The senior thesis is emblematic of the kind of intellectual freedom Bard College at Simon’s Rock’s Upper College students are given. It is a year-long, self-designed scholarly project that is the capstone of a student’s work. It’s required of everyone. The thesis is not just an academic requirement for a Simon’s Rock Bachelor of Arts degree, it is work that adds to the world’s storehouse of knowledge.
At the beginning of the thesis project, a formal proposal must be submitted and approved. This collection includes senior thesis proposals beginning in academic year 1998-1999 as well as theses beginning in 2011.
2018
Optimum Design of Dual Purpose Power Generation and Desalination Plants, Xinyan Zhang
2017
Unseen Histories: A Visual Study of Political Presence and Aesthetic Interpretation, Sara Aboobakar
Senior Thesis Proposal, Miles Abracosa
Senior Thesis Proposal, Nathan Alan-Lee
Tiny Weatherman: Examining Behavioral Changes in Pogonomyrmex occidentalis in Response to Seasonal Changes, Tony Alexander
Senior Thesis Proposal, Alec Allain
Senior Thesis Proposal, Russell Allen
Senior Thesis Proposal, Zyaid Banihani
Senior Thesis Proposal, Rebecca Bhik-Ghanie
Joining the Heroides: An Introspective Look into What It Means to Be an Artist When Life Happens, Told in Three Parts and Two Plays, Kaelyn Brandt
Artificial Intelligence Classical Music Composer, Chi Cao
Two-Dimensional Messiah: The Cartoon Aesthetics of Totalizing Capital and Fragmented Selfhood, Virginia Cassel
Senior Thesis Proposal, Sierra Cast
Musical and Visual Representations of Gray Codes, Michael Chang
Senior Thesis Proposal, Dennis Chen
Prayer Beads and Red Scarf: Projecting Shangrilazation in Modern Tibet, Yueming Chen
Senior Thesis Proposal, Mo Constantine
[Re] Encountering the Painted Look: Poetics of the Portrait, Rebecca Cosenza
Senior Thesis Proposal, Mikaela Dalessio
Categorizing Experience: Locke, Berkeley, and Wittgenstein on the Problem of Generalization, Elibba Dean
Senior Thesis Proposal, Jaimee de Witt Bedford
Senior Thesis Proposal, Haley Dionne
Miracle on 84th Street, House Dow
An Agricultural and Climate Analysis of Kern County (CA, USA) and Fujian Province (China): Past, Present, and Future, Hannah Ferus
Aquaponics: An Exploration into the Future of Agriculture, Greig Fields
Sex Work, Drugs, and Decriminalization: Toward a Politics of Harm Reduction, Avonlea Fisher
The Subjugation of Black Women: California and New York’s Legal Genocide, Ligaya Franklin
Only Mostly Dead: Battlefield Medicine through American History, Rhiannon Gabriel-Jones
Senior Thesis Proposal, Scheherazade Goertzel
As She Herself Might Have Told It: Relating Politics and Feminism as Method, Lillian Goldberg
ShapeShifter Programmatic geometric modelling made simple., Ishan Guru
Senior Thesis Proposal, Hayden Gutt
Senior Thesis Proposal, Cameron Haas
New Road: An Original Recorded Album and Film Installation, Stephen Hager
Wounded Skyes: A Tale of Razors and Recovery Not a Fairytale, Naomi Harris
Constructing Maximum-Rotating de Bruijn Sequences Using their Necklace Trees, Oscar Hernandez
Explorations of Darkness and Joy in Children’s Literature, Chloe Hull
What A Heart Loves A Thesis Presentation, Regan Humphrey
Destroy the Audience: Unconventional Forms of Playwriting Pioneered by Women of Color, Zoe Hu
Graceful and Cordial Forests: A Computational Investigation of Graph Labelings, Feston Kastrati
Rethinking Reddit: A Novel Hybrid Recommendation System, Spencer Kee
