Senior Capstones | English Department

Students of the Department of English annually produce academic articles as well as works of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction to cap their program of study at Pacific. The following is a sampling of recent senior projects in English Literature and Creative Writing. A complete searchable database including abstracts is available online.

2020

English Literature

• Jaye Adams, "The Power of Story: Transgender Narratives in AAA Video Games and Their Effect on Social Legitimacy"
• Kia Addison, "Don't Forget Our Ashes: The Commodification of Genocide Literature"
• Jessica Allen, "'My log saw something': The Uncanny PNW in Supernatural Cop Dramas"
• Gillian Gauer, "'Scandalously bifurcated garments': Ecocriticism, American Pioneers, and Novelizing Women of the West"
• Allison Jones, "From 'The Rood' to 'Whispered World': Medieval Poetry, Affect, and the Modern Video Game"
• Margaret McFarlane, "'Or keepe company with girls': Editing Performance and Gender in John Lyly's Gallathea (1585)
• Alexandria Morones, "Beyond the Place: Exploring the Complexity of Water in Shoshone Stories"

Creative Writing

• Lauren Bridges, "My Body, Our Mind: Desire and Identity in a Shared Body"
• Kymberlin Bush, "Writing the Small Town: Violence against Female Identifying Bodies and the Pastoral Fantasy in My Novel Did You Know Her?"
• Maxwell Lien, "The Newest Colossus: A Collection of Poetry & Nonfiction"
• Margaret McFarlane, "'The Dating Ga(y)me': Queer Romance and Rom Com Clichés in my Original Screenplay"
• Madison McGarrah, "Saving Grace"
• Aidan Peterson, "Dark Tunnels, Dank Memes: Horror and Humor in Down in the Depths"
• Emma Roles, "Desire and Entrapment in My Short Story Collection Her Forbidden Fruit"
• Brennan Lucas Staffieri, "41°43.5' N by 49°56.8' W: How a Shipwreck Becomes a Goddess of Death"
• Phoebe Whittington, "The Writer-in-Progress: Resisting Stereotypes and Aggressively Affirming the Self in My Graphic Novel The Meta
• Mickey Wolfe, "Small Green Knives: Poetry in a Time of Crisis"

2019

English Literature

• Hannah Nicks, "The Power of Gender Fluidity in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre"
• Kyle Riper, "'Strike old griefs into other countries': Editing Grief and Mourning in Early Modern English Drama"

Creative Writing

• Kadie Backlund, "Revamping Snow White: Desire and Hunger in My Novel Bloodstains"
• Sophia Backus, "Not Uprooted, Just Transplanted: Allowing Characters Room to Grow within a Narrative"
• Charli Elliott, "Identity Not Found: Exploring the Collision of Reality and Technology in Error 404"
• Melissa Hood, "Rebel Girl: Women in the Portland Rock Music Scene"
• Brian King, "Dreamscape"
• Kelsi Roth, "The Others"
• Rachel Savini, "Ghosts on the River"
• Richie Slaten, "Loyalty"
• Kristin Stein, "Ordinary Horror: The Suburban Gothic"
• Amber Tate, "Simulacrum: Videogames as Modern Storytelling"
• Joy Yokoy, "Remembering You"

2018

English Literature

• Sienna Ballou, "Tables, Legs, and Gestural Curves: Embodiment and the Victorian Novel"
• Darcy Christoffersen, "Caught between Cultures: An Exploration into Ammu in postcolonial India in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things"
• Tailor Dolgin, "'Being dead does little for one's acumens': Fanfiction, Affect Theory, and Sherlock Holmes"
• Kaitlin Dornan, "Adeline Virginia Woolf: Understanding her characters through her psychological background"
• Riley Elder, "'Even if everything were to fall from under me, I would still prevail': The Phenomenology of Literary Impressionism in Heinrich von Kleist"
• Jordan Kiserow, "Walking in the Steps of Child Soldiers: Exploring the Literature of Witnessing"
• Kayla Luttringer, "Mapping the Boundaries of 'No Place': An Examination and Deconstruction of the Utopian and Dystopian Genres"
• Kyle Riske, "The Hunt for Red October: A Look Into the Cold War Through Literature"
• Corri Seideman, "African Oral Literature: More than Meets the Eye"

