Notable Senior Theses

Notable Senior Theses

Belmont High School

May 2010

Each senior at BHS completes a senior thesis as part of the required twelfth grade English curriculum. A notable senior thesis is an accomplished piece of written work developed over the course of the school year under the direction and supervision of the classroom teacher. Teachers have identified students who have carefully thought about their topics and written an outstanding paper. The students listed below completed notable theses in a variety of senior English classes.

Winners of 2010 Lillian F. Blacker Prizes for Excellence in Writing

Martha Wechsler “The Land is Always Here”: Personification of the Land and Humanity’s Relationship with Absolute Truth in the Works of Willa Cather

(First Prize)

Ian Magnusson The Last Man’s Last Hope: Language in Dystopic Literature

(Second Prize)

Maria Tyutyunik A Thin Veil of Illusion: Truth, Deception, and Meta-Drama in Shakespeare’s Comedies (Third Prize)

Student / Title of Paper
Allie Alfonso / Art and Agreeability: Austen’s Confrontation of Societal Expectations
Through Poised Female Characters
Leili Ansari / Discovering One’s Role in Society: Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s Definition of Awakening through the Natural World
Leslie Baker / Disguise Dictating Identity: The Effect of Others’ Expectations on the Self in Shakespearean Comedy
Karina Bekelian / Evading Loneliness: Ann Beattie’s Depiction of Lonesomeness and the Affect it has on its Victims
Hunter Bennett / Dashiel Hammett: Breaking the Heroic Archetype in Detective Fiction
Erin Bleck / The Early Modern Feminist: Virginia Woolf Satirizing Patriarchy to Portray the Need for a Modern Feminist Society in the Novels The Voyage Out, Night and Day, Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves, and The Years
Deane Buckley / Uncivil Society: Society’s Constraints upon Free Will and Freedom of Association in Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Joseph Canina / Vonnegut’s Opinion of War: “War, What is it Good for? Absolutely Nothing”
Danielle Carter / Daphne du Maurier: Conflict is the Beginning of Consciousness
Vincent Cortina / Individuality vs. Community: Lewis’ Illustration of the Individual Adjusting to their Environment to Reach Self-Fulfillment
Alana Curran / Taking Back Their Bodies: Rejecting Limiting Gender Roles in the Works of Toni Morrison
Sarah DeGiacomo / The Pursuit of Happiness in the Works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Grace Durkin / Anne Tyler: The Fundamental Human Need for Companionship
Nancy Eggleston / The Caucasian Male>All Others: Proving Faulkner’s Stance on Racial, Gender and Mental Inequalities in the 1920’s South
Caroline Ekchian / Our Name: The Essence of Who We Are
Andrew El-Hayek / Hi Ho, So it Goes: The Value of Human Life and Experience for Realizing Potential in Kurt Vonnegut
Bacall Furmaniuk / Artistic Accomplishment: How Jane Austen Portrays Social Class in her Novels
Lily Goldstein / Fitzgerald’s Corrupted American Dream: A Criticism of This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned and Tender Is the Night
Paul Goodman / Be All My Sins Remembered: Karmic Retribution in the Works of T.H. White
Ben Green / “I put the oy back in goy”: Judaism and Assimilation in the Works of Philip Roth
Joshua Greenspan / Jose Saramago: The Art of Allegorical Association
Michael Griffin / Nature Raging: The Need for Equality in William Styron’s Novels
Leonid Grinberg / “Right and True and Decent”: The American Character in the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hunter S. Thompson
Kevin Guebenlian / The True Flaws of Cities: Not Crime in Contemporary American Literature
Elizabeth Halprin / "When he's looking, she falls apart": The Kaleidoscope of Gender and Identity in the Works of Angela Carter
Esther Hamburger / REALITY [results may vary]: Escaping Objective Actuality by Dreaming Oneself Awake
Christopher Hancock / Dickens and Class: A Rebuttal of the Status Quo
Julia Harris / Communicating a Culture: Storytelling Between Generations in Modern Immigrant Novels
