Capstone Process

Developing the Proposal

Review the M.A. Graduation Timeline for steps you need to complete to progress toward your degree.

Students should start considering possible capstone topics by the beginning of their third semester (or after having completed 15 hours of graduate courses). Review your concentration goals and guidelines as you consider possible topics and goals for your capstone. Capstone projects often evolve from previous coursework. Your professors, advisors, and fellow students represent good resources to draw upon as you define your project. You are responsible for proposing a topic to a member of the graduate faculty and asking him or her to serve as your capstone advisor. Upon request, your academic advisor or the Director of Graduate Programs (DGP) will assist you in identifying a capstone project advisor. See the MA Capstone abstract archive for previous topics students have pursued.

To register for the capstone course, ENG 676 Master’s Project in English, submit an ENG 676 Capstone Proposal Form during registration period. The form asks for a brief description of your proposed project, its rationale, and a preliminary bibliography of resources, all developed in consultation with your capstone project advisor.  Once the form is signed by your capstone advisor and the DGP, you will be manually registered for ENG 676.

Note: MA students who have been enrolled full-time throughout their graduate career may also be eligible for full-time classification in their final semester even if they need fewer than 9 hours to complete their degree.  To qualify for this classification, you must be engaged in capstone research and enrolled in ENG 675 or 676.  To request this classification (that is, to request a waiver of the courseload policy), contact the DGP after you register and before the end of the add/drop period. 

Download ENG 676 Capstone Proposal Form

Researching and Writing

Meet with your capstone advisor in the first week of the semester (or sooner) to plan your work. The two of you will need to develop a timeline for completing your project, including deadlines for the submission of draft(s) and revisions. Please note that faculty usually need a week or two to comment on a substantial draft or revision and to work it into their schedule, so be sure to allow plenty of turnaround time as you map out the various stages of your research and writing. Many advisors will expect to see a full draft 4-6 weeks in advance of the final deadline to allow time for revision and additional research if needed. The final document, approved by your advisor, must be submitted by the last day of class.

Formatting the Written Project

Projects can take many forms. All should be submitted with a title page(as formatted below) and an abstract of 250-300 words.

Projects in the form of academic essays could include a table of contents, a brief intro followed by section (or chapter) divisions, a conclusion, notes, and works cited. Length will vary but will typically be 30-50 pages, including notes and bibliography.

Projects that take other forms, such as screenplays, documentary films, curricular units, anthologies, multi-media texts, and other options, should also include a title page and abstract as well as a short (5-10 pages) written narrative describing the project and its objectives.

The project's title page should include the entries indicated on the "Format for Title Page" documents listed below.

The abstract should be 250-300 words. Important: An abstract is not an introduction. It is a stand-alone summary that quickly describes the purpose and focus of the project, the methods used or approach taken, and the major observations and conclusions you came to.

Format for Title Page and Abstract.doc (MSWord file)

Sample MA Capstone Abstracts

Submitting the Finished Project

Submit the following to the Graduate Services Coordinator by the last day of classes in order to participate in the Capstone Symposium:

1. An electronic copy of the full document, including an unsigned title page and abstract, emailed to the Graduate Services Coordinator at graduate-english@ncsu.edu.

2. A signed title page, signed only by you and your capstone advisor. You may scan and email this along with your full document, or you may submit a hard copy.

NOTE: We have updated the process of submitting your capstone project so please read the above information carefully. Also, we've added the option of permitting your work to be used as an example for future students. If you permit us to share your project, please sign and submit the Release Form with your full document. You'll find this form in the Format for Title Page and Abstract link above. Please also note that you may sign the Release Form with a digital signature in Adobe Reader so that you can email it along with your full document to graduate-english@ncsu.edu. Or you may submit a hard copy.

Presenting at the Capstone Symposium

All students will present their capstone projects in a series of symposia scheduled during the final exam period. 

Your 15-20-minute talk (approximately the length of an 8-10 page, double-spaced conference paper or 10 slide PowerPoint presentation with approximately 1.5 minutes allotted per slide) should summarize for members of the graduate faculty and other students the intellectual and/or creative merits of your project.  Begin by introducing yourself, the origins of your project, and the goals or research questions that motivate your work.  Provide an overview of your methods (e.g., the analytical frameworks, theoretical perspectives, empirical methods, and/or pedagogical principles that you applied or developed).  Summarize your major observations, findings or conclusions. Lastly, step back a bit and comment on how your work contributes to scholarship or practice in your field and/or to your own development as a scholar or other professional. A brief (5-10 minute) question-and-answer period will follow each presentation. Your presentation will be assessed according to the rubric. This rubric is not used to make evaluations of pass or fail, but to provide students and faculty feedback on presenting work in professional settings.

The presentation rooms are equipped with a computer+projector, which you are encouraged to make use of.  While visuals are not required, we expect you to prepare a professional presentation adapted to this departmental setting and audience.  (That is, don’t just read the written document you submitted.) This is an excellent opportunity to practice and enhance your presentation skills. Your advisor or the DGP will be happy to offer guidance on planning your presentation. 

Presentation sessions are held on the first two or three days of the final exam period. Specific times will be announced toward the end of the semester. 