Creative Writing

• Haley McKinnon, "Things to Consider About (Me)rmaids"
• Lindsay Oseran, "Chiaroscuro: The Aubade"
• Hunter Peterson, "The Smell of Smoke: An Exercise in Artistic Authenticity"
• Carly Taff, "Female Empowerment in Young Adult Fantasy: An Analysis of the Heroine's Journey"
• Julia Thomson, "The Worth of Millrose"
• Sara Villegas, "A Town Changed"
• Samantha Wacker, "A Siren's Call"
• Alexis Zmuda, "Don't Tell"

2017

English Literature

• Kristen Buehner, "Telling a Truer Truth: Fractured Narrative Styles in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried"
• Francisco Cervantes, "A Stranger in Your Own Language: Minor Literature in the Context of the American Canon"
• Karissa Mathae, "The Girl Hero's Journey: From Persephone to Coraline, and Back Again"
• Kestra Matson, "'To Strive, to Seek, to Find, and Not to Yield': Tennyson's Use of Greek and Roman Mythology to Challenge the Victorian Concept of Progress"
• Mikelyn Rochford, "The Sun Also Ariseth, and the Sun Goeth Down: Pastoral Escape in Hemingway"

Creative Writing

• Cailyn Andreasen, "Shuttered: One Story, Many Voices"
• Gray Ashford, "The Satyr Bard"
• Kristen Buehner, "What is Given and What is Taken: Writing in Fractured Narrative Styles to Tell a Truer Truth"
• Kayla Cardeiro, "A Story No One Wants to Hear: Deconstructing High Fantasy"
• Steven Childress, "Hollywood Dreams"
• Wynton Davis, "The Familiar Thing in the Woods: Personal Connections and Horror Structures in Glass Peak"
• Katelyn Gomes, "Black Market Magic"
• Matthew Jensen, "From the Ashes"
• Josie Kochendorfer, "The Age of Letting Go"
• Gillian Reimann, "Soulborn Chronicles: Fire and Foe Book One"
• Kyle Southard, "Synthesis of 'The People Puppets'"
• Emily van Vleet, "Relying on Dr. Tran"

2016

English Literature

• Max Medrano, "Mocking the Uncanny: Using Freudian concepts to accentuate the gothic themes of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird"
• Joshua Young, "Crowd Blindness: Seeing Through Collectivist (Mis)Interpretations of Shirley Jackson"

Creative Writing

• Rhayn Abner, "Victimized Girl to Hysterical Woman: The Character Restrictions of Females in Horror Fiction"
• Holly Eck, "The Purple Hat"
• Katie Fairchild, "Tales from Beneath the Trees: Creating the Pacific Northwest Gothic"
• Taylor Farris, "Immaculate Misconceptions: Examining Sexuality & Spirituality Through Contemporary Fiction"
• Greyson Gardner, "His Own Personal Hero"
• Grace Kenny, "A Poet's Struggle to Write Poems"
• Shannon Konoske, "Under Wooden Watchmen"
• Lesya Kravets, "A Litany of Light"
• John Lloyd, "A Shot in the Dark"
• Sierra Myers, "Pride in Heart, Sweat in Blood: A Collection of Essays"
• Thomas Radke, "Humanity, Heart, and Horror: Writing a Science Fiction Novel"
• Alex Roots, "David versus Goliath"
• Kristy Rudy, "Sora Haven and the Uncooperative Sidekick"
• Sally Wies, "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted"
• Emily Woodworth, "The Wind Chaser"

2015

English Literature

• Francesca Battaglia, "Art Spiegelman and the Power of the Graphic Novel"
• Haley Bedell, "Frodo Baggins: The Modern Parallel to Christ in Literature"
• Sarah Moore, "Sense within Nonsense: The method of literary and visual nonsense in Lewis Carroll's Alice books and political caricaturist J.J. Grandville"
• Libby Volk, "Man's Best Friend: Altering Anthropomorphism in Contemporary Literature"

Creative Writing

• Melissa Beck, "Lies My Parents Told Me"
• James Bennett, "Sonnets"
• Simon Brooks, "Poetic License"
• Megan Cramer, "As The Sun Travels: Rewriting Mythology into Modern Settings"
• Michele Ford, "The Stray Prince"
• Breanne Hall, "Road of Grief: Exploring Loss in Young Adult Fiction"
• Victoria Hampton, "Somewhere Between Hope and Paradise"
• Krystal Kahele, "Clarity"
• Makaela Kilsdonk, "Franklin's Freak Show"
• Zachary Meskell, "From Good to Evil: The Lucifer Effect in Fiction"
• Jason Pederson, "Heads and Tails"
• Laura Shurden, "Poems"
• Sophia Vadino, "Retelling Fairy Tales: Giving Old Stories New Lives"
• Joshua Young, "Poems"

