What's in a Thesis? We Ask Undergrads What It Takes

Cliff Haley’s “Stuck on the Spectrum” is a queer analysis of male heterosexuality within mid-20th-century American literature. Haley’s thesis begins with Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, then moves to Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises before returning to Baldwin’s Another Country. Within these texts, Haley explores the dilemmas of sexuality—and he argues that while we as modern readers better understand the sexual spectrum, we embrace invalid assumptions about our own place on it. In reality, Haley contends, our relationship to desire is constantly in flux. At any given point, individual sexuality can change; orientation, thus, is too limiting to hold in desire. Haley explicates this idea through an examination of male homosociality. By asking readers to consider why heterosexual men are so afraid of their femininity and their inner queerness, he ties the epistemology of the closet back to misogyny. Haley’s thesis engages in an open, refreshing conversation with the implications of queerness, and he uses the work of feminist thinkers to ground his work. Among other things, these thinkers help Haley illuminate 1) how universal intrinsic femininity is a condition of human life and 2) the way that misogyny impacts perceptions of this femininity. Ultimately, Haley argues that sexuality must be continually deconstructed within a spectrum that is fundamentally rooted in misogyny. 

Charlotte Tellefsen’s thesis delves further into the past. Entitled “The Convergence of Nature and Culture: Illegitimacy in Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda,” Tellefsen examines George Eliot’s treatment of illegitimacy, dealing with the historical and legal facets of this issue. Tellefsen specifically focuses on illegitimate children and their mothers in Adam Bede — Eliot’s first novel, published in 1859— and Daniel Deronda—Eliot’s final novel released 27 years later. With a keen understanding of English sociopolitical transformations between 1859 and 1876, Tellefsen examines the Bastardy Clause in the New Poor Laws and reads each chapter of her thesis against a different contemporary thinker. To read Eliot’s perspective on natural law in Adam Bede, she uses Malthus’ “Essay on the Principle of Population.” And with Daniel Deronda, and the introduction of consent, Tellefsen then uses Henry Maine’s Ancient Law, which explored the organization of the Roman family. In doing so, she reconsiders the nature of legitimacy in comparison to bastardy.