Past Thesis Topics

Year	Title	Joint concentration (if applicable)
2025
2025	The Human Cost: Towards a Relational Account of Consumer Responsibility	Philosophy
2025	Surviving Girlhood: Understanding Black Girls’ Adaptive Behaviors to Oppressive Power Structures and their Implications on Early Adulthood	Sociology
2025	Open Up: Stories	English
2025	The Fairy Tales of Alycia Esperanza: A Creative Exploration of Trauma through Fantasy	English
2025	The Tool
2025	Smoky Mountain Rainbow: A Queer Appalachian Memoir	English
2025	She Won’t Be Saved: The Evangelical Woman Trapped in Legalized Gender-Based Violence	Religion
2025	What's More Punk Than a Library? The Connection Between Conservative Politics, Moral Panic, and Book Bans on Transgender Children’s Literature	Philosophy
2025	Sex (Miss)-Ed: the Battle Over Sex Education in Texas Public Schools	Social Studies
2024
2024	The Making of a Woman's World: A Policy Paper Proposing the Creation of a Cabinet-Level Position for Women's Rights in the U.S.	Government
2024	Border(ed) Fictions: 21st Century Migration Narratives as Counter-Archives	History and Literature
2024	“If Their Hair Is Pink, It’ll Be a Damn Good Drink”: The Trans Labor of Care and the Cafe Unionization Movement	Government
2024	How We Got These Scars: Abject Embodiment and Posthuman Possibility in Online Joker/Original Female Character Fanfiction	English
2024	Victimize, Romanticize, Transsexualize: Trans Women Protagonists in Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters and Nevada by Imogen Binnie	English
2024	Transing as Method in Theory, at Harvard, and in Disability Histories	History and Science
2024	Through Mother's Milk	History and Science
2023
2023	Queering the Lotus Blossom: Queered Time and the Racialization of Asian Femininity
2023	Classics War, Cold War, Culture War: Exploring the New Traditionalist Paradigm in the Battle for American Education	Classics
2023	The Reign of the Welfare Queen	Government
2023	Dietrich’s Dolls: The Postcolonial New Woman and the Creation of Marlene Dietrich’s Image from 1929-1932	History & Literature
2023	Singing Sexuality: How Jewish Wedding Bards Shaped Communal Values in 19th Century Imperial Russia	History & Literature
2023	Not the Master’s Tool: An Evaluation of Intersectional Theory in Anti- Discrimination Law	Social Studies
2023	Peddling and Performing Racialized Sexuality: An Exploration of Asian Woman Porn Performers’ Narratives	Social Studies
2023	Prison and Jail Birthworkers: Towards Radical Care for the Pregnant and Incarcerated	Social Studies
2023	State v. DeLavallade: Reading Judicial Narratives and the Black Family Archive	Social Studies
2023	Com’Era Verde La Mia Valle: Using Ethnography to Expand Essentialized Gender Roles in the Italian Agritourism	Sociology
2023	Pandora’s Pill Box: Gendered ADHD Patienthood, Past and Present	Sociology
2023	HORIZON: The Bodies We Forget	Theater, Dance & Media
2023	Unbind this Book, Unstitch this Body	Theater, Dance & Media
2022
2022	Plastic to Pixels: Commodified Fantasies of Femininity from Barbie to Virtual Influencers
2022	To Witness a Revolutionary Love: Mainstream Media’s Impact on Black Lesbian Social Citizenship	African and African-American Studies
2022	“When and Where I Enter:” Preserving African American Women’s Histories Through Historic House Museums	African and African-American Studies
2022	From a Whisper to a Roar: Reproductive Justice as the Future of National Reproductive Advocacy	Government
2022	The Origins of Likhet: Gender, Colonialism, and Whiteness in Scandinavia from the Nineteenth Century to the Modern Day	Government
2022	A Woman’s Place is at the Convention: Feminists Within the Republican Party, 1972-1980	History
2022	Mother Monster and Queen Bey: Racialized Gender Performance in the 2010s Careers of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé	History and Literature
2022	To the Stars, In the Closet: Attitudes toward Homosexuality in the United States Space Program, 1957-1987	History and Science
2022	Because I Love You: Mothering as Praxis Toward a Black Feminist Politic of Futurity	Social Studies
2022	Single (M)Otherhood, “It’s Difficult, But I Can Do It:” Community-Building Practices for Single Mothers in Southeast Michigan	Social Studies
2022	What School May Not Teach, #LearnOnTikTok: (Mis)Education in TikTok’s Quasi-Curricula for American History and Sex Education	Social Studies
2021
2021	Gender Codes: Exploring Malaysia’s Gender Parity in Computer Science	Computer Science
