Undergraduate Thesis Seminar

Instructors Lila Abu-Lughod (Fall 2019) and Catherine Fennel (Spring 2020)

This two-term course is a combination of a seminar and a workshop that will help you conduct research, write, and present an original senior thesis in anthropology. The first term of this course introduces a variety of approaches used to produce anthropological knowledge and writing; encourages students to think critically about the approaches they take to researching and writing by studying model texts with an eye to the ethics, constraints, and potentials of anthropological research and writing; and gives students practice in the seminar and workshop formats that are key to collegial exchange and refinement of ideas. During the first term, students complete a few short exercises that will culminate in a fully developed, 15-page project proposal, as well as a preliminary draft of one chapter of the senior thesis. The proposal will serve as the guide for completing the thesis during the spring semester.

The spring sequence of the anthropology thesis seminar is a writing intensive continuation of the fall semester, in which students will have designed the research questions and begun research, prepared a full thesis proposal that will serve as a guide for the completion of the thesis or comparable senior capstone project, and written a draft of one chapter.  Readings in the first semester are geared toward exploring a variety of models of excellent anthropological or ethnographic work. In the second semester, weekly meetings will be devoted to the collaborative refinement of drafts, as well as working through issues of writing (evidence, voice, authority, integration of theory, etc.). All enrolled students are required to present their project at a symposium in the late spring, and the final grade is based primarily on successful completion of the thesis/ capstone project. Students who write senior theses are eligible for consideration for departmental honors.

Note: The senior thesis seminar is open to CC and GS majors in Anthropology only. It requires the instructor’s permission for registration.  Students must have a 3.7 GPA in the major and a preliminary project concept in order to be considered. Interested students must communicate with the thesis instructor and the director of undergraduate study in the previous spring about the possibility of taking the course during the upcoming academic year. Only those students who have completed the fall semester portion of the course are allowed to register for the spring. Permission to enroll is determined by the Instructor of the fall semester seminar and is contingent upon successful completion of the first semester requirements as well as assessment by the instructor on whether the student's project has progressed far enough to be completed in the spring semester. If the determination is that that project has not developed sufficiently as a thesis, the student will exit the seminar after one semester, with a grade based on the work completed during the fall term.  Enrollment limit is 15.  Instructor approval is required for registration each semester.

The Department of Anthropology congratulates the members of our twentieth annual Senior Thesis Seminar for their stellar works of original undergraduate scholarship!

Alexandra Baer Chan, "From One Nation One People to the American Melting Pot: Changing Community and Identity for the American Lhotsampa Refugees."

Darya Fraiman, "Unstructured Time: the Formation of a Ceramics Community in a New York City Basement." 

Rozanne Gooding Silverwood, "The Indigenous ‘Uncanny’: An Ethnography of Erasure and the Resurgence of Chickasaw Identity." 

Thomas Hallaran, "Heroic Contradictions: the Errant Tweets, New Enclosures, and Social Reproduction of Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists.”

Jing Hao Liong, "Nationalism in Crisis: Analyzing Media Coverage of Corruption and Protest in Malaysia.”

Benjamin Moe, “The Caring Office: Constructing Passion and Productivity in the Modern Tech Startup.”

Ramis J. Wadood, "Hometown Hip-Hop: Music and South Asian Identity in Detroit’s Suburbs."