Thesis or Not?

As the frenzied thesis season draws to a close and many seniors take a look at the sky again for the first time in weeks, FM examines offbeat thesis titles of yesteryear. Wacky, highly specific, and fraught with bad puns, these theses (thesi? theseaux?) represent some of Harvard’s strangest. We’ve thrown in a few apocryphal titles for good measure. Test your critical chops and see if you can separate the thesis gold from the “holy crap.”

1. The Decline and Fall of the Medieval Werewolf, Traced from the Origins of the Werewolf Belief through the Middle Ages

2. “Like, I Can’t Even”: Social Linguistics and Self-determined Identity of the Web-literate Adolescent across Regional Boundaries

3. Holy Crap!: The Role of Disgust in Religious Beliefs

4. Faux News and Impersonations: Political Humor in the Televisual Representation of Female Candidates in the 2008 United States Presidential Election on Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report

5. Be Your Own Bartender: The Politics of Party Culture, an Immersive Ethnographic Approach

6. Hedgewhores, Wagtails, Cockatrices, Whipsters: John Singer Sargent and His Coterie of Nature’s Artful Dodgers

7. Learning from drunk monkeys: Expert approaches to alcohol and drug problems in modern America

8. The Final Frontier: Representations of Gender, Race, and Political Identity in 20th Century Science Fiction Television

9. Mining for Marriage: The Gold Digger as Marital Speculator, 1919-1940

10. Cuckoldly Knaves and Plague-Sores: A Deconstruction of Shakespearian Insult and Contemporary Parody Through the Lens of Elizabethan Social Norms

11. “Takin’ Back the Night!”: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and “Girl Power” Feminism

fake titles: 2, 5, 8, 10