2014

English Literature

• Bryan Davis, "The Nature of Mechanism: Fear of 'the Other' from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Bram Stoker's Dracula"
• John Kean, "Patriarchal Culture in Shakespeare's Comedies"
• Kacey Killingback, "Theory, Untranslatability, and Gendered Voice and their Affect on Camus’s L’Étranger"
• Aaron Koford, "From out of the Shadows and into the Novel: How Tolkien's Reinvention of the Elvish Race Influenced the Fantasy Genre and Highlighted What It Means to be Human"
• Allison Loeb, "Teaching Acceptance: Themes in Young Adult Holocaust Literature"
• McKenzie Schmitt, "Fiction or Fact? How Truth Telling in War Stories Transcends Fact"
• Danielle Weedman, "Men, Monsters and Morality: Shaping Ethics through the Sublime and Grotesque"

Creative Writing

• Rebecca Allen, "The Modern Life of Bea"
• Denise Bowman, "The Chosen Landscape"
• Brianna Castellini, "The Secret Life of Blogging: Storytelling in the 21st Century"
• Jazzlynn Garrett, "Traveling Womb"
• Stephanie Johnson, "Snapshots of the Family"
• Samantha Mulholland, "Capturing Grief & Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Fiction"
• Amber Patton, "World-Building in the Fantasy Novel"
• Hayley Rozee, "Masked"

2013

English Literature

• Kristen Gazmen, "Love Talk: Defining Love from Plato's Symposium to Raymond Carver's 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love'"
• Roberta Kelley, "'Big Brother is Watching You': The Panoptic System as Portrayed in George Orwell's 1984"
• Connor Nelson, "The Death of Paradise: How a Crisis of Faith Shapes Identity in Milton's Paradise Lost"

Creative Writing

• Hannah Ayers, "Australian Vignettes: The Travel Writer's Experience"
• Nica Borders Chagolla, "Crafting the Magical Universe of Young Adult Paranormal Romance"
• Kelly Chastain, "A Choir of Soloists: Creating Distinct Voices for First-Person Narrators"
• Cayla Davis, "D Is for Davis, Drugs, Dysfunction: A Series of Nonfiction Essays"
• Ariana Eaton, "Balance of Traits: The Female in Young Adult Novels"
• Daisy Gildner, "The Evolution of a Fairy Tale: 'Little Red Riding Hood' in Contemporary Culture"
• Kaitlyn Gutierrez, "When Two Cultures Go Walking"
• Michael Johnson, "One Impossible Thing: A Year with Bucket Brigade"
• Nicholas Kelly, "The Weight of Wanting: A Poetic Exploration of Luis Cernuda's Themes Reality & Desire"
• Samantha Kitchen, "Möbius Strip: The Entwined Nature of Poetry and Science"
• Alexandria Nanneman, "Prostitutes, a Stalker, and a Jumper: Three Tales of Travel, Art and Upended Expectations"
• Quinn Ramsay, "Many Masters: Experiments in Historical Voice"
• Margaret Schimming, "It's Not Primavera When You Use Tomatoes: The Influence of Food in Storytelling"
• Niklas Streng, "Daddy Confidential: Adventures in the Paternal Underbelly"
• Alison Thomas, "Preserving Portland's Culture through Food Writing"
• Elizabeth Vandermolen, "Navigating Gay and Lesbian Gender Identities in Historical Fiction"
• Kristen Yamamoto, "O ka hula ka 'olelo o ka pu'uwai, no laila, 'o ia ka pana pu'uwai o ka po'e Hawai'i: The Kaona of Ekphrastic Poetry"

2012

English Literature

• Vanita Carrillo-Rush, "Suffocating Under a Sealed Bell Jar:The Angel/Monster Dichotomy in the Literary Tradition"
• Chelsey Chamberlain, "Stepping Up to the Plate: Distinct Women Roles in Baseball Literature"
• Krystal Chitwood, "Recreating Jane Austen for a New Generation: A Defense of Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"
• Alex Furstenberg, "Moby-Dick: A Symbol of Ambiguity in an Unfathomable Universe"
• Valerie Horres, "Craving the Bite: Understanding the Popularity of Vampire Narratives"
• Aleah Steinzeig, "Waiting for Prince Charming: Gender Expectations in the European Fairy Tale"
• Ashley Wilsey, "'Half in Love with Easeful Death': Tuberculosis in Literature"

