Past Thesis Projects

2024 Senior Thesis Students: 

  • Layla Gianna Arty—"The Acquisition of the English Plural Form by Native Japanese Speakers: An Investigation" (Thesis Advisor: Yunchuan Chen)
     
  • Clara Harms—"The Road to Rebuilding Trust in Medicine: A Case Study of Levantine Refugees and Immigrants‘ Negative Experiences with the U.S. Healthcare System and Subsequent Mistrust" (Thesis Advisor: Mbaye Lo)
     
  • Mac Hester—"Existing among Ambiguity: Understanding the Grammars of Korean-Chinese Bilinguals Through Scope Assignment in Quantifier-Negation Sentences" (Thesis Advisor: Yunchuan Chen)
     
  • Andrew Shi—"Telling “Queer Time” in the Age of Empire: Transcolonial Modernism across the May Fourth China and Late Colonial Taiwan" (Thesis Advisor: Carlos Rojas)
     
  • Isadora Toledo— "Migrants, Maids, and Slaves: Tracing the Activist and Counter Discourses of Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong" (Thesis Advisor: Carlos Rojas)

2023 Senior Thesis Students: 

  • Leah Okamura—“Scope of Negation and Conjugation in Heritage Japanese” (Thesis advisor: Yunchuan Chen) 

2022 Senior Thesis Students: 

  • Nora Benmamoun—“How Does Increasing Chinese Involvement in Algeria and Morocco Impact Public Perception Towards China? An Analysis of How History and Contemporary Relations With The U.S., Europe, and China Informs How Algerians and Moroccans Perceive China ” (Thesis advisor: Kang Liu) 
     
  • Soren Christensen—“Style Shifts in Japanese Video Game Commentary Monologues” (Thesis advisor: Yunchuan Chen) 
     
  • Raia Lockerman—“#WhenISeeThemISeeUs: Conceptualizing Black Power's Palestine” (Thesis advisor: Ellen McLarney) 
     
  • Jennifer Shen—“Simplified Grammar in Both Languages? On Scope Assignment in Q-Neg Sentences in Eng-Dominant Heritage CHN Speakers” (Thesis advisor: Yunchuan Chen) 

2021 Senior Thesis Students: 

  • Chapin Ruffa—“ ‘Umbrella as Weapon’: Identity, Creativity, and Social Media in Hong Kong's Pro-Democracy Movement” (Thesis advisor: Leo Ching) 
     
  • Anna Klingensmith—“Exploring Cultural Influence on Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) Policy: A Cultural Analysis and Comparison Between Jordan and the United Kingdom” (Thesis advisor: Shai Ginsburg) 
     
  • Michelle Rodriguez—“Cyberspace in the Middle East: An Analysis of US and Iranian State Cyber Operations and their Effects on Regional Politics” (Thesis advisor: Mbaye Lo) 

2020 Senior Thesis Students:

  • Allison Rose Geary—“Online Censorship in Egypt: The Silencing and Creation of a Constituency” (Thesis Advisor: Mbaye Lo)
     
  • Jessica Marlow—“Child Valuation in Contemporary China: Abandonment, Institutional Care, and Transnational Adoption” (Thesis Advisor: Carlos Rojas)
     
  • Giacomo Beresford McCarthy—“Social Remembering; Plastic History: The Politics of Power and the Famine in Lebanon, 1915-18” (Thesis Advisor: Erdag Goknar)
     
  • Natasha Mia Rothenbucher—“Where Are You from? Problematizing Jordanian National Identity” (Thesis Advisor: Mbaye Lo)
     
  • Bryan Hoyler Rusch—“Transportation Networks and Social Dynamics in the UAE Imagined Inheritance: The Legacy of Colonial Transportation Ideology and Network” (Thesis Advisor: miriam cooke)

2019 Senior Thesis Students:

  • Clark Moore Goff—“On the Nature of 20th and 21st Century Gendered Marketing Strategies and Perceptions Toward Cigarette Products in the United States and China” (Thesis Advisor: Carlos Rojas)
     
  • Caitlin Lopez—“Otome Games: Narrative, Gender and Globalization” (Thesis Advisor: Leo Ching)
     
  • Daniella Rose Nevid—“The Effects of Everyday Discrimination on the Mental Health of Muslim Students at Duke University” (Thesis Advisor: Ellen McLarney)
     
  • Natasha Jo Torrens—“Female Labor Force Participation in Turkic Countries: A Study of Azerbaijan and Turkey” (Thesis Advisor: Erdag Goknar, Didem Havlioglu)
     
  • Amulya Vadapalli—“Arguing Justice in Yemen’s Civil War: A Researcher’s Notebook” (Thesis Advisor: Mbaye Lo)
     
  • Shuqi Zhao—“Remembering or Forgetting Wartime Sexual Violence: The Contemporary Discourse on the “Comfort Women” Issue in China” (Thesis Advisor: Nayoung Aimee Kwon)

2018 Senior Thesis Students:

  • Shivam Narayan Dave— "Translation of Maithilisharan Gupt’s Saket"
     
  • Luul Yasmine Lampkins—"The Afterlives of Mao: Discourses, Representations, and Politics"
     
  • Attyat Mayans—"Evaluating changing attitudes towards education in the People’s Republic of China: Western disruption and the rise of the study abroad movement"
     