2021	The Voice of Technology: Understanding The Work Of Feminine Voice Assistants and the Feminization of the Interface	Computer Science
2021	Whose Voices, Whose Values? Environmental Policy Effects Ofextra-Community Sovereignty Advocacy	Environmental Science and Public Policy
2021	“Felons, Not Families”: The Construction of Immigrant Criminality in Obama-Era Policies and Discourses, 2011-2016	History and Literature
2021	Seeing Beyond the Binary: The Photographic Construction of Queer Identity in Interwar Paris and Berlin	History and Literature
2021	Iconic Market Women: The Unsung Heroines of Post-Colonial Ghana (1960s-1990s)	History and Literature: Ethnic Studies
2021	From Stove Polish to the She-E-O: The Historical Relationship Between the American Feminist Movement and Consumer Culture	Social Studies
2021	“Interstitial Existence,” De-Personification, and Black Women’s Resistance to Police Brutality	Social Studies
2021	#Metoo Meets #Blm: Understanding Black Feminist Anti-Violence Activism in the United States	Social Studies
2021	"Why Won’t Anyone Fight For Us?”: A Contemporary Class Analysis of the Positions and Politics of H-1b and H-4 Visa Holders	Social Studies
2020
2020	A Feminist Scientific Exploration of Minority Stress and Eating Pathology in Transgender Adolescents
2020	From Decolonization to LGBTQ + Liberation: LGBTQ+ Activism, Colonial History and National Identity in Guyana
2020	La Pocha, Sin Raíces / Spoiled Fruit, Without Roots: A Genealogy of Tejana Borderland Imaginaries	Anthropology
2020	Capturing Authenticity in Indian Transmasculine Identity: Design of a Novel Penile Prosthesis	Biomedical Engineering
2020	More Than Missing: Analyzing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Policy Trajectories in the United States and Canada, 2015-2019	Government
2020	“Almost Perfect”: The Cleansing and Erasure of Undocumented and Queer Identities through Performance of Model Families and Citizensh	History & Literature
2020	"He Needs a New Belt:” Queerness, Homonationalism, and the Racial and Sexual Dimensions of Passing in Israeli Cinema	History & Literature
2020	Our Healthy Bodies, Our Healthy Selves: Community Women's Health Centers as Collaborative Sites of Politics, Education, and Care	History of Science
2020	“No Way to Speak of Myself”: Lived and Literary Resistance to Gender in French	Romance Languages and Literatures
2020	Through Eastern European Eyes and Under the Western Gaze: The (Un)Feminist Face of the Russo-Ukrainian War	Slavic Languages and Literatures
2020	Subversion and Subordination: The Materialization of the YouTube Beauty Community in Everyday Reality	Social Studies
2019
2019	Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall, Why Can’t I See Myself At All?: A Close Reading of Children’s Picture Books Featuring Gender Expansive Children of Color	African and African-American Studies
2019	Dilating Health, Healthcare, and Well-Being: Experiences of LGBTQ+ Thai People	Biomedical Engineering
2019	The Consociationalist Culprit: Explaining Women’s Lack of Political Representation in Northern Ireland	Government
2019	Queering the Political Sphere: Play, Performance, and Civil Society with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in San Francisco, 1979-1999	Government
2019	Playing With Power: Kink, Race, and Desire	History and Literature
2019	“Take Root:” Community Formation at the San Francisco Chinatown Branch Public Library, 1970s-1990s	History and Literature
2018
2018	Fetal Tomfoolery: Comedy, Activism, and Reproductive Justice in the Pro-Abortion Work of the Lady Parts Justice League
2018	And They're Saying It's Because of the Internet: An Exploration of Sexuality Urban Legends Online	Folklore and Mythology
2018	(In)visibly Queer: Assessing Disparities in the Adjudication of U.S. LGBTQ Asylum Cases	Government
2017
2017	Enough for Today
2017	Radical Appropriations: A Cultural History and Critical Theorization of Cultural Appropriation in Drag Performance
2017	Surviving Safe Spaces: Exploring Survivor Narratives and Community-Based Responses to LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence
2017	“The Cruelest of All Pains”: Birth, Compassion, and the Female Body in The Book of Margery Kempe	English
2017	Virtually Normal? How “Initiation” Shapes the Pursuit of Modern Gay Relationships	Social Studies
2017	How Stigma Impacts Mental Health: The Minority Stress Model and Unwed Mothers in South Korea	Sociology
2017	The Future is Taken Care of: Care Robots, Migrant Workers, and the Re-production of Japanese Identity	Visual and Environmental Studies
2016
