Opportunities and Resources
As an undergraduate student, you have the opportunity to pursue research and creative work through the English Department’s writing contests and University-sponsored events such as the annual Fall Fest and Academic Spree Day. You also might pursue an honors thesis, allowing you to dive deeper into a topic that interests you.
You’ll benefit from Clark’s prime location, which gives you the chance to work at major research libraries, including the nearby American Antiquarian Society — a world-renowned archive of journals, novels, letters, broadsides, and ephemera. Worcester is home to nine colleges and universities, providing the opportunity for face-to-face collaboration with scholars and writers beyond the Clark campus.
Recent Undergraduate Honors Theses in English
Interested in applying your skills in close reading and critical analysis to a long-term research project? Consider pursuing honors work, where you’ll work closely with an adviser to develop a thesis. Below, check out recent topics and titles.
- “Gendered (De)constructions of Identity and their Traumatic Effects: Illuminating a History of Brutality Buried Beneath the Beauty of the Caribbean Landscape”
- “Trapped Within and Without: Representations of Space in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights”
- “Straying from the Heterosexual Ideal: Gothic Anxieties Regarding Sex and Gender”
- “ ‘Palpable Verb Tense’: A Feminist Orientation to Readerly and Authorial Position”
- “Identity in the Zone: Disciplinary Power, Habitus, and Influential Narrative in Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow”
- “ ‘Now I a Fourfold Vision See’: From the Miltonic Trinity to the Blakean Quadrinity”
- “Gender in Conflict: A History of Iraqi Women from Ba’athism to Occupation”
- “ ‘In My Ear’: Gender and Claims to Knowledge in The Great Gatsby and Jazz”
- “ ‘Units of a Greater Beast’: The Presence of John Steinbeck’s Phalanx Theory in his Political Fiction and Non-Fiction”