Creative Writing

• Tyler Bokuniewicz, "Finding Earnhardt"
• Amanda Butkovich, "Transgressive Fiction: An Exploration of Genre and Style In Relation To Fight Club"
• Kathryn Carr, "A Catholic Education"
• Kail Eichen, "What the Diary Did for Bridget Jones; Or Authenticity, Ouroboros, and Cake"
• Rose Engelfriend, "Into the Lyrical Unknown: An Exploration of Poetry and Allegory in Magical Realism Fiction"
• Valerie Horres, "Crafting New Truths from Old Stories: Instances of the Use of Myth in Poems from Tennyson, Yeats, and Auden"
• Heather Johnson, "Emotion and the Natural World: The Poetry of Jack Gilbert and Heather Johnson"
• Ashleigh Mahoney, "I Am What I Eat"
• Katie Sipos, "Digitization: Rethinking the Editor"
• Gina Warren, "Nonlinear Narratives: Cyclical Return and Dynamic Development"

2011

English Literature

• Jade Anderson, "Identity versus Desire:The Act of Self-Fashioning in Marlowe's Hero and Leander"
• Josh Bateman, "Walden and Fight Club: Prescribing a Lifestyle"
• Jordan Chase, "Milton's Principle of Matter: Why Angels Bleed in Paradise Lost"
• Clasen Clasen, "Carnival of Words: Applying Bakhtin to Spoken Word Poetry"
• Jennifer Renee Cooper Munoz, "Theatre and AIDS: The Magic Behind the Mayhem"
• Allison Fujimoto, "Roots and Routes: Re-defining Ethnic Identity in Contemporary American Immigrant Fiction"
• Carrie Maerz, "What it means to be Awake: Edna Pontellier's Awakening through Social, Physical, and Psychological Forces"
• Johanna Miller, "'Tell Them Stories':The Evolution of Significance in Literature for Children and Young Adults"
• Lucy Skertchly, "Willa Cather: It's A Sex Thing"
• Katelyn Waggoner, "Malice in Wonderland: The Shift to the Dystopian in Literature and the Physical World"

Creative Writing

• Samantha Auclair, "Anatomized: A Creative Nonfiction Memoir in Fragmented Form"
• Shane Kwiatkowski, "Worlds Invisible to See"
• Bryce Magorian, "A Cure for Dracophobia: The Necessity to Study Fantasy Literature & 'Authentic Encounters'"
• Xiao Palmer, "Shadowplay: Magical Realism in Acute Grief"
• Steven Seeley, "Kissing Sharon Olds"

2010

English Literature

• Robbie Dressler, "The Awakening through Time: How Societal Changes Influence Literary Perception"
• Malia Gonsalves, "Build and Destroy: Sex, Violence, & Music in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and A Clockwork Orange"
• Ruth Happ, "Jane Austenmania: Why the Current Craze and Why Should We Care?"
• Amanda Martin, "'To Hate All Women': Alternative Interpretations to Misogynist Claims in Jonathan Swift's Poetry and Prose"
• Grant McOmie, "Kurt Vonnegut's Postmodernism: Science and Religion in Cat's Cradle"
• Jennifer Terhune, "Heller's Women and the Catch-22 of Bureaucracy"

Creative Writing

• Peter Cherney, "The Perpetual Poem: On Revising Life and Writing"
• Jessica Cornwell, "Not Just a Pretty Place: Landscape in Short Fiction"
• Kathryn Dressler, "Attempting to Remember: A Collection of Creative Work"
• Steven Ellerd, "'Believe Everything Before Breakfast' & 'The Third God'"
• Brooke Fogwell, "In Defense of the Diary"
• Julie Israel, "All That Glitters Grows Mold: Gold Nuggets From Mulch"
• Kelsey Jordan, "Flight, Fight, and Fornication: A Collection of Poems"
• Alan Peters, "Toward a More Realistic Story: A Creative Exploration of Anti-Epiphany and Non-Dysfunctional Narratives"
• Matthew Trotter, "My Barbaric Yawp: A Memoir of Touch and Affection in Modern America"