2016	Bodies on the Line: Empowerment through Collective Subjectification in Women's Rugby Culture
2016	"In the Middle of the Movement": Advocating for Sexuality and Reproductive Health Rights in the Nonprofit Industrial Complex	Anthropology
2016	Breaking the Equator: Formation and Fragmentation of Gender and Race in Indigenous Ecuador	Social Studies
2016	Deconstructing the American Dream: Visually Imagined Communities in Kodak Advertisements and Shirley Cards in Post World War II American Culture	Visual and Environmental Studies
2015
2015	Imposing Consent: Past Paradigms, Gender Norms, and the Continuing Conflation of Health and Genital Appearance in Medical Practice for Intersex Infants
2015	And I am Telling You, You Can’t Stop the Beat: Locating Narratives of Racial Crossover in Musical Theater	History and Literature
2015	Reality® Check: Shifting Discourses of “Female Empowerment” in the History of the Reality Female Condom, 1989-2000	History and Science
2015	Dialectics of a Feminist Future	Literature
2015	Lesbian Against the Law: Indian Lesbian Activism and Film, 1987-2014	Literature
2015	Talking Dirty: Using the Pornographic to Negotiate Sexual Discourse in Public and Private	Philosophy
2015	Wars Are Fought, They Are Also Told: A Study of 9/11 and the War on Terrorism in U.S. History Textbooks	Social Studies
2014
2014	Yoko as a Narrator in Nobuyoshi Araki’s Sentimental Journey and Tokyo is Autumn
2014	Reading at an Angle: Theorizing Young Women Reading Science-Fictionally	English and American Literature
2014	“Are you Ready to be Strong?”: Images of Female Empowerment in 1990s Popular Culture	History and Literature
2014	Constructing the Harvard Man: Eugenics, the Science of Physical Education, and Masculinity at Harvard, 1879-1919	History and Science
2014	Sex, Science, and Politics in the Sociobiology Debate	History and Science
2014	"A Little Bit of Sodomy in Me”: Disgust, Loss, and the Politics of Redemption in the American Ex-Gay Movement	Religion
2014	Art of Disturbance: Trans-Actions on the Stage of the US-Mexico Border	Romance Languages and Literatures
2014	“Too Important for Politics”: The Implications of “Autonomy” in the Indian Women’s Movement	Social Studies
2014	Yes, No, Maybe: The Politics of Consent Under Compulsory Sex-Positivity	Social Studies
2013
2013	Inside the Master's House: Gender, Sexuality, and the 'Impossible' History of Slavery in Jamaica, 1753-1786
2013	Illuminating the Darkness Beneath the Lamp: Im Yong-sin’s Disappearance from History and Rewriting the History of Women in Korea’s Colonial Period (1910-1945)	East Asian Languages and Civilizations
2013	"How to Survive a Plague": Navigating AIDS in Mark Doty's Poetry	English and American Literature
2013	Respectability's Girl: Images of Black Girlhood Innocence, 1920-2013	History and Literature
2013	Defining Our Own Lives: The Racial, Gendered, and Postcolonial Experience of Black Women in the Netherlands	Social Studies
2013	Beyond Victim-Blaming: Strategies of Rape Response through Narrative	Sociology
2012
2012	From “Ultimate Females” to “Be(ing) Me”: Uncovering Australian Intersex Experiences and Perspectives
2012	Modernity on Trial: Sodomy and Nation in Malaysia
2012	Paht-Bing-Soo: Woven Accounts of Gender, Work and Motherhood in South Korea
2012	Sexual Apartheid: Marginalized Identity(s) in South Africa's HIV/AIDS Interventions
2012	The Pornographer's Tools: A Critical and Artistic Response to the Pornography of Georges Bataille and Anaïs Nin
2012	Cerebral interhemispheric connectivity and autism: A laboratory investigation of Dkk3 function in the postmitotic development of callosal projection neuron subpopulations and a historical analysis of the reported male prevalence of autism and the “extreme male brain” theory	Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology
2011
2011	"Let's Just Invite Them In" versus "We Just Don't Have the Resources to Support You": Selective and Non-Selective College Administrators as Creators of Alcohol Policies and Practices, Campus Cultures, and Students' Identities, and Implications for Opportunities in Higher Education
2011	Plaintiffs' Role in Reinventing Legal Arguments for Same-Sex Marriage
2011	Facing Tijuana's Maquilas: An Inquiry into Embodied Viewership of the US-Mexico Border	Romance Languages and Literatures
2011	"The Woman Who Shouts": Coming to Voice as a Young Urban Female Leader	Social Studies
2011	Closet Communities: A Study of Queer Life in Cairo	Social Studies
2011	Redefining Survival: Statistics and the Language of Uncertainty at the Height of the AIDS Epidemic	Statistics
