Student Thesis/Project Titles
2025-26
Eloise Johnson, The Queen of the Up-Side Down Kingdom: The Queen of Sheba as a Case Study for the Shift in Understanding the Gendered Narratives of Jewish Traditions from Biblical to Medieval Times (Senior Project)
Claire Hatch, Dharmic Modernity and Resilient Religious Spaces: Mapping Temple Building at Baglung Kalika Bhagawati Mandir (Senior Project)
Hugh Hutchinson, Sanctuary Beyond the Church: Progressive Pastors and Resistance to Immigration Enforcement Under Trump’s Second Administration (Senior Thesis)
Tetor Nghiem, Managing Hinduism: Digital Authority, Authenticity, and the Hindu American Foundation (Senior Project)
Noemi Zendejas Rodriguez, Becoming, Being, and Belonging: The Construction of Latine Muslim Identity in the U.S. (Senior Project)
2024-25
Keegan Gilsenan, The Divine Mission of Chinggis Khan: the Early Mongol Religion, Identity, and the Great Khanship from 1206 to 1259 (Senior Thesis)
Sam Marquis, Seeking Fullness in the Immanent Frame: Secular Students and the Journey of Meaning-Making (Senior Project)
Christopher Martucci, Frozen on Shaky Ground: Why the Scientific Community Needs to Start Taking Religion Seriously (Senior Project)
Sam Hale Schneiderhan, Faith Under the Rising Sun: Religion, Militarism, and the Theology of Colonialism in Imperial Japan (1868-1945) (Senior Thesis)
2023-24
Peter Herman, Olympians as Ascetics: Investigating Contemporary Elite Athletes Through a Lens of Asceticism (Senior Project)
2022-23
Katherine Barton, The Gods Are In Storage: Place and Placelessness Amongst Diasporic Hindus in Burlington, Vermont (Senior Thesis)
2021-22
Niyafa Boucher, Body Positivity: The Secular Reform Movement for Christian Body Discipline Ideals (Senior Project)
Lauren Eskra, “We’re Not Like Other Churches”: Identity Formation and Community Construction in a French Evangelical Church (Senior Thesis)
Paul Flores-Clavel, The Impact of Exodus: Exploring African American & Central-American Identity Formation Through Historical and Literary Analysis
Zeke Hodkin, Catechisms and the Court: Evaluating the Relationship Between Supreme Court Justices, Evolving Catholic Teachings on Capital Punishment, and Modern Jurisprudence
Yining Lu, Debates and Practices of Humanistic Buddhism in China - Infusing the World with Love and Compassion (Senior Project)
Jacqueline Topping, Tracing the Westernization of Mindfulness: Americanization, Medicalization, and Corporatization (Senior Project)
2020-21
Laura Friedrich, Written to be Remembered and Authored to Inspire: Collective memory and a new female model from the late ancient narratives of Perpetua and Thecla (Senior Thesis)
Sara Santiago, Faith in Prisons: The Transformative History and Potential of Religious Leaders in the American Prison System (Senior Project)
Ashley Tonini, Mount Eskel is Singing: Development of Divine Connection in Mormon Fantasy Novels (Senior Thesis)
Lucy Weiss, Examining Religion at Middlebury: Missionaries, Discourse, and Courses Over the Years (Senior Thesis)
2019-20
Lauren Bates, This Land is Our Land: Medieval Jewish Travelers’ Assertion of Sovereignty over Sacred Spaces of Palestine (Senior Project)
Susan Deutsch, Goddess in the Graveyard, Witch in the Woods: Narrative Depictions of the Goddess Durga in Indonesia as Templates (Senior Project)
Leila Faulstich-Hon, Building a Pure Land on Earth: Fagushan’s (法鼓山) Philosophy of Engagement (Senior Project)
Sebastian Grandas, Spiritual memory and imagination: A reading of García
Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, in light of Don Quixote (Senior Project)
Xuan He, Reimagining the Rural: Visions of Healing and Transformation in China’s Countryside (Senior Project)
kOle Lekhutle, A BODHISATTVA IS BORN: The domestication of Guan Yin in Lesotho (Senior Project)