Michael Johnson / Chuck Palahniuk: A Self Reflection
Jenny Kang / The Inextricability of Soul and Body: Achieving Spiritual Clairvoyance While Resisting Carnal Distractions in Dostoevsky
Elias Kleinbock / The Desecration of Eden-- Corruption of the Human Condition by the Desire for Power and Knowledge in Márquez and Cortázar
Emily Kolenbrander / Natural Beauty: Cather's Empowerment of Women through Their Resemblance to the Land
Alex Kozhemiakov / The Weakness of Humanity in Relation to Nature in the Works of Norman Mailer
Shaina Kulbersh / An Explication of Inhibited Identity and Identity Discovery: The Use of Music in Morrison’s Novels
Annie Lazenby / The Everlasting Battle Between Chaos and Sanity: Context and Individuality in Wallace Stegner
Annie Leccese / Unnatural Selection: The Path to Survival in Edith Wharton’s Society
Denise Lu / Finding the Self in Others: Achieving Unity in the Works of Virginia Woolf
Stephanie Luk / Tan and Kincaid: A Mother Who Gives her Daughter a “Swan”
Claire Mackevicius / Lost in Their Own Fiction: The Reality of Spark’s Writers
Haruna Matsusaka / Norman Mailer: A Closet Feminist and Critic of America’s Male Dominated Culture
Andrew McCracken / A True Judgment of Morals: Tim O’Brien’s Search for Inner and World Peace
Malinda McPherson / Rejecting Gender Roles: The Ramifications of Male Control and Power in the Works of Miles Franklin
Nick Manos / A Light in the Dark: Allusion to the Future in the Works of Ellison, Baldwin, and Wright
Marina Manoukian / Musings and the Lives of Characters: The Ignorance of the Human Condition
Joseph McNamara / Inevitable Failures in Sex, Society, and Self: Disturbing Sexual Acts and Self-Actualization in the Works of John Irving
Andrea Meyer / Following Dreams: Hesse’s Portrayal of the Journey of Escaping Society
Thomas Miller / Finding Emotional and Natural Happiness: The Exploration of Symbolic Societies in the Novels of E.M. Forster
Michael Musi / The Mere Exposure Effect: Chuck Palahniuk’s Inconvenient Truth
Melanie Nehrkorn / A Precarious Balancing Act: The Conflict Between the Innate and the Assumed Identity in Louise Erdrich’s Novels
Juliet O’Reilly / “A Grotesque and Uncontrollable World”: How Waugh Pins the Individual Against Societal Pressures
Alexcia Pierre / Guide Me in My Time of Need: Family and Society in the Works of Toni Morrison
Robert Powers / Organic Versus Synthetic: The Power of Nature and the Corruption of Society in the Works of Ernest Hemingway
Emily Regier / For Good or Evil: Norman Mailer’s Distortion of Sexuality to Destroy Moral Absolutes
Kendall Richards / The Threat of Continuity: The Monstrous Results of Attempting to Control that which will not be Controlled
Julia Rodgers / Biology vs. Society: D.H. Lawrence Argues for the Supremacy of Human Instinct and Sexuality Over Industry and Intellect
Sara Shahanagi / Belief: The Necessary Falsehood of Human Existence in the Writings of Kurt Vonnegut
Pamela Shapiro / “The Kindly Mirrors of Future Times”: Finding Spiritual Immortality in Nabokov’s Mirrors
Christopher Stadler / “This is No Story, This is True”: The Confusion of Words and Reality in the Novels of Jack Kerouac
Jerry Suh / Tan, Amy: You, Me, and the World
Hannah Swartz / The Beautiful Yet Damned: The Hopeless Pursuits of Fitzgerald’s Male Protagonists
Isaac Tovares / Fighting for Faith: Wiesel and Ornstein’s Exploration of Loss of Faith and the Chance to Restore It
Samantha Tse / Promoting yet Undermining the Androgynous Character: Unconventionality in Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, The Moonstone, Antonina, The Dead Secret, Man and Wife, and No Name
Helen Wistman / “They want a plot, do they?”: Art as a resolution between contrived order and natural chaos in the works of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf
Charley Yan / Heroically Unimportant: Examining Human Relevance in Selected Works of Cormac McCarthy
Annie Yang / Trapped on All Sides: William Faulkner's Portrayal of the Individual's Struggle with the Rigid Structure and Rules of Southern Society