MA Program Timeline

In your first year:

  • Create your Plan of Work (POW). Make sure to save your POW only. You will not submit your POW for approval until your final semester.
  • Sign the Patent Agreement in your POW.

3rd semester (or after 15 hours):

  • Decide on capstone topic and identify your capstone advisor in time to register for ENG 676 for final semester.  Complete your capstone proposals and submit it to the Graduate Services Coordinator or Director of Graduate Programs at graduate-english@ncsu.edu or in person at T246. Proposals are due no later than the last day of class, but keep an eye on posted billing deadlines to avoid late charges.  You'll want to finalize your spring schedule as soon as possible.
    Please also keep in mind that faculty are planning their semesters as well and may not be able to accommodate last-minute requests.
  • Add your capstone advisor (Chair) to your GPOW, via the Committee tab. Save your GPOW. Note: your Committee will only consist of your Capstone Advisor (Chair). 

Final semester:

  • Meet with your capstone advisor to agree on a timeline for submission of your drafts and revisions. The final draft must be approved by your advisor and submitted to the Graduate Services Coordinator by the last day of class.
  • Complete your Plan of Work and submit for approval
  • Apply to Graduate via MyPack at least two weeks in advance of the Graduate School’s deadline (the Graduate School’s Academic Calendar), so that your application can be reviewed and approved by the DGP before the deadline
  • Submit drafts and revisions by the dates stipulated by your capstone advisor
  • Complete your project and submit the following to the Graduate Services Coordinator by the last day of class:
    • An electronic copy of your completed capstone document, including title page and abstract. Submit this to graduate-english@ncsu.edu.
    • A print copy of the title page and abstract, signed by your capstone advisor and the DGP.
  • Coordinating with your capstone advisor, schedule and present your capstone project in the Graduate Symposium (during final exam period). It will be assessed according to the rubric. This rubric is not used to make evaluations of pass or fail, but to provide students and faculty feedback on presenting work in professional settings.

M.A. Course Offerings

Below are course offerings by subject area. See NCSU course catalog for brief descriptions.

Scroll down to see recent topics: 

  • ENG 539 Studies in World Literature
  • ENG 582 Studies in Literature 
  • ENG 583 Studies in Rhetoric and Composition
  • ENG 584 Studies in Linguistics
  • ENG 585 Studies in Film
  • ENG 586 Studies in Theory
  • ENG 587 Interdisciplinary Studies in English
  • ENG 590 Studies in Creative Writing
  • ENG 591 Studies in National Cinemas
  • ENG 592 Special Topics in Film and Styles and Genres

Examples of recently offered topics by course:

ENG 539 Studies in World Literature

  • Issues of Human Rights and Justice in Contemporary
  • Metaphor and Metamorphosis
  • Achebe and Adichie
  • Global Modernisms
  • Chinese Science Fiction
  • East Asian Lyric Poetry
  • 3rd World Feminism
  • Caribbean Literature
  • Ancient History as Literature
  • East Asian Lyric Poetry

ENG 582 Studies in Literature

  • Race, Gender, and Transnationalism in American Lit
  • Early Women Writers
  • Langston Hughes: From Popular Culture to the Civil Rights Movement
  • Theoretical Perspectives on American Literature
  • Animal Studies
  • Cormac McCarthy
  • History of the Book
  • Victorian Media Studies
  • Poetry and the Visual Arts
  • Irish Short Story
  • Romance and Repentance
  • Studies in Digital Humanities
  • Contemporary Southern Novel
  • The Global 18th Century
  • Styles of Truthtelling
  • Medieval Women Writers
  • Transnational Modernisms
  • Early 20th Century Poetry
  • Langston Hughes and Pop Culture 
  • 20th Century Irish Drama
  • 18th and 19th Century Female Poets
  • 19th Century American Novel

ENG 583 Studies in Rhetoric and Composition

  • Cultural Rhetorics
  • Emerging Genres
  • Writing Program Administration
  • Digital Media Theory
  • Analysis of Verbal Data
  • Social Networking
  • Introduction to Digital Humanities
  • Intercultural Professional and Technical Communication
  • Feminist Theories and Research in Composition Studies

ENG 584 Studies in Linguistics

  • Laboratory Phonology
  • Ethnolinguistics
  • Laboratory and Comp Tools
  • Ethnicity and Language

ENG 585 Studies in Film

  • Media and Machine Aesthetics
  • Animating Matter and Media
  • Laboring Ladies: How Pre-1960s Hollywood Imagined
  • Studio Era Hollywood
  • Nonfiction Film
  • European Film: 1945- Present
  • Moving Image/ Media Archaeology
  • War Documentaries
  • Film and the Archive
  • New Queer Cinema
  • Educational Film
  • Contemporary American Cinema
  • Violence and Cinema
  • Media Style and Authorship
  • Women, Representation, and Violence in Contemporary Film and Media
  • Audience Makes the Media: On Reception

ENG 586 Studies in Theory

  • Post-Colonial Theory

ENG 587 Interdisciplinary Studies in English

  • American Reading Cultures
  • Introduction to Digital Humanities 
  • Thinking with Things: Multimodal Composition and Critical Making
  • History of the Book
  • Methods and Theories in Media Studies