2010
2010	A Genealogy of Gay Male Representation from the Lavender Scare to Lavender Containment
2010	More Than "Thoughts by the Way": Young Women and the Overland Journey Finding Themselves Through Narrative Voice, 1940-1870
2010	Que(e)rying Harvard Men, 1941-1951: A Project on Oral Histories
2010	When Welfare Queens Speak: Survival Rhetoric in the Face of Domination	African and African American Studies
2010	ACT UP New York: Art, Activism and the AIDS Crisis, 1987-1993	Visual and Environmental Studies
2009
2009	"Gay, Straight, or Lying?": The Cultural Silencing of Male Bisexuality in America
2009	"I had never seen a beautiful woman with just one breast": Beauty and Norms of Femininity in Popular Breast Cancer Narratives
2009	Diego Garcia: Islands of Empire, Archipelagos of Resistance
2009	Zion Sexing Palestine
2009	Are You Sisters?: Motherhood, Sisterhood, and the Impossible Black Lesbian Subject	African and African American Studies
2009	Girl Interpellated: Female Childhoods and the Trauma of Nationalist Subjectivity	History and Literature
2009	Breaching the Subject of Birth: An Examination of Undergraduate Women's Perceptions of "Alternative" Birthing Methods	Sociology
2008
2008	Biomedicalizing the Labor of Love: Narratives of Maternal Disability and Reproduction
2008	Dis/locating the Margins: Gloria Anzaldúa and New Potential for Feminist Pedagogy
2008	Mommy, Where Do Babies Come From? Egg Donation and Popular Constructions of Authentic Motherhood
2008	Parallel Histories and Mutual Lessons: Advocates Negotiate Feminism and Domestic Violence Services in Immigrant Communities in Boston
2008	SILENCE=DEATH: (Re)Presentations of "The AIDS Epidemic" 1981-1990
2008	The "Sparrow in the Cage": Images of the Emaciated Body in Representations of Anorexia Nervosa
2008	Theater of the Abject: The Powers of Horror in Sarah Kane's Blasted
2008	Toward a Participatory Framework for Inclusive Citizenship: Haitian Immigrant Women's Claim to Civic Space in Boston
2008	"Keepin' it Real," Queering the Real: Queer Hip Hop and the Performance of Authenticity	African and African American Studies
2008	On the Surface: Conceptualizing Gender and Subjectivity in Chinese Lesbian Culture	East Asian Languages and Civilization
2008	Viewing Post-War Black Politics Through a New Lens: Tracing Changes in Ann Perry's Conception of the Mother-Child Relationship, 1943-1965	History and Literature
2008	Silent Families and Invisible Sex: Christian Nationalism and the 2004 Texas Sex Education Battle	Social Studies
2008	White 2.0: Theorizing White Feminist Blogging	Social Studies
2007
2007	Do Mothers Experience The Mommy Wars?: An Examination of the Media's Claims About the Mommy Wars and the Mothers Who Supposedly Fight In Them
2007	On The Offense: The Apologetic Defense and Women's Sports
2007	Stop Being Polite & Start Getting "Real": Examining Madonna & Black Culture Appropriation in the MTV Generation
2007	The Inviability of Balance: Performing Female Political Candidacy
2007	The Money Taboo	English
2007	Somewhere Over the Rainbow Nation: The Dynamics of the Gay and Lesbian Movement and the Countermovement After a Decade of Democracy in South Africa	Government
2007	Facing The Empress: Modern Representations of Women, Power and Ideology In Dynasty China	Religion
2007	Re-Evaluating Homosexuality: Extralegal Factors in Conservative Jewish Law	Social Studies
2007	Who's Producing Your Knowledge?: Filipina American Scholars	Social Studies
2006
2006	"The Potential of Universality": Discovering Gender Fluidity Through Performance
2006	Coming Out of the Candlelight: Erasure, Politics, and Practice at the 2005 Boston Transgender Day of Remembrance
2006	May Our Daughters Return Home: Transnational Organizing to Halt Femicide in Ciudad Juarez
2006	She Let It Happen: An Analysis of Rape Myth Acceptance among Women	Anthropology
2006	"This is no time for the private point of view": Vexing the Confessional in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton	History and Literature
2006	Relying on the Experts: The Hidden Motives of Tampon Manufacturers, Feminist Health Activists and the Medical Community During the American Toxic Shock Epidemic from 1978- 1982	History of Science
2006	(In)visibility: Identity Rights and Subjective Experience in Gay Beirut	Social Studies
2006	Popular Feminism in the Dominican Republic	Social Studies
2006	Redefining the 'Crisis in Citizenship': The Emergence of Immigrant Women as Political Actors in the United States	Social Studies
