Senior Projects Awards & Presentation
View more Literature Senior Projects on Digital Commons.
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Senior Projects in Literature 2025
Senior Projects in Literature 2025
ISABELLA CLAIRE AMENDOLA
Literature: “Magical Realism in Post-Colonial Narratives: Novel of the Nation”
Project Adviser: Alys Moody
PETER PHILIP BARRIE
Literature: “Windows Breaking Everywhere: The Dangers of Storytelling in the Novels of John Darnielle”
Project Adviser: Franz Nicolay
JEMUEL SIMEON BARTHOLOMEW
Literature: “A Common Place for Jazz and Fictional Writing”
Project Adviser: Matthew Mutter
OLGA BORZENKO
Literature: “Theories and Practices of Medieval Translation: The Story of Tristan and Yseut in Anglo-Norman French, Old Norse, and Middle English Literature”
Concentration: Medieval Studies
Project Advisers: Marisa Libbon and Karen Sullivan
MAIRÉAD EMMA BOYLE
Literature: “Literalizing the Other: Usury, Bloodlines, Miscegenation, and the Cultural Crisis of Early Modern England in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and The Tragedy of Othello”
Project Adviser: Peter L’Official
VICTORIA CLAIRE CARDEN
Literature: “Madwomen, Monsters, and Marriage: How Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, and Jane Eyre Rewrite Redemption”
Second Focus: Anthropology
Project Adviser: Stephen Graham
ERIN JIWON CHOI
Literature: “Still Unsettled: Ghosts in Grief and Memory”
Second Focus: French Studies
Project Adviser: Hua Hsu
FOSTER DOWD
Literature: “No Rule of a Single Master: Justice in the Oresteia”
Project Adviser: Thomas Bartscherer
BRANDON JAMES FLAD
Literature: “Raids on the Inarticulate: T. S. Eliot and Wittgenstein”
Project Adviser: Matthew Mutter
SOPHIE ELIZA FOLEY
Literature: “Intellectual Autonomy, Narratorial Authority, and Nabokov’s Pnin, or, A Sullen Reader is Confronted by a Sunny Book”
Project Adviser: Olga Voronina
ARTEMIS EZRA JEAN FREDERICK
Literature: “Windows, Rabbit Holes, and Wardrobes: The Construction of the Gender Binary in Barrie’s, Carroll’s, and Lewis’s Fantasy Worlds”
Project Adviser: Stephen Graham
NORAH KATHLEEN GEARY
Literature: “Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: Novels of Female Education, Experience, and Resolution”
Project Adviser: Stephen Graham
SEBASTIAN J. KAPLAN
Literature: “Writing/Movie/Going”
Project Adviser: Éric Trudel
ZOE K. KATINOS
Literature: “‘There Was Once a Neighborhood’: Temporality, Genre, and Community in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Sula”
Project Adviser: Daniel Williams
HANNAH LU MARSH
Literature: “Language Remained”
Project Adviser: Matthew Mutter
JAMES MARSHALL
Literature: “‘Radiant Angels Poised in the Air She Breathed’: Sacrament in the Works of Ron Hansen and Andre Dubus”
Project Adviser: David Ungvary
SARAH BROOKE MARTIN
Literature and Philosophy: “‘The Body Lurking Within the Body’: The Transcendental Influence of Emanuel Swedenborg in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass”
Project Advisers: Alex Benson and James Keller
MILLA ROSEMARY MEIMAN
Literature: “‘If Love Be Rough With You, Be Rough With Love’: The Sexual Power Dynamics of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet”
Project Adviser: Robert Cioffi
ELIZABETH MARY NUNAN
Literature: “The Odyssey Reimagined: Translating Ancient Themes into the Modern Classroom”
Second Focus: Classical Studies
Project Adviser: Lauren Curtis
DOROTHEA SILER REAMES-HENRY
Literature: “The Brontës’ Feminine Ideal”
Project Adviser: Karen Sullivan
AUSTIN JAMES ROWEY
Literature: “Realms of Tragic Decay: Destruction, Adaptation, and Transformation in Japanese Literature”
Project Adviser: Nathan Shockey
MATTHEW SANDERS
Literature: “Individual Multiplicity: Autobiographical Writing and the Genesis of the Subconscious Self”
