Skip to main content

Independent Studies

The English and Communication Studies Department encourages students to engage in individualized study. With the approval of the department chair and permission of a professor who will help direct the study, the student designs an in-depth look at a topic in literature, language, or critical theory, leading to a substantial paper, series of essays, or creative project. Below is a list of a few recent independent studies:

  • "The Misogynistic Tradition: A Female Voice Responds: A Comparison of Women's Lives as Represented by Boccaccio, Chaucer and Christine de Pizan"
  • "Communications and Manuel De Landa's 1000 Years of Nonlinear History"
  • "Studies in Twentieth Century Latin American Fiction: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Juan Rulfo, Clarice Lispector, Isabel Allende & Luisa Valenzuela"
  • "Sampling Soseki"
  • "Tim O'Brien and Truth"
  • "Man and the Machine: Images of Artificial Intelligence in Stanley Kubrick Films"
  • "The Bible as Literature"
  • "Understanding O'Neill's Guilt"
  • "Celtic Myth and Christian Beliefs in Contemporary Irish Literature"
  • "Masterpieces of 19th Century Russian Literature"
  • "Modern Russia: Peter the Great to Pushkin"
  • "Comparisons between the Southern Grotesque and Contemporary Dystopian Literature"
  • "American 1920s Expatriate Literature"
  • "Contemporary Japanese Literature"
  • "Health and Fitness Journalism"
  • "Effect of Social Media on Social Movements"
  • "Sexual Transitions in the Long 18th Century"
  • "Fictional Bodies, Textual Selves: A Crisis of Control in the 19th Century Novel"
  • "Write Drunk, Edit Sober: Creating a Book of Poetry"