Senior Honors Projects

The most extensive research opportunity for Classics majors is the Senior Honors Project. The Honors Project is a year-long project which in most cases carries two course credits, normally in Fall and Winter of the senior year. Several options are available for students to design an honors project that matches their particular interests and abilities. In many cases, the honors project consists of a thesis or creative project, but it is also possible to design a program of readings leading to a comprehensive examination, or a combination of a research paper and a written examination.

For more information about honors work in the classics department, please read Frequently Asked Questions about Honors Work in Classics.

Past Honors Projects

  • Jacob H. Parker '23, "Hebrew Education at Dartmouth: The Forgotten Language"
  • Carson D. Riggs '23, "Solomon as Protector of the Womb: The Image of the Holy Rider on Late Antique Gem Amulets"
  • Abigail S. Hyun '23, "A Humanistic Approach to the MI Year: Practical Philosophical Lessons from Ancient Writers & Medical Practitioners"
  • Ian D. Gill '23, "Pitying the Enemy in Aeschylus' Persians"
  • Elizabeth A. Hadley '23, "A Metamorphosis of Ovid's Metamorphoses"
  • William C. Dowling '23, "Aristotle on Animals: Teleology and Ethics"
  • Nathaniel W. Kramer '23, "A Digital Archaelogy of Sparta: A Diachronic Data and Spatial-driven Approach"
  • Grace E. Goodwin '23, "Pauline Christianity and the Paradox of Agency and Chosenness in the Shepherd of Hermas"
  • Sarah A. Mason '23, "Xenophon's Apology"
  • Georgina Davis '22, "No Longer Lost in Translation: Lexicon-Based Sentiment Analysis for Ancient Translation Variation"
  • Margaret Ferris '22, "The Promotion of Heirs on Coins of Tiberius"
  • Ben Zide '22, "Violence and Roman Slavery in Books VII, VIII, and IX of Apuleius' Metamorphoses"
  • Kevin Donohue '21, "A poet and a scholar is what I was told": Analyses and Poems Inspired by the Two Men in A. E. Housman
  • Naomi Meron '21, "What is your sickness?": Madness in Greek Tragedy and Medical Literature
  • Clayton Howard '21, The Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World: Naxos and Paros
  • Sophia Kocher '21, Mater Patriae: Livia in Nummis after Augustus
  • Noah Simmons '20, The Upwind Performance of Roman Period Sailing Vessels
  • Grace Caldwell '19, Gorgias' Encomium of Helen and the logos - a jeu de l'amour et du hazard
  • Leah Alpern '18,  Choosing to be grateful: ethical reasoning in Seneca's On Benefits
  • Maeve Lentricchia '17 "The Theme You Left in Death": Between Euripides and Heidegger
  • Emma Lape '16,  Flowers that Bend with the Rainfall: Time and Identity in Greek Epic and Tragedy
  • Thomas Rover '16, The Combat Archaeology of the Fifth-Century BCE Kopis
  • Aaron Pellowski '15, De Tempore Discendum Est: Seneca's Philosophy of Time
  • Kathleen Wahl '15, Lessons in Rape: Sexual Violence in the Roman Declamations
  • Chloe Lee '14, The "Good Men" of 100 BCE: A Study of Cicero's Pro Rabirio Perduellionis
  • Margarita S. Montgomery '14, Poetry of Politics in the 30s BC: A Reading of Vergil's Eclogues and Horace's Epodes

  • Anna Leah Berstein-Simpson '13, Nostoi: Cultural Repatriation and National Identity
  • Joyce Cho '13, Constructions of the Body of the Mistress By the Men of Latin Love Elegy 
  • Sarah Loucks '13, The Rhetoric of Wealth in Demosthenes' On the Crown
  • Joel Malkin '13, Pindar's Delphi: The Delphic Authority behind Epinician Praise
  • Kyle McGinty '13Circles of Framing and Light: Analyzing the Nimbus in the Mediterranean

    (image corpus overview)
  • Chloe Moon '13, Early Athenian Gendering Through Art: Representations of Mixed-Gender Dancing from the Late Geometric to the Late Archaic Period
  • Elizabeth Neill '13, Pillars of Society: Women as Bearers of Burdens in Archaic and Classical Art
  • Emily Stronski '13i, A Representation of Immortality and the Afterlife in the Third Century CE: the Capitoline Prometheus Sarcophagus
  • Emma Vance '13, Before the Alba Mater: Classics, Civilization, and Race at Moor's Indian Charity School
  • Gregory Knight '12, Adeia as Immunity in 5th Century BC Athens
  • Scott O'Brien '12Seneca on the Renaissance University Stage: The Plays of William Gager and the Function of Moral Agency in the Tragic Genre

