligibility

Participation is open to all Macalester College students who either have already completed an American Studies Major or will have completed one by the time they graduate (students must have declared a major in American Studies). Honors students must complete all regular requirements for the American Studies department degree. Before finishing the honors project, the student should have completed twelve courses in American Studies of which not more than eight credits are independent research courses. Participants must have maintained at least a 3.3 overall GPA.

All honors students must register for or have already taken AMST 400, the American Studies senior seminar.

Honors applications can be downloaded here and can either be submitted to via email or delivered to the American Studies office in Humanities 114.

Honors Projects

You can read these projects in Digital Commons.

2016

“Racial Uplift in a Jim Crow Local: Black Union Organizing in Minneapolis Hotels 1930-1940,” Luke Mielke

2015

Decolonizing Healing, Decolonizing Mental Health: The Impacts of Settler-colonialism on Blackfeet Youth Suicide, Abaki Beck

Queering the “Comfort Women”: Coming Out Testimonials and Public Collective Memories, Elisa My. Lee

Ways We Remember: Rethinking Symbols of Italian American History and Imagining Alternative Narratives, Kathryn N. Anastasi

Haunted: Three Generations of Black Feminism(s), Lucy Short

Blood Diamonds: The Recovery of Black Unification Amidst White Hegemony, Christine E. Ohenewah

2014

Genocidal Silences: The Politics of Cambodian Memory in a United States Context, David Rao

2013

Warped Foundations: The Creation of Home and the Spatial Realities of Homelessness, Eric Goldfischer

Eating Spaces and Places: Examining the Latin@ Barrio, Chinatown, and Black Urban Space as Sites of Collective and Social Imagination, Kathlynn E. Hinkfuss

A Dividing City and Limited Education: An Analysis of School Segregation in Chicago, Illinois and Seattle, Washington, Ricardo J. Millhouse

2012

Trans(nacional) Bodies in Motion: Reframing Violence and Resistance in Mexicana Performance and Chicana Theater, Gabriella Deal-Márquez

The RED Revolution from the Perspective of Visual Cultural Studies: A New Chapter in Art, Commerce and Corporate Social Responsibility, Caroline Karanja

Faces of the Future: Race, Beauty and the Mixed Race Beauty Myth, Clara Younge

2011

Can We Laugh? Jewish American Comedy’s Expression of Anxiety in a Time of Change, 1965-1973, Emily Schorr Lesnick

2010

What Lies Beneath? Contemporary Notions of Multiculturalism and Their Impact on Irish and American Immigrant Communities, Amanda Nelson

2007

A Piece of Land: Black Women and Land in South Africa and the United States of America, Alessandra Williams

2006

Eugenicism: The Construction of Queer Space in the Works of Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany, Freda Fair

Civil Rights in Black and Green: Towards a Transatlantic Understanding of the Civil Rights Movements in the United States and Northern Ireland, Mollie Gabrys