Senior Thesis
The thesis marks the culmination of your academic career at Reed. It’s an opportunity to build on what you’ve learned over the past three years in order to research and write about a historical question that is intellectually meaningful for you.
The division of history and social science requires students to submit a thesis first draft. This requirement applies to both those completing the thesis in the fall and those completing in the spring. The deadlines for submitting the first draft are set each year, but generally occur about one month before the college fall and spring final thesis deadlines. Students should consult their adviser and the division’s annual thesis memoranda for specific first draft requirements and procedures for the thesis. The completion of the thesis first draft by the stipulated divisional deadline is mandatory.
Recent Thesis Titles
- “Making Home and Household: Reconstructing Family and Community in Early to Mid-20th Century Japanese American Migrant Life” by Arthur Imamoto ’22
- “Growing Holiday Magic: Nature, Labor, and Meaning in Christmas Trees in the mid-Twentieth Century Pacific Northwest” by Clara Barclay ’23
- “Stuffed and Silent: a Study of the Troubling Legacies of Taxidermy at the Field Museum, 1890–1920” by Robin Eckensberger ’23
- “In the Company of the Marquis: Reevaluating the Collapse of the Aztec Empire” by Cazador Barnum ’24
- “Students and ‘The Scars of a Democracy:’ Political Possibilities at the West German Campus from 1967–1969” by Andrew Lucksinger ’25
- “Tick, Tick, BOOM! the Doomsday Clock, Environmental Catastrophe, and the Cold War, 1939–1991” by Sydney Stitt ’25