2006	The New Goddess: Women, Progress, and Patriarchy in the Hindu Nationalist Movement	Social Studies
2005
2005	"Takin' Back the Night!" Buffy the Vampire Slayer and "Girl Power" Feminism
2005	Bread Winners or Bread Makers? The Professional Challenges for Working Women
2005	Power to the People! Or Not: The Exceptional Decrease in Women’s Formal and Informal Political Participation in Slovenia During Democratization
2005	To Whom Many Doors Are Still Locked: Gender, Space & Power in Harvard Final Clubs
2005	Coca Politics: Women's Leadership in the Chapare	Anthropology
2005	Redressing Prostitution: Trans Sex Work and the Fragmentation of Feminist Theories	Government
2005	The Media Coverage of Women, Ten Years Later, in the 108th Congress, Has Anything Changed Since 'The Year of the Women' in 1992	Government
2005	Divided Designs: Separatism, Intersectionality, and Feminist Science in the 1970s	History of Science
2005	Completing the Circle: Singing Women's Universality and the Music of Libana	Music
2005	Attitudes, Beliefs and Behavior Towards Gays and Lesbians	Psychology
2005	Beauty and Brains: The Influence of Stereotypical Portraits of Women on Implicit Cognition	Psychology
2005	"Rational Kitchens" How Scientific Kitchen Designs Reconfigured Domestic Space and Subjectivity from the White City to the New Frankfurt	Social Studies
2004
2004	Begin By Imagining: Reflections of Women in the Holocaust
2004	Feminism within the Frame: An Analysis of Representations of Women in the Art of Americas Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston	History of Art and Architecture
2004	The Fluid Body: Gender, Agency, and Embodiment in Chöd Ritual	Religion
2004	Parodic Patriotism and Ambivalent Assimilation: A Rereading of Mary Antin's The Promised Land	Romance Languages and Literatures
2004	Virgin, Mother, Warrior: The Virgin of Guadalupe as an Icon of the Anti- Abortion Movement	Romance Languages and Literatures
2004	Feminist Evolutions: An exploration and response to the disconnect between young women and contemporary dominant feminism	Social Studies
2004	Public Enemies: South Asian and Arab Americans Navigate Racialization and Cultural Citizenship After 9/11	Social Studies
2004	The Blue Stockinged Gal of Yesterday is Gone: Life-course Decision-making and Identity Formation of 1950s Radcliffe College Graduates	Social Studies
2003
2003	At the Narrative Center of Gravity: Stories and Identities of Queer Women of Color
2003	Embodying the Psyche, Envisioning the Self: Race, Gender, and Psychology in Postwar American Women’s Fiction
2003	From Many Mouths to Her Mind: Pursuits of Selfhood, the American Woman, and the Self-Help Book
2003	Out of Love: The Permissibility of Abuse in Love and Self Development
2003	Promising Monsters, Perilous Motherhood: The Social Construction of 20th Century Multiple Births
2003	Sexing the Gender Dysphoric Body: A Developmental Examination of Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood
2003	The Specter of Homoeroticism: Recasting Castration in David Fincher's 'Fight Club'
2003	Women's Occupational Health: A Study of Latina Immigrant Janitors at Harvard	Biology
2003	Accidental Bodies	English
2003	Transformations in the Polish Female Gender Model from Communism to Democracy	History of Science
2003	Between Nation and World: Organizing Against Domestic Violence in China	Social Studies
2003	The Process of Becoming: Cultural Identity-Formation Among Second-Generation South Asian Women in the Contexts of Marriage and Family	Social Studies
2002
2002	A Turn of the Page: Contemporary Women’s Reading Groups in America
2002	Bordering Home
2002	Canary in a Coal Mine: The Mixed Race Woman in American History and Literature
2002	Reflections in Yellow
2002	My Rights Don't Just Come to Me: Palestinian Women Negotiating Identity	Anthropology
2002	“Progressive Conservatism”: The Intersection of Boston Women's Involvement in Anti-Suffrage and Progressive Reform, 1908 - 1920	History
2002	“What Can a Woman Do?”: Gender, Youth, and Citizenship at Women's Colleges During World War I	History
2002	Building Strong Community: A Study of Queer Groups at Northeastern, Brandeis, and Harvard	Sociology
2001
2001	Taking Care: Stereotypes, Medical Care, and HIV+ Women
2001	Of Tongues Untied: Stories Told and Retold by Working-Class Women
2001	On Display: Deconstructing Modes of Fashion Exhibition
2001	The Un-Candidates: Gender and Outsider Signals in Women's Political Advertisements
2001	Tugging at the Seams: Feminist Resistance in Pornography
2001	Witnessing Memory': Narrating the Realities of Immigrant and Refugee Women
