The Honors Program in Literatures in English continues to grow, as our students increasingly value this opportunity for in-depth research, extended reflection, and independent, original exploration. This year, thirteen of our majors in Literatures in English completed senior theses, on topics that ranged from Victorian novels to contemporary fan fiction to the politics of representation in Caribbean carnival. In recognition of this accomplishment and of their success throughout their time in the major, all thirteen students will be graduating with Honors in English. 2025-26 will be the last academic year that Latin honors (cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude) are determined within the department; in future years, following a university-wide policy change, Latin honors will be determined by the College on the basis of grade point average, and authors of senior theses will graduate with Distinction in English. It is fitting, then, that this year saw an especially robust pool of thesis writers and thesis topics, reflecting a diversity of literary genres, historical contexts, and critical approaches. The co-winners of the M.H. Abrams Prize exemplify this range, across a 600-year span: Christina Bonarti’s thesis, “Desire on the Menu: The Paradox of Appetite in the Middle Ages,” explores the meanings of bodily appetite in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and in medieval culture, while America Casanova’s “Si Yo Pudiera, Yo Lo Hiciera: Co-Illegality and Mother-Daughter Bonds in Their Dogs Came with Them” joins perspectives from sociology, law, and literary form in a revelatory reading of Department member and Distinguished Professor Helena María Viramontes’ 2007 novel. The co-winners of the newer Guilford Prize, which recognizes achievement in English prose, were both exquisitely crafted: Sarah Mittleman’s “The Dark and Doubtful Way of the Law: Prosecuting Women’s Oppression through Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White,” in its canny use of legal reasoning, including motions and an opening statement, to make its case through the structure of the thesis itself; and Olivia Weeldreyer’s “The Childhood Sublime: Architecture, Memory, and the Uncanny in Shirley Jackson's Haunted Houses,” in its delicately wrought and persuasive reading of Jackson’s unusual gothic fiction. Congratulations to all of our senior thesis writers!
Award winners for this and other department writing prize competitions can be found on the Department Awards for Students page.