Project Adviser: Éric Trudel
LYDIA LENA SCHULTZ
Literature: “‘The Spirit We Live By, Life Itself’: Virginia Woolf’s Minor Characters and the Art of Character-Reading”
Project Adviser: Daniel Williams
LOUIS J. WATSON
Literature: “Reading Intermittence: Lost Bodies and Texts in Proust”
Project Adviser: Marina van Zuylen
MARA LOUISE ZAKI
Literature: “‘To Love and to Sorrow’: The Enigma of Goethe’s Mignon from Page to Performance”
Project Adviser: Karen Raizen -
Senior Awards and Prizes 2025
Senior Awards and Prizes 2025
Spadaccia Family Scholarship in Literature
An endowed scholarship established by the Spadaccia family and awarded to an outstanding Upper College student who has moderated in literature
Lu Marsh
Mark Purlia ’71 Memorial Scholarship
A scholarship given by the parents of Mark Purlia ’71, in his name and memory, and awarded annually to a student who, in the judgment of the Division of Languages and Literature, best fulfills conditions of ability and character
Brandon Flad
William Frauenfelder Award
An award established in honor of William Frauenfelder, beloved professor of modern languages and literature for more than 30 years, and given to a student excelling in the study of one or more foreign languages
Celeste Connell
William Frauenfelder Translation Prize
A prize established in honor of William Frauenfelder, professor of modern languages and literature from 1934 to 1957 and 1969 to 1977, and awarded to a senior whose project includes a substantial work of literary translation of particularly high quality and attention to scholarship
Ezra Calderon, Colin Terrien
Margaret and John Bard Scholars Prize
Honorary prizes awarded annually by the faculty of each division of the College for outstanding academic achievement in the field of major interest
Languages and Literature
Tyler Epps, Nora Furlong
Bill Sanders ’90 Memorial Prize
A prize given in memory of Bill Sanders ’90 to a student for appreciative, elegant, and insightful critical writing in English literature
Clarise Reichley
Robert Rockman Prize
A prize established by the Class of 1966 to honor and acknowledge Robert Rockman, a beloved teacher devoted to making the Bard experience come to life for more than 40 years, and awarded to a junior or senior for excellence in literature and theater.
Anthony Leo
William Weaver Prize in Music and Languages
The renowned translator and authority on opera, William Weaver, a distinguished member of the Bard faculty, devoted his career as writer and teacher to exploring the links between language, music, and the visual arts. This prize is awarded to a senior Conservatory student whose work is in the spirit of William Weaver.
Rowan Swain
Wilton Moore Lockwood Prize
Established in 1927 by Mr. Wilton Moore Lockwood, a prize awarded to students who have submitted particularly distinguished creative and critical writing in coursework.
Nora Furlong (critical), Noah Barbosa (creative)
Irma Brandeis Prize
A prize given annually to a third-year student or students with an excellent academic record, whose Senior Project in literature, languages, history, art history, philosophy, or the history of science is outstanding for both broadness of vision and precision of thought. The prize honors Bard’s distinguished, longtime faculty member Irma Brandeis, whose contributions to Dante scholarship and to Bard College exemplify the virtues embodied in this prize.
Ethan Clark
The Mary McCarthy Award
The Mary McCarthy Award is given in recognition of engagement in the public sphere by an intellectual, artist, or writer. Mary McCarthy taught at Bard from 1946 to 1947 and again in the 1980s. The award honors the combination of political and cultural commitment exemplified by this fearless, eloquent writer and teacher.
Joy Harjo