  • Peter Osorio '12A Classicist Under Constraint

  • Chelsea Perfect '12Fortuna Redux in Early Imperial Coinage

  • Charles H. Clark '11The Gortyn Laws in Architectural Context
  • Kathryn T. Mammel '11Bodies in Bloom: The Association of Flora and Female Figures in Late Bronze Age Aegean Iconography

    (catalogue) (appendix
  • Sarah C. Spangenberg '11Issues of Planning in Diocletian's Palace at Split: Imperial Cult and the Late Antique Palace

    (images)
  • Margaret Bell '10, The Gadde of Palmyra and Dura-Europos: Images of Fortune from Late 2nd Century Roman Syria
  • Ryan Marnell '10, "Betwixt the Joys of Sex:" Scholarship and Marriage in Michael Field's treatment of Sappho
  • Christopher Blankenship '09The Role of the Individual in Ephoros' Histories
  • Ray DiCiaccio '09DAMP: A Digital Archaeological Mapping Program: Problems with its Applicability to Surface Survey Information Due to Issues of Data Comparability
  • Catherine Lacey '09, Ovid's Art of Meaning: Interpretation and Authority in Tristia 2
  • Radha D. S. Kulkarni '09, Visualizing the Past: Tu Marcellus Eris
  • Dominic Machado '09, Marcus Claudius Marcellus: Rebellious Republican or Traditional Triumphator?
  • Peter Mathias '09, Capital Punishment and Jurisprudence in Ancient Rome
  • Debra M. Aboodi '08A Log Cabin Out of Stone: Translating Horace's Epodes
  • Aindriu C. Colgan '08, Understanding Imperial Rome and the Evolving Meaning of Empire
  • Kyle Jazwa '08, Depictions of Boxing in Late Archaic Etruscan Tomb Paintings
  • Alisa R. Koonce '08 (Senior Fellow), Philosophical Studies in early monastic schools: Ontology and mereology in marginal glosses of commentaries to Aristotle's Categories and related writings (10-11 c)
  • Briar (Teron) Dent '08The Pompeian Bakeries: An Analysis of the Urban Distribution of the Bakeries and Pastry Shops at Pompeii 
    (images)
  • Craig W. Dent '07, Etruscan Tomb Markers: The Archaic and Classical Production of Clusium and Felsina (600-420 BCE)
  • Jacqueline T. Olson '07, At Death's Doors: An Iconographical Study of the Velletri Sarcophagus
  • Katherine B. Harrington '06, A Comparative Study of the Pebble Mosaics of Ancient Greece
  • Sophia S. Khan '06, Polis under Threat: The Enduring Power of Euripides' Hecuba
  • Bradley G. Wolcott '06, Striking a Balance: The numismatic Evidence for the Religious and Political Policy of Constantine the Great
  • Matthew R. Jedreski '05, Minoan Religious Architecture in Glyptic Art: A Complete Contextual Analysis
  • Tori L. McKee '05, Representations of Wives and Marriageable Women in Pliny the Younger and Ps. - Quintilian
  • Matthew I. Kenney '04, The Military Nike
  • Sarah C. Murray '04, Man Overboard? A Re-evaluation of the Under-representation of Sailors and Naval Warfare in Classical Athenian Art
  • Magdalena M. Panz '04, The Aesthetics of Desire in Sappho: A Comparative Reading with Charles Baudelaire
  • George M. Storm '04, Damnatio Memoriae: Case Studies from the Roman Republic through the First Century AD
  • Christopher M. Chan '03, Plautus and the Learned Comedy of the Renaissance
  • Rose B. MacLean '03, Fashioning a Freed Self: Representations of Civic and Familial Identity in the Ostian Epigraphic Monuments
  • Dongngan Truong '02, A Novel Theme for Elegy: Abortion in Ovid, Amores 2.13 and 2.14
  • Julia Tzeng '02, Hadrian's Provincial Policies: An Examination of Achaea, Britannia, and Judea under the Reign of Hadrian
  • Michael F. O'Donnell '02, Poet as Playwright: Characterization through Speech in Homer's Iliad
  • Julie B. Axelrod '01, Lifting the Veil: A Critical Model for the Interpretation of Juvenal's Satires
  • Seth L. Button '01, Chariots in War and and Art in the Late Bronze Age Aegean
  • Abigail J. Gillard '01, Politics in the Kerameikos and Demosion Sema: Civic Identity and Funerary Custom in Fifth-Century BC Atheos