ENG 590 Studies in Creative Writing

  • Poetry of Sex and Death
  • Novel Structure
  • Studies in Urban Poetry
  • Latino Voices and Cultures
  • The Personal Essay
  • The Novella
  • Literary Style
  • The Memoir
  • Screenwriting and Adaptation
  • Creative Non-Fiction
  • Fiction and Poetry of East Asia
  • The Mannerists
  • Twenty-first Century Literary Debuts

ENG 591 Studies in National Cinemas

  • Cinema and the Nation

ENG 592 Special Topics in Film Styles and Genres

  • Queer Cinema
  • Film Styles Genre
  • Film Comedy and Modernity
  • The Film Musical
  • Cinema Stylists
  • Spanish Thriller
  • Film and the 1990s
  • Hong Kong Cinema
  • Cinema: Hong Kong Vanishes
  • Contemporary European Cinema
  • Genre in Eastern and Southern Asian Cinema
  • Race in German Film
  • Modern Asian Cinema
  • Film and the 1980s 
  • Cinema and the New Europe
  • Cinema Stylists: Fuller and Ray
  • Science Fiction
  • Cinema of the 1970s 
  • Hitchcock and Wilder
  • Media F/X: Digital Cinema, Animation, and Sp Effects
  • Superheroes, Soldiers, Cowboys, and Gangsters
  • The Gothic Horror Film

  • ENG 509 Old English Literature
  • ENG 510 Middle English Literature
  • ENG 529 16th Century Nondramatic Literature
  • ENG 530 17th Century Nondramatic Literature
  • ENG 551 Chaucer
  • ENG 558 Studies in Shakespeare
  • ENG 561 Milton
  • ENG 578 English Drama - 1580-1642
  • ENG 582 Studies in Literature (when topic applies)

  • ENG 550 English Romantic Period
  • ENG 560 Victorian Poetry and Prose Nonfiction
  • ENG 562 18th Century English Literature
  • ENG 563 18th Century English Novel
  • ENG 564 Victorian Novel
  • ENG 570 20th Century British Prose
  • ENG 571 20th Century British Poetry
  • ENG 572 20th Century British Drama
  • ENG 579 Restoration and 18th Century Drama
  • ENG 582 Studies in Literature (when topic applies)

  • ENG 531 American Colonial Literature
  • ENG 548 African American Literature
  • ENG 555 American Romantic Period
  • ENG 565 American Realism and Naturalism
  • ENG 573 Modern American Drama
  • ENG 575 Southern Writers
  • ENG 576 20th Century American Poetry
  • ENG 577 20th Century American Prose
  • ENG 580 Literary Postmodernism
  • ENG 582 Studies in Literature (when topic applies)

  • ENG 539 Studies in World Literature
  • ENG 549 Modern African Literature

  • ENG 532 Narrative Analysis
  • ENG 540 History of Literary Criticism
  • ENG 541 Contemporary Literary Theory
  • ENG 580 Literary Postmodernism
  • ENG 582 Studies in Literature (when topic applies)
  • ENG 586 Studies in Theory

  • ENG 523 Language Variation Research Seminar
  • ENG 524 Introduction to Linguistics
  • ENG 525 Variety in Language
  • ENG 526 History of the English Language
  • ENG 527 Discourse Analysis
  • ENG 528 Sociophonetics
  • ENG 533 Bilingualism and Language Contact
  • ENG 534 Quantitative Analysis in Sociolinguistics
  • ENG 536 Research Methods in Phonology
  • ENG 584 Studies in Linguistics (rotating special topics)

  • ENG 505 Writing Program Administration: Theory, Practice, and Research
  • ENG 511 Theory and Research in Composition
  • ENG 513 Empirical Research in Composition
  • ENG 514 History of Rhetoric
  • ENG 515 Rhetoric of Science and Technology
  • ENG 516 Rhetorical Criticism: Theory and Practice
  • ENG 554 Contemporary Rhetorical Theory
  • ENG 581 Visual Rhetoric: Theory and Criticism
  • ENG 583 Studies in Rhetoric and Writing (rotating special topics). See SPECIAL TOPICS COURSES above for recent offerings.


MA Capstone Abstracts Archive

Fall 2020

Andrew Maurer, “Do You Trust Me?” Horror, Homology, and Genre Emergence in a Time of Dislocation

Spring 2020

Kelsey Virginia Downs Dufresne, Follow the Bees: Sylvia Plath and Dorothea Dix Park A study on the Economics and Landscapes of Madness

Lauren Fulmore, Oh, How Ironic: An Exploration of Irony in Toni Morrison Novels

Brittany Hilliard, Virtuous and Sinful Minds: An Analysis of Thomist Cognition Theory in Geoffrey Chaucer’s House of Fame and John Lydgate’s Temple of Glas

Austin Horne, African American Metamodernism: Percival Everett’s Watershed and the Oscillation of (Dis)Affection

Austin Jenkins, “Dubious Battle: Gender and Gardens in Steinbeck’s The Long Valley”

