Hillsdale College Students Defend Senior Theses
Eighteen students in Hillsdale’s Collegiate Scholars Program presented their research to members of the College community.
HILLSDALE, Mich. — Eighteen Hillsdale College seniors in the Collegiate Scholars Program defended their senior theses this semester. In public defenses, students gave ten-minute presentations of their theses and then responded to questions from the faculty members on their committees as well as audience members from the College community for 40 minutes.
“Watching students defend their theses is an exciting culmination of our time together.”
“Watching students defend their theses is an exciting culmination of our time together,” said Eric Hutchinson, associate professor of classics and chairman of the Collegiate Scholars Program. “It has been a joy to watch these students grow and explore during their time in CSP, and I hope they take their love of learning with them wherever they go from here.”
Eighteen seniors defended theses this semester:
- Henry Ahrabi | “‘My Own Separate Fantasy’: Plato’s Influence in Percy Shelley’s Empiricist Poetics”
- David Cathel | “Ambrose’s Reception of Nature as an Ethical Concept in De Officiis”
- Joseph Claeys | “Rome’s First Prince: Shakespeare’s Caesar and Machiavelli’s Rome”
- Abby Davis | “Unconditional Positive Regard: Why Mental Health Courts Conflict with Carl Rogers’ Client-Centered Therapy”
- Caitlin Filep | “Metaphor as Nature: Transcendent Truth and Natural Metaphors in Emily Dickinson’s Poetics”
- Jacob Fox | “Driven by Design: How Market Distortions Cemented Cars into American Life”
- Sofie Kellar | “The Huldra and Kitsune as Phenomenological Fox Tricksters Across the East and West”
- Brian Knewtson | “Reasoning of the Heart: Pascal’s Reconciliation of Human Reason and Divine Grace”
- Harrison Layman | “Free to be Whole: How the Philosophy of Iain McGilchrist Paves a Novel Path to the Liberal Arts”
- Anna Leman | “More or Less a Statesman: A Comparison of Cicero’s Statesman and Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More”
- Micah Miller | “Until They Are Oned to Him: The Metaphysics of Marriage in the Sophiology of Sergei Bulgakov”
- Jonah Murray | “A Moderate Fanaticism: Pascal’s Wager in Light of Modern Decision Theory”
- Njomëza Pema | “Vindicating the Mother of Feminism: Wollstonecraft’s Vision of Companionate Marriage as a Response to Her Defamation”
- Jonathan Rolfe | “Hwæt sculon we nu don? King Alfred’s Answers to Problems in the Consolation of Philosophy”
- Maya Toman | “The Anti-Confessions: Till We Have Faces as a Response to Augustine”
- Nick Treloar | “Brains in Jars and Evil Deceivers: DishBrains and The Rise of Organoid Intelligence”
- Abigail Wagner | “The Woodman Fate and the Brilliant People: Taylor’s Victorian Cross-Pressures and Visions of History in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities”
- Elizabeth Williams | “Proof of Personhood: The Legal and Philosophical Significance of the Congressional Testimony of a Woman Born-Alive in a Failed Abortion”
The Collegiate Scholars Program, formerly known as the Honors Program, allows students to dig more deeply into the kinds of readings, ideas, and problems exemplified in the College’s core curriculum, joining an ongoing dialogue about the arts and sciences in the Western tradition. Students apply to the program as sophomores or juniors. Students in the program complete a small number of additional classes and write an interdisciplinary senior thesis. They also have the opportunity to participate in retreats, on-campus events, and a trip to Greece.