Undergraduate Research

Marquette English majors have many opportunities to pursue research with faculty mentors through advanced literature and writing courses, the Capstone class, the Honors in Humanities Program, and the Write Fellows Program at the Ott Memorial Writing Center. Undergraduate research has been funded through grants from the University Honors Program as well as the Mellon Foundation and other sources.

Marquette English majors have presented their research at local, regional, and national conferences including the Marquette Undergraduate Humanities Conference, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the annual conference of the International Writing Centers Association, and the annual conference of Sigma Tau Delta. Students have published research co-authored with faculty in the Perspectives on Undergraduate Research and Mentoring. A sample of undergraduate research completed in English courses is available on e-Publications@Marquette.


English Creative Capstone projects from 2022

Recent Honors Senior Theses include:

  • Benjamin Aquino '21, "Feeding Back" (Mentor: Dr. Angela Sorby)
  • Katie Breck '22, "Reflections on the Value of the Humanities: An Argument for the Importance of Dynamic Humanism" (Mentor: Dr. Melissa Ganz)
  • Jessica Brown '20, "Identifying and Categorizing Language Discrimination in the Legal Field" (Mentor:  Dr. Jenn Fishman)
  • John Godfrey '19, "'You're the Expert Here': Evaluating Expertise and Collaborative Potential in Peer Writing Conferences" (Mentor:  Dr. Rebecca Nowacek)
  • Oscar Guzman '19, "Rabbits and Tricksters: Narrative Sympathetic Imagination in American and British Children's Literature" (Mentor:  Dr. Sarah Wadsworth)
  • Aishah Mahmood '20, "Mind the (Acculturation) Gap: Hybridity in First-Generation Asian American Diaspora" (Mentor:  Dr. Christine Krueger)
  • Mara McAndrews '22, "A Research Journey" (Mentor: Dr. Leah Flack)
  • Courtney Michaelson '22, "Embellishing Reality: Analyzing Various Versions of Historiographic Metafiction in Contemporary Historical Fiction" (Mentor: Dr. Leah Flack)
  • Maya Mocarski '20, "Aesthetic and Ecological Ideologies in Contemporary Science Fiction" (Mentor: Dr. B. Pladek)
  • Jack Moore '20, "Dickens’s Rejection of Panopticism: The Justice of Observation in Bleak House" (Mentor:  Dr. Melissa Ganz)
  • Lily Regan '21, "Building Relationships and Breaking Barriers: Professional Development for Secondary Educators" (Mentor: Dr. Jenn Fishman)
  • Betsy Richards '21, "Embracing Quiet, Defying Silence: The Journey of a Writer through a Virtual Year" (Mentor: Dr. Leah Flack)
  • Katherine Stein '19, "Legacies of Empire and Tides of Reform: The Perplexing Popularity of Charles Dickens in Nineteenth-Century Ireland" (Mentor:  Dr. Timothy McMahon)
  • Abby Vakulskas '19, "Art in the Open: Milwaukee, Murals, and Community Engagement" (Mentor:  Dr. Deirdre Dempsey)
  • Emma Wyngaard '22, "The North Side" (Mentor: Prof. C.J. Hribal)