Government and the Voiceless City: A Case Study on the Flint, Michigan Water Crisis and State-Community Relations, Arielle King
Chatting with Bots: A Quick Survey of Conversational Agents And Their Appropriate Applications, Maksim Kotov
Senior Thesis Proposal, Andrew Ku
Domination, Andrew Kunz
Senior Thesis Proposal, Boqiao Lai
Fibers Joining a Broken Lotus Root: An Exploration of Han Chinese Traditional Food and Agricultural Plant Knowledge, Wai Lun Lam
The Backseat Drivers of a Nation: The Impact of Western Interests on Modern Iran, Jonathan Levinson
¿Repita, Por Favor? An Exploration of the Challenges Faced by Spanish-speaking Students and Families in Massachusetts, Hannah Lienhard
Improving Bacterial Ear Infection Diagnostics with an Image Classification Algorithm, Wanying Li
Senior Thesis Proposal, Victoria Loughborough
Senior Thesis Proposal, Ross MacFadyen
Senior Thesis Proposal, Theodore Macphail
Senior Thesis Proposal, Asa Martinez
Senior Thesis Proposal, William Mason
Rivkele: A Feminist Translation and Analysis of Sholem Asch’s גאָט פון נקמה, Molly McGowan
Senior Thesis Proposal, Kalie McGuirl
Senior Thesis Proposal, Dana Miller
Senior Thesis Proposal, Nay Chie Moe Thet
Natural Language in a Constructed World, Meghan Molinari
[Insert Shitty Pun Here]: A Socio-Biological Analysis of the Composting Toilet as a Feasible Alternative to Conventional Human Waste Management Technologies, Jenifer Morgan-Davie
Senior Thesis Proposal, Kayleigh Myer
Senior Thesis Proposal, Naol Negassa
Senior Thesis Proposal, Lael Ngangmeni
The Document of Film Politics, Aesthetics, and the Production of Value, Isabel O'Donnell
Senior Thesis Proposal, Daniel Packer
Belousov-Zhabotinsky: an Exploration of Filmmaking in the Digital Age, Bryce Parker
Coronal Mass Ejections: A Study of Structure, Grant Parker
Senior Thesis Proposal, Danielle Pendleton
Senior Thesis Proposal, Micaela Pereira
Senior Thesis Proposal, Georges Pichard
A Low-Cost, Feature-Based Color Threshold Selection Approach to Eye-gaze Tracking and a Basis For Gaze Interface, Vijay Pillai
To Will an End: Outliving Sexual Violence and State Sovereignty, Anna Poplawski
An Examination of the Process Of Writing, Directing, Acting In, and Producing The Play Brothers, Dominica Purcell
PCBs Filtration Model using Perfluorocarbons as an Active Agent, Sofia Rafikova
Laser Ultrasound-Guided Biopsy Needle Aid: Biopsies made simple, Payal Rana
Butch? An Exploration of the Queer Community and Female Masculinity, A.J. Rio-Glick
Against All Odds, I Universe You: Academic and Personal Perspectives on Facets of Queer Identity, Andre Santana
Feel. Look. Listen., Ihor Shuhan
Senior Thesis Proposal, Matthew Stabile
Senior Thesis Proposal, Elle Stanion
Senior Thesis Proposal, Mira Tesla
Senior Thesis Proposal, Danya Tracht
How Will Chinese Film Survive? The Opportunities and Challenges of Contemporary Chinese Film in World Marketing., Kassidy Wang
Senior Thesis Proposal, Madison Weber
Senior Thesis Proposal, Claire Wegh
Hippotherapy and Therapeutic Horseback Riding: An Occupational Therapy Framework, Erin Wilkerson
Senior Thesis Proposal, Yi Xie
Senior Thesis Proposal, Chengcheng Xin
Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser: The paradox of time-independent correlated measurements, Hyojun James Yu
Senior Thesis Proposal, Maisha Zahed
Senior Thesis Proposal, Xinyan Zhang
2016
Senior Thesis Proposal, Sara Aboobakar
Competitive Coloring: A Structural Approach, Ethan Ackelsberg
Senior Thesis Proposal, Tony Alexander
Gentle Nightmares: A Collection of Short Stories, Kathleen Ansel
Ironbound, Carrie Basch