Olivia Mitchell, Catholic Social Teaching and the “Preferential Option for the Poor” in the United States’ Health Care System: Integrating Top-Down and Bottom-Up Religious Ethics in Institutional Policy (Senior Thesis)
Caleb Turner, Investigating Criticisms of Modern Hajj in the Age of Social Media (Senior Project)
Varsha Vijayakumar, The Looming Threat of Hindu Nationalism: Diasporic Considerations and Implications for Hindu Indian-American Political Participation (Senior Project)
2018-19
Chris Diak, Transcendental Generative Grammar: A Chomskyan Reading of the Sphoṭavāda (Senior Thesis)
Ben Freedman, Turn of Heart, Turn of Phrase: Qur’anic Translations in Japanese (Senior Thesis)
Connor Freeman, Semper Reformanda: Peter Berger’s Sociology of Religion and its Application to the Evangelical Lutheran Church America (Senior Thesis)
Naina Horning, Zhu Xi, al-Ghazali and Moral Education: A Comparative Study Through the Lens of Confucianism and Islam (Senior Project)
Hal Juster, The Music is More Ancient Than the Words: The Evolution of a Musical Black Liberation Theology and its Influence on Martin Luther King, Jr. (Senior Thesis)
Anna Lueck, “For the Sake of Our Children”: Motherhood as Self-Conscious Performance Among Middle-Class Muslim Immigrants in Vermont (Senior Project)
Miles Meijer, Bibles and Ballots: The Christian Progressive Movement’s Fusion of Religion with Immigration Politics in Trump’s America (Senior Thesis)
Mehek Naqvi, MEMES AND MUSLIMS: Examining the Conflation of Religion and Culture Among Second-Generation, Muslim-American Youth. (Senior Project)
Jonathon O’Dell, A Case Study of Christian Missions Among the Lisu People of Nujiang, China (Senior Project)
Lex Scott, Identity Incongruity & Reconciliation: Queer & Muslim (Senior Project)
Liza Tarr, Democracy Under Siege: The Combative Nature of American Political Discourse, and its Metaphoric Revival (Senior Thesis)
Weiru Ye, Uncovering House Churches in China’s Christian Heartland (Senior Thesis)
Shan Zeng, Shimenawa: Weaving Traditions with Modernity – Interdisciplinary Research on the Cultural History of Japanese Sacred Rope (Senior Thesis)
2017-18
David M. Dennis, Pancasila vs. Syariah: The Dialectical Evolution of Official State Nationalism and Islamic Authority that Shaped and Reshaped the Foundations of the Indonesian State (1945-2005) (Thesis)
Hayk Harutyunyan, Heidegger: The Death of God and the Metaphysics of Subjectivity (Senior Project)
Benjamin S. Karlin, The Primacy of Experience and the Meaning of God: Mordecai Kaplan and the legacy He Created (Senior Project)
Emma R. Walker, The Shifting Amazigh Identity from French Colonization to the Present through the Portrayal of al-Kahina (Senior Project)
2016-17
Francesca M. Conde, Women of the Islamic State: Social Media and Sisterhood (Senior Thesis)
Kelsey N. Follansbee, From war photograph to a museum for forgetting: A built reproduction of Rosenthal’s Iwo Jima photograph (Senior Thesis)
Alexandra K. Gimbel, Akbar’s Sacred Kingship: Religious Influences and Their Visual Manifestations in Akbarnama (Senior Thesis)
Johan W. Heiser, Re-Thinking Mysticism: An Examination of the Transformative Path Through Language of Light and Darkness (Senior Thesis)
Karma Lama, The Paradox of Purity and Pollution: Examining Ecology and Religion along the Ganges River (Senior Thesis)
Maya J. Peers Nitzberg, Illustrating and Unpacking the Type-Scene Of Land-Woman: Examining Misogynist and Imperializing Ideologies in the Hebrew Bible (Senior Thesis)
Andrew P. Smith, “In suffering, a dazzling light”: Jewish Historiography in the Debate over Zionism, 1837-1919 (Senior Thesis)
Matthew B. Sptizer, Conceptualizing the Non-Conceptual: Language at its Limit in Buddhist Thought (Senior Thesis)
Kai S. Wiggins, VIOLENCE, DIGITAL MEDIA, JUST WAR. Complications to Just War Doctrine in the 21st Century (Senior Thesis)