  • Sydney Ella Smith—"Heritage with a High Price Tag: The Rise of China's Luxury Automotive Industry"
     
  • Quinn Alison Steven—"Fast Food, Street Food: Western Fast Food’s Influence on Fast Service Food in China"

2017 Senior Thesis Students:

  • John Stathis—"Ainu, Identity, and Japanese Imperial Nationalism"

2016 Senior Thesis Students:

  • Tessa Deardorff—"'Three Tentacles of Terror': Israeli Securitization after the Arab Spring"
     
  • Emma Campbell-Mohn—"The World's New Peacekeeper? An Analysis of China's Personnel Contributions to UN Peacekeeping Missions"
     
  • Jessica Gold—"The Islamic State: The Manifestation of a Violently Intimate Utopian Imaginary"
     
  • Thao Nguyen—"The Role of National Status in Refugee Narratives: A Case Study on Palestinian and Sudanese Productions"

2015 Senior Thesis Students:

  • Stephanie Egeler—"Women's Legal Status in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco in the Post Arab Spring Era"
     
  • Kaidi Gao—"Listening for Revolution, Sharing for Uprising: Media's Role in the National Revolts in 1979 Iran and 2010 Tunisia"
     
  • Nali Julia Gillespie—"Exile Amidst a Lost Sense of Purpose: Asylum Experiences of Iraqi Refugees in Jordan"
     
  • Anna Lamb—"Gendering the Public Sphere in the Middle East and North Africa: Feminist Counter-Publics on the Internet"
     
  • Alexis Morton—"Yellow Skin, Black Masks: Constructing and Performing Blackness in Japan"
     
  • Courtney Murray—"Beyond the Lens: Analyzing Nationalism in Egyptian Cinema"
     
  • Jaya Z. Powell—"Denying Difference: Japanese Identity and the Myth of Monoethnic Japan"
     
  • Anna Quian—"Barefoot Doctors of the Cultural Revolution: Examining Educated Youth Experiences of Politicization and Remembrance"
     
  • Archer Wang—"Chinese Online Literature as Popular Culture"

2014 Senior Thesis Students:

  • Jonathan Hafferkamp—"Reframing Youth Apathy in Jordan: An Anarchist Approach to Politics in the Hashemite Kingdom"
     
  • Shelby Hart-Armstrong—"Visual Battleground: Contestation of Egyptian Public Spaces"

2013 Senior Thesis Students:

  • Jose Lamazares—“From Mario to Smash Brothers: Historical, Social, and Technological Formations of Nintendo.”  
     
  • Thomas Jun Hong—“Japanese Nationalist Discourse from the End of the World War II to the Present.” 
     
  • Sabrina Anne McCutchan—“Hollywood Films in Mainland Chinese Theaters: Emergent Models of Film Production, Emergent Discourses of Chineseness.”  
  • Fernando Revelo La Rotta—““Are You Gay?" A Queer Ethnography of Sex and Sexuality in Egypt.” 
     
  • Rachel Leng—“Tongzhi Tales in Mainland China: Chinese Gay Male Subjectivities in Online Comrade Literature.”

2012 Senior Thesis Students:

  • John Nelson III—"Writing He: The Evolution of Discourse on Rural-to-Urban Migration Through the Self-Representation of He Zhenzong in The City Is Also Ours." 
     
  • Michelle Zhang—"Mediating Modernity: Constructions of Urban Chinese Women in Ling Long (1931-1937) and ELLE (1988-1998)." 
     
  • Janice Jeong—"The Nation in the World and the World in the Nation: A Comparison of Historical Narratives of Egyptian, South Korean, and Chinese Textbooks During the Early Cold War: From a Global Perspective." 
     
  • Erica Nagi—"Constructing the Future: The Process of Street Rehabilitation in Cairo, Egypt--A Case Study on Ana El Masry Organization."

2011 Senior Thesis Students:

  • Debra Armour—“The African-American-Korean Encounter:   Race Relations between African-American Soldiers and Korean Civilians during the Korean War”
     
  • Katherine Booth—“Arguing ‘community’ in a Muslim Context:  The Case of the Muslim Community in the Triangle”
     
  • Michael Chenkin—“Praise Be to Chairman Mao, the Reddest Sun in our Hearts!:   Probing the Cultural and Visual Religious Qualities of Mao Zedong-centric Chinese Propaganda”
     
  • Yasmina Chergui—“Morocco’s Years of Lead: A Look inside Moroccan Prison Literature”
     
  • Hye Jung “Sarah” Kim—“Evangelical Aid: Humanitarian Aid or Religious Coercion”
     
  • Minah Kim—“Lessons from Helsinki: Effects of U.S. Foreign Policy on the Protection of North Korean Human Rights”
     
  • Mallory McLoughlin—“Americanizing al Qaeda: The Case of Anwar al-Awlaki”
     
  • Sharon Mei—“Voices Represented: Mediating Factors in Documentary Film’s Conception of Chinese Women”
     
  • Muntasir Natour—“Palestinian Hip-Hop: Narrative Functions and Articulation of Resistance”
     
  • Linda Zhang—“Representations of Chinese Migrant Women: Documenting and Reshaping the Dagongmei”