Evan Moore, With Open Arms and Eyes to the Ground: The Hospitality of Milton’s Adam in Paradise Lost

Shuo Niu, Shakespeare's Influence on Chinese Theater and Culture in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

Mandy Reid, In the Demise of Empire: Challenging Assumptions of Hybrid Identity in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and Meera Syal's Anita and Me

Melannie Stewart, Blogging & Mimicry in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah: (Re)Discovery of Self

Katelyn Vause, The Ethical Ecology of Middle-earth: What the Animals of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit Have to Teach Us

Fall 2019

Bridget Sharlow, American Literature Cocktail Company: Exploring Characters Through Drink

Summer 2019

Clark Perry Meshaw, Some of my Best Friends are Villains: Reading Identity Politics in Evil Fictions

Spring 2019

Katelyn Alley, “Hear the words of thy most worthy wife”: Women’s Voices in Early Modern Marriage Discourses in Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and Lady Anne Southwell’s Manuscript Poetry

Stephen Ateca, Temporary Edens: Nature as a Space for Female Community in Lanyer’s Salve Deus

William Christy, Gawain in the Cloud: Apophatic Theology and Contemplative Chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green

Andrew DeGroot, The Perfect Disguise: Examining the Reconciliation of the King’s Two Bodies in Shakespeare’s Henriad

Samantha Duke, Teaching Langston Hughes Thematically: Working with Genre and Bridging CCSS ELA 9-12 and WPA OS

Morgan Elliott, Exploring the Darkness of Postmodernism

Donato Fhunsu, Lost and Found in Translation?: The European Christian Missionary Impact on African Culture in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple

Danielle Gentry, Andromeda Bound: Erotic Male Fantasies in Victorian England

Virginia Harris, “Young Men of Promise:” British Education and the Boomerang Effort in No Longer at Ease and Season of Migration to the North

Victoria Lambert, Connected by Rivers: Socialism, Nature, and Freedom as Explored by Thoreau and Hughes

Amanda Ogea, Songs of Nowhere: Beach House, the She, and Atopian Transcendence

Joanna Pacchioli, Birds of the Air and Beasts of the Field: An Animal Studies Perspective on the Self in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

Brandy Reeves, Do Southern Mothers Abandon Their Children?: Maternal Abandonment in the Contemporary Southern Novel

Starlina Rose, “As Like as One Pin to Another”: An Exploration of Class and Gender Through Dialect and Realism in Miss Byron’s Gothic Romance The Englishwoman

Chloe Stephens, “Not as She is But as She Fills His Dreams”: Vampirism in the Life and Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Fall 2018

Anna McFadyen, Natural Romantics: The Influence of Gilbert White on Lyrical Ballads and English Romanticism

Summer 2018

Rachel Canning, “I Promise I’m Funny: The Serious Role of Humor in Trauma Narrative

Spring 2018

Sydney Anderson, The Power of Womanism as seen in Toni Morrison’s Sula, Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha, and Ann Petry’s The Street

Jacob Berger, Three Daughters, Two Stories, One Tragedy: Ownership and Incest in A Thousand Acres and King Lear

Rachel Canning, I Promise I’m Funny: The Serious Role of Humor in Trauma Narrative

Ashley Daughtridge, Teaching Social Justice, Empathy, and Critical Race Theory through The Hate U Give

Alexandria Doria, “Pictures of Perfection As You Know Make Me Sick and Wicked”: How Ethics, Marxism, and Feminism Make an Austen Heroine

Taela George-East, Aemilia Lanyer as Coterie Poet: A Re-Visioning of the 17th Century English Canon

Catherine Godbold, Degradation of the Father: The Colonial Source of Familial Corrosion in The Joys of Motherhood

William Lavelle, The Fall of a House Divided: The Recurrence of Architectural Apocalypse in American Literature in the 1830s and 1840s

Cassandra Hawkins, Katherine Ann Porter's "Struggle For Coherence:" Racial Ambivalence in The Old Order and "Old Mortality"

Mara Masters, “I am a Woman of My Wording”: Language, Love, and Violence in Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade

Rachel Mosher, “The woman…ought never to be conquered:” Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Teeth as a Feminist Text

Fall 2017

David Pruitt, Songs of Innocence and Experience: William Blake's Poems of Trauma

Matthew Sarda, Inverted American Heroes: Challenging the American Trauma Hero Myth

Spring 2017

Taylor Brock, Writing WWII: Literary Representation, Collective Memory, and the Twenty-First-Century Author

Alison Martin, Rhetoric of Identification and Division in America: How Donald Trump Won the 2016 Presidential Election

Emily Milks, “Reimagining Female Friendships: Dickinson, Woolf, and Walker"

Malcolm Ogden, The "necessity for exertion": Protestantism, Ideology, and Expendability in Charlotte Brontë’s Villete

Sarah Perkins, James Schuyler and the Agentive Ordinary

Samuel Perrin, "Thus the law": Augury and Poetry in Melville's Battle-Pieces

Lauren Scudder, Compiling Textual Agency: An Examination into the Recipe Collection of Constance Hall

