Thesis
As part of the GLAM major, all students will complete a senior thesis. The senior thesis is a year-long research project on a topic of the student’s choice. The thesis provides the opportunity for students to engage in deep and sustained work on a topic of particular interest to them, in close collaboration and consultation with a faculty adviser.
Past GLAM theses have covered a wide range of topics that reflects the diversity and richness of the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean; we encourage students to consult past theses for inspiration and ideas. Past theses can be found in the Thesis Tower in the Reed Library and in the GLAM/Religion student lounge on the second floor of the ETC. Reed community members can browse the .
Recent GLAM Theses
2023-2024
- Ariel Cooper, “Performing the Lover: One Solution to Two Crises of Masculinity in the 1st and 12th Centuries”
- Elizabeth Rollison, “Who is Ethnicity For? A Comparative Archaeological Investigation of Ethnicity in Teotihuacan and Ostia Antica”
- Anna Wilson, “Kleos through the Oikos: Women as Household Managers in the Odyssey”
2022-2023
- George Crooks, “Narratives of Roman History in Salvian’s De Gubernatione Dei”
- Celia Garb, “Ancient DNA An Unfit Arbiter of the Indo-European Debate”
- Rose Gatlin, “From Pen to Palace: Examining Roman Britain Through Literary Sources and Archaeological Discoveries at Fishbourne and Vindolanda”
- Alisa MacDonald, “A Comparison of Homeric and Virgilian Similes”
- Michael Quinn, “The Examination of Virtus, Slavery, and Civil War in the Third Servile War in Appian's Civil Wars”
- David Rothfels, “Hoping to Smash DNA with Rocks and Pickaxes”
- Freya Schlaefer, “Gastric Heroics: Towards a Grammar of Eating in Archaic Greek Poetry”
- Amir Weksler, “Love’s Coming for your Head!”
2021-2022
- Elin Hansen, “The Image of Augustus in Tacitus' Annals”
- Aemann Lin, “The Literary Form of the Dialogue and the Ethics of Philosophy in Plato's Gorgias”
- Cayden Price, “A New Model of Heroism for Roman Epic”
- Elliot Rydell Galarraga, “Lucretius and the Elite Roman Outlook”
2020-2021
- Emma McNeel, “Conversing with Mute Ash: The Capacity of Classical Reception”
- Kyle Nash, “De Rerum Repatriatione, or On the Repatriation of Things”
- Elliott Rosenthal, “Agamemnon and Political Crisis in the Iliad”
2019-2020
- Hayley Curtis, “The Cento Probae: Creative Appropriation in Late Antiquity”
- Liam Dulany, “Singing the Unspeakable: Metapoetics and Multivalence in Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile”
- Duncan Feiges, “On the Ruin of Britain: Reassessing the End of Roman Britain 400–700 CE”
- Wenqian Liu, “Medical and Cosmetic Tools and Implements from Gabii”
- Alexander Poston, “Traces of Stoic Philosophy in Cicero’s De Legibus and De Re Publica”
- Yeşim Yilmaz, “Penelope, Klytaimnestra, Helen”
2018-2019
- Lex Ladge, “Memory Objects: A Study of Attalid Memory and Object Creation under Philetairos and Attalos I”
- Marnie Leven, “Knowledge Is Power: An Examination of the Roman Empire's Rhetorical Imperialism of the Chinese Empire”
- Rikki Liu, “The Epistula ad Floram: Appealing to an Intellectual Woman in the Competitive Religious Marketplace of Second Century Christianity” (Classics/Religion)
- Kaylee Ma, “Imagining and Imaging the Past: Archaeological Reconstructions of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Oplontis”
- Elliot Menard, “Ovid is Divo Backwards: the Ovidian Orpheus' Influence on the Birth and Evolution of Opera”
- Kirk Svensson, “Hesiod's Works and Days: A Discourse on Ethics”
2017-2018
- Olivia Churchwell, "Of Ignorance, Equally Fatal: Re-examining Aeschylus' Iphigenia as a Political Body"
- Shin Dickens, “Identifying Seth: An Examination of Curse Tablets in the Ancient Mediterranean” (Classics/Religion)
- Griffin Hancock, ”Ego Mulier: The Construction of Sacred Gender Non-Conformity in the Roman Empire”
- Lina Neidhardt, “Sulpicia on Her Own Terms”
- Costanza Rasi, “Theatricality in Tacitus' Neronian Annales”
- William Wu, “Superbia and the Roman Disease in Sallust's Bellum Iugurthinum”
2016-2017
- Genevieve Marie Hook, “Making Italy Great Again: the Aeneid as Mythological Justification for Roman Power and Land Occupation”
- Ying Ying (Amelea) Ng, “Poetic Justice: Declamatory Rhetoric and Poetry in the Songs of Orpheus”
- Lewis Sears Sherman, “The Endurance of Truth: Views on Law and Knowledge in Plato and al-Farabi”
2015-2016
- Bailey Rose Boatsman, "Sticking it to the Men: Transgressive Women on the Greek Tragic Stage"
- Yelena Jeanne Erez, “It’s the Thought that Counts: Living in Accordance with Reason In Stoic Philosophy"
- Carolyn Louise Foerster, "Caesar et suos: Charisma, Pietas, and Discipline in the Gallic War" (Classics/Religion)
- George Walter Johnson, "Medicine in the Iliad"
- Anya Elizabeth Logan, "The Honeyed Cup: Lucretius’s Use of Myth"
- Alex Joseph McGrath, "Gangsta’s Paradise: Popular Politics and Gang Violence in the Late Roman Republic (63–52 BCE)"
- Warren James Peterson, "Omens and Intertexts: Interpreting Signs and Language in the oἰωνοϲκοπικά"
- Haley Jean Tilt, "Living and Dying Young: Conceptions of Child Development in Africa Proconsularis"
2014-2015
- Nicholas Brancaccio, “Life in Second Exile: Xenophon’s Reconception of Panhellenism in the Anabasis”
- Marilyn Carlin, “Tragic Gender Performance in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon”
- Christopher Embrey, “Social Unity, Class Conflict, and Aristotelian πόλις”
- Zachary Garriss, “Acerrimus”
- Laura Moser, “Madness and Meaning: Signs of Epic and Tragedy in Sophocles’ Ajax”
2013-2014
- Johanna Burgess, "The Management of Artistic and Architectural Heritage as a Base of Power in Early Imperial Rome"
- Jaye Whitney Dale Debber, "Forces in Opposition: The Polis and the Dionysiac in Euripides' Bacchae"
- Heather Hambley, "Gender and Genre in Ovid's Heroides 16 and 17"
- Benjamin Stephens, "The Social and Economic Reforms of Diocletian"