2001	“La Revolution Tranquille”: Concubinage: The Renegotiation of Gender and the Deregulation of Conjugal Kinship in the Contemporary French Household	Anthropology
2001	What is “natural” about the menstrual cycle?	Anthropology
2001	Multi-Drug Resistance in Malaria: Identification and Characterization of a Putative ABC-Transporter in Plasmodium falciparum	Biology
2001	“We Was Girls Together”: The Role of Female Friendship in Nella Larsen's Passing and Toni Morrison's Sula	English
2001	Pom-Pom Power--The History of Cheerleading at Harvard	History
2001	Conception of Gender in Artificial Intelligence	History of Science
2001	“Hysterilization”: Hysterectomy as Sterilization in the 1970s United States	History of Science
2001	What's Blood Got to Do with It? Menarche, Menstrual Attitudes, Experiences, and Behaviors	Psychology
2001	Facing the Screen: Portrayals of Female Body Image on Websites for Teenagers	Sociology
2001	They're Not Those Kinds of Girls: The Absence of Physical Pleasure in Teenage Girls' Sexual Narratives	Sociology
2000
2000	(Re)Writing Woman: Confronting Gender in the Czech Masculine Narrative
2000	“Like a Nuprin: Little, Yellow, Queer”: The Case for Queer Asian American Autobiofictional Performance
2000	Sex, Mothers, and Bodies: Chilean Sex Workers Voicing their Honor	Anthropology
2000	Mapping his Manila: Feminine Geographies of the City in Nick Joaquin's The Woman Who had Two Navels	English
2000	Precious Mettle: Margaret DeWitt, Susanna Townsend, and Mary Jane Megquier Negotiate Environment, Refinement & Femininity in Gold Rush California	History
2000	From Black Art to Black Girl Juice: Analyzing the Aesthetics of Spoken Word Poetry	History and Literature
2000	The Hymeneal Seal: Embodying Female Virginity in Early Modern England	History of Science
2000	Suit Her Up, She's Ready to Play: How the Woman-in-a-Suit Tackles Social Binaries	Social Studies
1999
1999	"From the Bones of Memory": Women's Stories to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
1999	"When We Get Married, We'll Live Next Door to Each Other": Adolescence, Girl-Friends, and "Lesbian" Desires
1999	Healthy Bodies, Healthy Lives: The Women's Health Initiative and the Politics of Science
1999	Adah Isaacs Menken, The [Un]True Stories: History, Identity, Memory, Menken, and Me	Afro-American Studies
1999	Situated Science: Margaret Cavendish and Natural Philosophical Discourse	English
1999	From "Sympathizers" to Organizers: The Emergence of the Women's Liberation Movement from the New Left at Harvard-Radcliffe	History
1999	Re-(e)valu[ate/ing] Madonna: Understanding the Success of Post-Modernity's Greatest Diva	Music
1999	"Let's Not Change the Subject!": Deliberation on Abortion on the Web, in the House and in Abortion Dialogue Groups	Social Studies
1999	A Socialist-Feminist Re-vision: An Integration of Socialist Feminist and Psychoanalytic Accounts of Women's Oppression	Social Studies
1999	Common Visions, Differing Priorities, Challenging Dynamics: An Examination of a Low-Income Immigrant Women's Cooperative Project	Sociology
1998
1998	"I Don't Want to Grow Up - If It's Like That": Carson McCullers's Construction of Female Adolescence and Women's Coming of Age
1998	Another Toxic Shock: Health Risks from Rayon and Dioxin in Chlorine Bleached Tampons Manufactured in the United States, a Public Policy Analysis
1998	Damned Beauties of the Roaring Twenties: The Death of Young, White, Urban, American Women and The New York Times
1998	Just Saying No? A Closer Look at the Messages of Three Sexual Abstinence Programs
1998	The Cost of Making Money: Exploring the Dissociative Tendencies of College Educated Strippers
1998	Whose Sexuality? Masochistic Sexual Fantasies and Notions of Feminist Subjectivity
1998	That Takes Balls…or Does it? A Historical and Endocrinologic Examination of the Relation of Androgens to Confidence in Males and Females	Anthropology
1998	black tar/and honey: Anne Sexton in Performance	English
1998	Redefining the Politics of Presence: The Case of Indian Women in Panchayati Raj Institutions	Government
1998	The Psychic Connection: The historical evolution of the psychic hotline in terms of gender, spirituality, and talk therapy	History
1998	Visions and Revisions of Love: The English Patient and the Crisis of Heterosexual Romance	Visual and Environmental Studies
1997
1997	"I Feel it in My Bones That You are Making History": The Life and Leadership of Pauli Murray
1997	"Reports from the Front: Welfare Mothers Up in Arms": A Case Study with Policy Implications