Conor Small, Integral Parts of the Human Whole: Science and Myth in the “Ithaca” Chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Sonya Trawick, “English-like” Approximant Rhotics in Paraguayan Spanish

Hannah Williams, Naming the Dead: Literary Memorials in the War Literature of Bierce, Graves, and Vonnegut

Katelyn Witt, “Crosse the posts of every door”: Paratextual Thresholds in Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum

Spring 2016

Rinita Baneree, Trauma, Death and War in The Waste Land and Mrs Dalloway: A Critical-Memoiristic Reflection

Anna Betts, Woman in Pieces

Mark Huntanar, The Depiction of Emotional Trauma and the Literary Psychological Arc

Jesse McDowell, Book Ontology and Ptolemaic Learning in the Old English Boethius

Laura Simson, “No More Perfect Moments”: Restless Fancies, Insatiable Hearts, and the Decay of the Story in Existentialist Narrative From Fyodor Dostoevsky to Paul Bowles

Cameron Winter, Flannery O’Connor’s “The Lame Shall Enter First” and the Conflicting Ideologies of Space-Age America

Fall 2015

Megan Myers, A Girl's Place in Space: Teaching Rhetoric through Contemporary Young Adult Science Fiction.

Kaitlyn Pierce, Constructing Irish Masculinity: Re-defining and Re-imagining Irish Masculinity through the Short Stories of Kevin Barry

Spring 2015

Judith Bond, "Can't Keep My Mind off of You:" Haunting as an Establishing Factor for Female Identity and Agency in the American Gothic Tradition

Diana Bryan, "You are mythical after all": Young Adult Paranormal Romance and the New Folklore

Allison DeVille, "She-Wolf Imperfectly Tamed": Madness, Foreignness, and Female Subjectivity in Bleak House and Jane Eyre

Lucas DiPerna, Shifting Walls: An Interpretation of Rejection and Denial in House of Leaves

Kristie Ellison, Leaving on the Light: Creating Hope by Building a Community with the Reader and Adopting Its Morals in Young Adult Dystopian Literature

James Ensley, Fragmentary Piers Plowman: A Description, Digital Edition and Literary Analysis Of The Poem's Extant Fragments

Heather Harris, "Assembled from the Original":Visuality and Embodiment in Gris Grimly's Frankenstein

Madison Helman, "Hang Your Head and Cry": A Re-Examination of Western North Carolina Murder Ballads

Jody Herring, 'A Meaning Which Includes All Things': Science and Religion in Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire

Eileen Heyes, Madness, Confession and the Cultural Moment: How Two Victorian Tales Seized Their Day

Robyn Luney, Biopower and the Boomerang Effect in Richard Wright's Native Son and Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North

Katie McCreary, Cultural Identity, Cultural Memory, and Dance in African American Literature

Michael Wocher, "What would you say you do here?": Emerson's Critique of Modern Labor

Fall 2014

Elizabeth Gehringer, A Therapeutic Treatment for Trauma and Violence: Islamic Feminism in Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero and Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Joel Orr, Performance Theory in a Pedagogical Approach to Prespective(s) in Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation."

Khaki Stelten, The Body-Politic in Pieces: Reflections of the English Succession Crisis through Disjointed Body Parts in Titus Andronicus, Othello, and King Lear

Summer 2014

Gretchen Walters, The Price of Prejudice: Narrating Ethnicity in Willa Cather's My Antonia.

Spring 2014

Vincent Agosta, Returning to Omelas: A formal Analysis of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and its Relationship to Traditionalist Narrative Structure and Postmodernism

Kristina Bender, A Recursive Processing Sketchbook: Programming Play with Language and Numeracy

Evan Brisson, The Digital Wasteland: An Acoustic Enactment of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land

Kayla Forrest, More Than a Moment: American Expatriate Writers in Paris from the Lost Generation to the Twenty-First Century

Stuart Hubbard, Through a Glass Darkly: Translating Performance and Selfhood in Richard Yate's Revolutionary Road

Erin Kayajian, Regimenting Gender Under Trujillo and Duvalier: Female Spiritual Repression and Recovery

Kerri McMurray, Economics of Hybrid Spaces in Gaskell's North and South

Valerie Voight, False Females: Metamorphosis and Mutability in The Faerie Queene

Herman Joseph Wright, Atomic America And Ferlinghetti's Identity Poetics: The Reclamation of Radical Innocence in an Age Less Charged, Less Mythic, and More Fallen

Fall 2013

Rebecca Brodney, Guinevere: An Exploration of Queenship and Authority in Arthurian Legend

Donald Ward, Lacan and Idealism: Borgesian Time in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas

Nicholas Winstead, Holy Orientalism! Batman, Anti-Japanese Depiction, and the 1940s

Amber Woolsey, Bodily Disorders: Spectacle and Self-Abnegation in The Blazing World, Roxana, and Great Expectations

Summer 2013

Sierra Moore, Octavia Butler’s Subversive Heroes

Spring 2013

Bethany Bradshaw, The [Im]materiality of Memory: A Comparative Media-Specific Analysis of Scott McCarney’s Memory Loss, Anne Carson’s Nox, and Reiner Strasser’s In The White Darkness