2009

English Literature

• Madalyn Clemence, "Love According to Disney versus Love According to Harry Potter: A Close Analysis of how Love Relates to Good and Evil in the Harry Potter Series"
• Lindsey Costley, "Literary Batman: The Tragic Hero in Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns"
• Iain Culp, "'No sense in trying': Trickster Humor in the 1965 albums of Bob Dylan"
• Thais Lee, "The Innocent Whore: Overcoming the Virgin/Whore Dichotomy in Ana Castillo's So Far From God"
• Amanda Loupin, "From White to Black, and Back Again: An Analysis of Dialect in Their Eyes Were Watching God and Go Down, Moses"
• LeAnna Nash, "Brothers of the Same Fold: The Hero Concept in the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales and American Indian Myths"
• Aaron Pratt, "Evangelizo Vobis Gaudium Magnum, Quod Erit Omni Populo (I Bring to You a Gospel of Great Joy, Which Shall Be for All People): The Jacobean Sermons of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes and Dean John Donne"
• Bridgett Pride, "Hell-Bride as Mother Goddess: Beowulf and the Nameless Woman"
• Michael Russo, "eriF elaP: Reading Nabokov Backward and Forward"
• Sarah Shepherd, "Truth and Knowledge in Children's Literature: An Analysis of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials"

Creative Writing

• Jason Tyler Atwood, "Who is America? and Other Poems"
• Rachael Burbank, "Don't waste your life waiting?"
• Lindsey Costley, "Clean Freak and Other Stories"
• Miriam Kramer, "In Time, This Too Shall be Proven Foolish"
• Valerie Nelson, "Scars and Sentences: A Collection of Creative Work"
• Jan Nerenberg, "Journey"
• Alenna Louise Nilsen, "Chipping Away The Paint: Lacanian Psychoanalysis and the Manifestation of the Real"
• Tanna Waters, "Revising Lives: The Shape of Prose Through Revision"

2008

English Literature

• Katie Bowen, "The Meaning Beneath the Words: A Pedagogical Perspective on Holocaust Literature"
• Jeffrey Breitenfeldt, "Kill the Indian and Lose the Man: Ideological Alienation in N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn"
• Faren Clarambeau, "From Spoken Words to Paper and Ink: Oral Narrative Format in Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko"
• Paula Gilster, "Sleeping Beauty Snores: The Anti-Fairy Tale within Jane Austen's Fairy Tale Novel"
• Jennifer Ma, "The ABCs in Asian American Literature: The Struggle between Chopsticks and Forks in The Joy Luck Club"
• Jan Nerenberg, "The Womanly Virtues of Power, Strength, and Endurance: The Second Playing Field"
• Jessica Shoemaker, "Parentheses in (Post) Colonial: Sherman Alexie and Discontinuous Narrative"
• Kelly Sirles, "Crashing Into the Unknown: Virginia Woolf's Self-Analysis in The Waves"
• Amy Walters, "The Real F. Scott Fitzgerald: Utilizing Biographical Background to Close the Gap between Fiction and Reality"

Creative Writing

• Cameron Bardwell, "Taking 'The Scenic Route': The Craft of Travel Writing"
• Megrez Mosher, "Drafted: The Poet's Responsibility to His or Her Art"
• Haylie Swenson, "Behind the Walls: Family Crisis and the Short Story"
• Amy Young, "Dying for Her Sins: A Collection of Poems"

2007

English Literature

• Aaron Bales, "Doctor Faustus's Appetite for Pride and Lust: A Story of Damnation by Faustus' Inner Desires"
• Matthew Beil, "The Iron Youth's Great Adventure: Communal and Societal Breakdown in All Quiet on the Western Front"
• Kristin Bone, "Kiss of Immortality: A Search for the Real Helen of Troy"
• Sarah Cange, "The Weight of Common Sense on Society and Literature"
• Patrick Guild, "Reinventing China: Orientalism, Mistranslation, and Modernism"
• Megan Jones, "'Hiroshima Rages, Nagasaki Prays': How the Religious Beliefs of Shinto/Buddhism and Christianity Influence Atomic Bomb Authors"
• Michelle Ludwig, "A Conflict of Allegiance in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls"
• Jennifer Mauer, "Barbarians and the Beast: An Examination of Literature's True Monsters"
• Kelsey Pierson, "A Look into Tomorrow: A Literature Thesis on Science Fiction"
• Shannon Tillman, "'The Citizens Are Mum, They Say Not a Word': A Dialogism of William Shakespeare's Richard III and George Orwell's 1984"
• Jessica Wells, "Disappointment and Dissolution: Forster's Message in A Passage to India"

Creative Writing

• Patrick Guild, "Inventing the Authentic: A Creative Thesis"
• Kristina Kabanuk, "My Life as a Kabooky Girl"
• Aaron Knuth, "Foresight of the Artist: Making the Ordinary Extraordinary"
• James McDonald, "So Be It: A Collection of Short Stories"
• Melanie Yeates, "Feel Something: A Creative Thesis"