1997	All the Weapons I Carry 'Round with Me: Five Adult Women Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse Speak about Their Experiences with Impact Model Mugging
1997	It's All About: Manufacturing Multiplicity from American Fashion Magazines
1997	Listening to Stories of Prison: The HIV Epidemic in MCI-Framingham
1997	The Communicating Wire: Bell Telephone, Farm Wives, and the Struggle for Rural Telephone Service
1997	When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Good Girl: Adolescent Fiction and Patriarchal Notions of Womanhood
1997	Out of the Courtroom and onto the Ballot: The Politicization of the 1930s and '40s Massachusetts Birth Control Movement	History
1997	"The Role For Which God Created Them": Women in the United States' Religious Right	Social Studies
1997	Potent Vulnerability: American Jewry and the Romance with Diaspora	Social Studies
1996
1996	"I Certainly Try and Make the Most of it": An Exploratory Study of Teenage Mothers Who Have Remained in High School
1996	In Their Own Words: Life and Love in the Literary Transactions of Adolescent Girls
1996	Math/Theory: Constructing a Feminist Epistemology of Mathematics
1996	Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…" Nella Larsen, Alice Walker, and the Self-Representation of Black Female Sexuality
1996	Racial Iconography and Feminist Film: A Cultural Critique of Independent Women's Cinema
1996	Real Plums in an Imaginary Cake: Mary McCarthy and the Writing of Autobiography
1996	Single-Mother Poverty: A Critical Analysis of Current Welfare Theory and Policy from a Feminist, Cultural Perspective
1996	Intra-household Resource Allocations in South Africa: Is There a Gender Bias?	Economics
1996	Vision and Revision: The Naked Body and the Borders of Sex and Gender	English
1996	Are Abusive Men Different? And Can We Predict Their Behavior?	Psychology
1996	Racial Iconography and Feminist Film: A Cultural Critique of Independent Women's Cinema	Visual and Environmental Studies
1995
1995	"What Does a Girl Do?": Teenage Girls' Voices in the Girl Group Music of the 1950s and '60s
1995	Continuing the Struggle: Gender Equality in an Egalitarian Community
1995	Elements of Community: Re-entering the Landscape of Utah Mormonism
1995	Loving and Living Surrealism: Reuniting Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst
1995	Reading the Body: The Physiological Politics of Gender in Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, Margaret Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks, and Mary Braddon's Aurora Floyd
1995	Searching for a Place Apart: A Journey into and out of Bulimia Nervosa
1995	The Flagstad Case
1995	The Sound Factory
1995	Visual Strategies of the Contemporary U.S. Abortion Conflict
1995	Working Women, Legitimate Lives: The Gender Values Underlying 1994 Welfare Reform
1995	The Hormone Replacement Therapy Decision: Women at the Crossroads of Women's Health	Anthropology
1995	The Economic Consequences of Domestic Violence	Economics
1995	"It's My Skin": Gender, Pathology, and the Jewish Body in Holocaust Narratives	English
1995	Essentialist Tensions: Feminist Theories of the "Maleness" of Philosophy	Philosophy
1994
1994	Differences Among Friends: International feminists, USAID, and Nigerian women
1994	Helke Sander and the Roots of Change: Gaining a Foothold for Women Filmmakers in Postwar Germany
1994	On Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina and Literary Theory on Pain and Witnessing
1994	Redefining Malinchista: A Study of Chicana Identity and the Malinche Image
1994	The Feminist Critique of the Birth Control Pill
1994	The Femme Fatale Re-visited: Women Villains in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema
1994	The Framings of Ethel Rosenberg: Gender, Law, Politics, and Culture in Cold War America
1994	Tradition and Transgression: Gender Roles in Ballroom Dancing
1994	When Pregnancy is a Crime: Addiction, Pregnancy and the Law
1994	Strategic Sentiments: Javanese Women and the Anthropology of Emotion	Anthropology
1994	Engendering Bodies in Pain: Trauma and Silence in Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina	English
1994	The Flowers of Middle Summer	English
1994	Conceptions of Self, Relationships and Gender Roles in Japanese American Women in California and Hawaii	Psychology
1993
1993	Bad Mothers and Wicked (wo)Men: Facts and Fictions about Serial Killers
1993	Child of Imagination: Literary Analysis of Woolf, Steedman, Rich & Gilligan
1993	Gender Roles on Trial During the Reign of Terror