Amanda Bryan, Decolonization and Mysticism in William Butler Yeats’s The Celtic Twilight and The Secret Rose

Jacob Clayton, A World of One’s Own: Cavendish’s Fanciful Places and the Male Academy

Jill Coyle, David Lee’s The Porcine Canticles: Creating a New American Mythology

Jana Koehler, “I Ain’t Precious”:Embracing Shame in Sapphire’s Push

James Kornegay, Women in the West: American Idealism in Willa Cather’s My Antonia and A Lost Lady

Bruce Lamont, Reading William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” “Dry September” and “Fox Hunt” in their Historical and Discursive Contexts

Miranda Langston, Lesbianism in Southern Women’s Writings: Rubyfruit Jungle and The Revolution of Little Girls

Christopher Murray, “To write what nobody peruses”:The Romanticism of F.T. Prince

Lucas Nossaman, Agriculture and Biblical Tradition in Jewett’s ‘A Dunnet Shepherdess

Alexandra Olney, Portents of Darwinism: Evolution and Regression in Wuthering Heights

Cynthia Potter, “Bringing The Scarlet Letter to Life for Modern Students” 

Catherine Rose, Haunted Houses, Haunted Minds: An Analysis of Liminal Spaces in the Supernatural Fiction of Henry James

Erik Russ, “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World:” Peter Taylor’s Investigation of Potential Social Orders through the Female Characters in The Oracle at Stoneleigh Court

Logan Taylor, Life and Death, Loyalty and Treason in Shakespearean Tragedy

Deniz Alemdar Tuck, Wounded Earth, Groaning Nature: Milton’s Ecotheological Hermeneutics in Paradise Lost

Ian Wolf, Zombies and Tulips: Predestination and Time Travel

Hanhan Zhang, Attitude and Act: Recontextualizing Li Qingzhao’s poetry

Fall 2012

Elizabeth Cooper, English Pastoral in Milton's Lycidas and Wordsworth's Michael

David Gatewood, "the truth will be there yet": History, Violence and Representation in Cormac McCarthy and Tim O'Brien 

Rachel Phillips, The Canonization of Young Adult Literature: Lessons from William Wordsworth in "Preface to Lyrical Ballads"

Spring 2020

José Álvarez-Retamales, Mock Hispanicized English: The case of contested identities, enregistered voice and indirect indexicality

Peter Andrews, A description of the Natqgu vowel system using ultrasound

Adam Barnhardt, “I didn’t go to college with anyone that country”: Age-Stratified Indexicality of Southern-Shifted Vowels

Matthew Champagne, Sounding Gay with a Twang?: Negotiating Gay and Southern Identities Vocalically

Marissa Morgan, “I Have Sacred Space Walking with Me:” Discursive Constructions of the Sacred in Healing Sites and Practices.

Fall 2019

Alison Eggerth, Handling Diversity in ASL Interpreter Training Programs

Spring 2019

Marie Bissell, An acoustic and articulatory study of a phonetically-distinct buzzed /i/ production among speakers in Raleigh, North Carolina

Zack Dukic, Put Your Faith in the President: Christianity and Presidential Discourse

Shalina Omar, Cross-Dialectal Communication in the Courtroom: A Review and Resource

Fall 2018

Jennifer Sheridan, The Woman’s Mandate: Investigating Stance Constructions and Negotiations of Power in Dynastic Female Congressional Speech

Spring 2018

Katherine Conner, Reverse Engineering the LGBTQ+ Voice: Utilizing Prototype Theory to Construct Linguistic Stereotypes of Sexual Identity

Jessica Hatcher, Spectral Measures of Stop Affrication : The Case of /dɹ/ Affrication in Raleigh

Lawrence Naborn, A Quantitative Study of the Dutch /Tj/ Cluster Realization Among Multicultural Speakers in Amsterdam

Frankie Pennington, Computational Phonetics as Language Documentation: Implementing Forced Alignment for Kalasha

Hannah Smith, “the Virginia Woolf Cubs or something like that”: Identity construction and symbolic power through the social labeling of GSM women

Cecelia Tomasatti, Same Route, New Immigrants: Identity Practices and Forms of Belonging amoung Recent Italian Immigrants in the U.S.

KellyNoel Waldorf, The Polarizing Effects of Racialization in Political Discourse: A Discursive Analysis of Donald Trump’s Tweets

Spring 2017

Kelsey Campolong, From Fake News to Alternative Facts: Constructions of Truth in Trumpian Political Discourse

Karen Eisenhauer, A Quantitative Analysis of Directives in Disney Films

Arianna Janoff, Third Dialect in Santa Barbara, California: An Examination of the California Vowel Shift

Yuqiu Liu, Discursive Construction of Chinese Returnee Identities in Mainstream Chinese Newspapers and a Reality TV Show: A Methodological Synergy of Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis

Sonya Trawick, “English-like” Approximant Rhotics in Paraguayan Spanish

Fall 2016

Amanda Eads, Nostalgic Resonations: Being Syrian-Lebanese in Grand Rapids, Michigan 

Spring 2016

Juan David Gutierrez, Code-switching and the Optimal Grammar of Six Spanish Lessons

Mary-Kate Hedrick, How Private Research Firms Conceptualize Qualitative Linguistic Methodologies 

Eric Wilbanks, Social and Structural Constraints on a Phonetically-Motivated Change in Progress: (str) Retraction in Raleigh, NC

Karissa Wojcik, Dialect Influence in the Composition Classroom: A Study of Writing Instructor's Beliefs and Knowledge on Language Diversity

Sean Minty, Stance and the Construction of Self in Narratives of Anxiety

Fall 2015

Cadwell Turnbull, Vernacular Third Person and the Politics of Accessibility

Spring 2015

Lacey Arnold, The Role of Production in Perception of Vowel Merger: A Study of pre-/I/ Mergers in Youngstown, Ohio

Kellam Barta, Your voices will be heard: Raising awareness of language diversity through an expanded outreach program

Angela Tramontelli, Living Languages: Developing Sociolinguistic Curricula in Foreign Language Teaching

Fall 2014

Kendra Intihar, Dialect Preservation and Leveling in Hickory, North Carolina

Spring 2014

Erin Adamson, In the Words of my Sister: Use and Function of Constructed Dialogue in a Natural-Haired Community

May Chung, The Hmong Among Many: A Descriptive Analysis of a Southern Interlanguage Variety

Meghan Cooper, The Linguistic Transformation of a Tobacco Town: Southern Features in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, NC

Jaclyn Daugherty, Spatial Language and Homeland Language Variety in Shaping American Indian Identity: The Cherokee and Lumbee of North Carolina

Shivonne Gates, Style and intra-speaker variation in African American English: A multi-dimensional approach

Laura Griffith, Prosodic variation of adolescent Hispanic heritage speakers in central North Carolina

Jon Inscoe, Sorority Talk: An Intonational Study

Md. Jahurul Islam, Explaining four-way stop categories in Bangla: Perspectives of Harmonicity, Intensity, Center of Gravity, and Open Quotient

Samina Khan, An Integrated Study of Language Attitudes Among the Burushaski Speakers of Hunza

Megan Risdal, An acoustic and articulatory study of coarticulatory vowel nasalization in two dialects of English

Martha Summerlin, Voice Onset Timing in L1 and L2 Speakers in North Carolina and Texas

Spring 2013

Jon Forrest, The Times They Are A-Changin’: (ING) Variation and Dialect Leveling in Raleigh, NC

Michael Fox, Quantifying cross-dialectal variation in vowel-to-consonant coarticulation using locus equations

Caroline Myrick, Putting Saban English on the Map: A Descriptive
Analysis of English Language Variation on Saba

Joel Schneier, Sociolexting in Texting: Social and Relational Negotiation through Text-Messaging

Liang Zhang, When English Meets Cantonese --- A phonological and prosodic study on Hong Kong English

Spring 2020

Kathryn Burt, You Are What They Tell You to Eat: Re-evaluating the Role that Food Labeling Genres Play in Developing Food and Nutrition Literacies

Logan Clem, Fostering Generative Dispositions for Transfer with Place-Conscious Education

Bethany Van Scooter, "Whose Job is Writing Anyway?": An Institutional Ethnography of Graduate Writing at NC State University

Spring 2019

Tim Becker, Boundaries, Thresholds, and Roads: Navigating the Spatial Metaphors of Transfer

Ashley Burchett, Naming the Practice: An Examination of Writing Center Mission

Shannon Henesy, Roasting the Competition: A Rhetorical Case Study of the Wendy’s Twitter Feed

Alyssa Jennings, Adults in the Writing Classroom: A WPA’s Guide to Adult Writing Students

Jose Martinez, Mediating Racial Identity for Profit in a “Newer South”: A Visual Investigation of Physical Billboards to Digital Space

Spring 2018

Robin Diaz, Speak Up or Shut Up: What are Civil Discourse Statements?

Marisa Incremona, Communicating Science to Public Educators: The Case of North Carolina Sea Grant's Coastwatch Magazine

Shasta Lewis, Identity Constructions in Student Narratives: Why Study at Hunt Library?

Stephen Taylor, Fallacy Instruction in First-Year Writing Textbooks

Spring 2017

Angela Bush, Context to Collaboration: The Transition from Academic to Workplace Writing

Alison Martin, Rhetoric of Identification and Division in America: How Donald Trump Won the 2016 Presidential Election

Melody Owens, Assessing Directed Self-Placement in the University Writing Program: A Study of Student Perceptions of their Role as the Decision-Maker in the Placement Process

Grace Taylor, Exploring Latinx Student Identity and Self-Efficacy through Visual Rhetoric and Graphic Novels

Spring 2016

Christine Barba, Student perceptions of standardized assessment and the SAT 

Kim Lilienthal, Discursive Stancetaking in Service Learning Reflection Assessment

Chelsea Meade, The Rhetoric of "Binging" and the Age of Story: The Evolution of Audience in the Era of Netflix Original Programming

Corey Patton, Autism and Composition: Finding the Voice of Empathy in Autistic Writing