1993	Grief and Rage: The Politics of Death and the Political Implications of Mourning
1993	Jewels in the Net: Women Bringing Relation into the Light of American Buddhist Practice
1993	Mamas Fighting for Freedom in Kenya
1993	Rethinking "Feminine Wiles": Sexuality and Subversion in the Fiction of Jane Bowles
1993	Sexing the Machine: Feminism, Technology, and Postmodernism
1993	Sisterhood is Robin? The Politics of the Woman-Centered Feminist Discourse in the New Ms. Magazine
1993	"Thank God for Technology!" Taking a Second Look at the Technocratic Birth Experience
1993	Where She Slept These Many Years
1993	Women's Narratives of Anger: Exploring the Relationship between Anger and Self
1993	Edith Wharton's A Backward Glance: Gendered Paradoxes and Resistance to Representation	English
1993	Sociocognitive and Motivational Influences on Gender-Linked Conduct	Psychology
1992
1992	Conceptions of the Female Self: A Struggle Between Dominant and Resistant Forces
1992	Objectified Subjects: Women in AIDS Clinical Drug Trials
1992	Re-membering the American Dream: Woman in the Process of Placing a Beam in a Bag
1992	Thelma and Louise: Voices of Resistance
1992	Women and War
1992	Women of the Cloister, Women of the World: American Benedictines in Transition
1992	The Changing Lives of Palestinian Women in the Galilee: Reflections on Some Aspects of Modernization by Three Generations	Anthropology
1992	Blending the Spectrum: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Women and HIV Disease	Biology
1992	Maestra: Five Female Orchestral Conductors in the United States	Music
1992	Negotiating Identity: Multiracial People Challenging the Discourse	Social Studies
1992	Pain, Privacy, and Photography: Approaches to Picturing the Experiences of Battered Women	Visual and Environmental Studies
1991
1991	Incest and the Denial of Paternal Fallibility in Psychoanalysis and Feminist Theory
1991	Sex and the Ivory Girl: Judy Blume Speaks to the Erotics of Disembodiment in Adolescent Girls' Discourses of Sexual Desire
1991	Women's Secrets, Feminine Desires: Narrative Hiding and Revealing in Frances Burney's Evelina, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and Mary Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret
1991	Workers, Mothers and Working Mothers: The Politics of Fetal Protection in the Workplace
1991	Appalachian Identity: A Contested Discourse	Anthropology
1991	Half-Baked in Botswana: Why Cookstoves Aren't Heating Up the Kitchen	Economics
1991	"Management of Men": Political Wives in British Parliamentary Politics, 1846-1867	History
1991	re:Visions of Feminism: An Analysis of Contemporary Film and Video Directed by Asian American Women	Social Studies
1990
1990	A Mini-Revolution: hemlines, gender identity, and the 1960s
1990	Feeding Women and Children First: A Study of the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children
1990	On Refracting a Voice: Readings of Tatiana Tolstaia
1990	Private Lives in Public Spaces: Marie Stopes, The Mothers' Clinics, and the Practice of Contraception
1990	Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book: Meaning and Community Re-orient/ed
1990	With Child: Women's Experiences of Childbirth from Personal, Historical, and Cultural Perspectives
1990	Representing "Miss Lizzie": Class and Gender in the Borden Case	History and Literature
1990	Seductive Strategies: Towards an Interactive Model of Consumerism	History and Literature
1990	Nancy Chodorow's Theory Examined: Contraceptive Use Among Sexually Active Adolescents	Psychology
1990	Choosing Sides: Massachusetts Activists Formulate Opinions on the Abortion Issue	Social Studies
1989
1989	Influence of Early Hollywood Films on Women's Roles in America
1989	Rethinking Sex and Gender in a World of Women without Men: Changing Consciousness and Incorporation of the Feminine in Three Utopias by Women
1989	A Different Voice in Politics: Women As Elites	Government
1989	The Lady Teaches Well: Middle-Class Women and the Sunday School Movement in England, 1780-1830	History
1989	The Analytical Muse: Historiography, Gender and Science in the Life of Lady Ada Lovelace	History of Science
1989	The Tragic Part of Happiness: The Construction of the Subject in The Portrait of a Lady	Literatures
1989	The Ideology of Gender Roles in Contemporary Mormonism: Feminist Reform and Traditional Reaction	Religion
1988
1988	La fonction génératrice: French Feminism, Motherhood, and Legal Reform, 1880-1914.

Past Thesis Topics

Year

Title

Joint concentration (if applicable)

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

1989

1988