Emily Jo Schwaller, Twilight Fans and Anti-Fans: The Layers of a Fading Fan Culture

Jeff Strange, The Snowden Operation

Sheena Young, 'Josh Made Some Very Bad Mistakes': Rhetorics of Morality, Obedience, and Abuse

Spring 2015

Jennifer Bedard, Peer Review in ENG 101 and its Influence on Students' Attitudes, Beliefs and Feedback-Seeking Behavior

Cassie Curtis, Using Multimedia Technologies to Meet the Goals of Universal Design for Learning in Composition Courses: A Curricular Unit

Gavin Johnson, Click Here For an A; or, Grade Distribution Data, Student Course Choice, and the Implications of a Grade-Driven University

Julie Schurr, "Wecome to the Distributorship!": The Construction of Discursive Power and Manipulation in the Evangelical "Prosperity Gospel" Movement

Jordan Smith, Student Perceptions of Knowledge Transfer in the First-Year Writing Classroom

Fall 2014

Robert Hazelgrove, The Boundaries are Limitless: Use Values and Generic Instability in Contemporary Music

Summer 2014

Denise Sawyer, A Peer-Centered Approach: A Case Study on the Experiences of Early College High School Writing Tutors.

Spring 2014

Skyler Bunn, Lacan and the Unconscious Function of Ideology: Subjectivizing Avatar's Hyperreal Fantasy

Nesren Elhertani, Understanding Information Literacy in the Digital Age: A Review of the Research on Students' Research Process

Sarah Greenberg, Gluten-free College Life: A Case Study of Students with Celiac Disease at NC State University

Juliana Kocsis, "There Wasn't Much Writing Involved": Teaching a Multimodal Project in a FYW Course

Molly Meachum, Writing at the Agricultural Institute: Reflections from Faculty and Student Survey Results and Self-Perceptions

Charlotte Mitchell, "Haunting Back:" The Subaltern Gothic and Genre as Cultural Haunting

Heather Nocera, The Imagined Communities of Nonprofit Twitter

Lauren Taylor, Teaching Writing to All: Teaching Strategies for Students with Learning Disabilities and Basic Writers

Meridel Thomson, Writing Chronic Pain: A Metacritical and Creative Practice of the Rhetoric of Pain

Spring 2013

Melanie Cregger, Hearing Voices: Addressing Student Reflection in the Genre-Based Classroom

Jessica Odom, Countervailing University Commemoration: For Whom Do the Bells Toll?

Amy Pippi, Informal Research Talk: A resource for academic socialization of international students

Nikki Weickum, The Rhetoric of Democratic Constitution: A Comparative Social Movement Analysis of Occupy Wall Street and Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign

Spring 2020

Nyeela Bolton, Fandom for Black Girls: Black Panther and Digital Fandom

Jay Irwin, Not So Secret Transmissions: A Contemporary Analysis of Toxic Online Discourse

Travis Merchant, Bodies and Visuals Unbound to Time: Embracing Sensations of Spectacle and Narrative in Mandy and Climax

Spring 2019

Phillip Bryant, Dark Things to Come: The Emerging Aesthetics of Conspiracy Moving Images

Mariana Colin, The Morbid Zoo: An Exercise in Scholarly Communication

Darya Levchenko, Secret Screenings and New Discoveries: The Role of Fantastic Fest in Foreign Genre Film Distribution in the U.S.

Arthur Schlecht, From Los Angeles to the Green Place: Gendering Environment in Science Fiction

Spring 2018

Molly Campbell, Movement, Environment and the Aesthetics of Awe in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gravity, and Interstellar

Kevin Permenter, 307 to Vegas

Zachary Smith, Empathy for the Devil: Shifting Narrative and Perspective in Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and Its Cinematic Adaptions

Kelly White, Jim Jarmusch's Discography: Redefining a Collection of Films as Albums

Spring 2017

Alison Rodriguez, Transgressions at the Dining Table: Family and Gender Roles in Cult TV

Spring 2016

William Felker,  Nothing Compares: The Reel Carolina

Fall 2015

Adam Hebert, "Fleeing Toward Oneself": Cinematic Influence and the Anxiety of Freedom in the Films of Paul Thomas Anderson

Kenneth Pinion, Animal Remains: Towards an Archaeology of Anthropomorphic Media and "Furry" Representation

Brian Robertson, The Video Camera and the E-Meter: Self-Exposure, Concealment, and Scientology's Performative Style

Spring 2014

James Lewis, Those Weren't the Days: Nostalgia for the 1950s in Steven Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist, and John Carpenter's The Thing

Rose Wilson, Forced Labor: (Re)production under Ceausescu's Communist Regime in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Fall 2013

Ryan Craver, The Queens of Club Pygmalion

Summer 2013

Kevin Flinn, "Every Sound Must Signify": The Evolution of Sound in Westerns

Spring 2013

Christina Blyde, “Be Prepared”: The Endurance of Robert-Baden Powell’s Militaristic Ideology in Boy Scout of America Films

Lauren Pilcher, Man: A Course of Study: Harnessing The Power of Classroom Film In Cold War America 

Oliver Spivey, A Defense of the Moral Dimension of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian