Marquette English majors have many opportunities to pursue research with faculty mentors through advanced literature and writing courses, the Capstone class, the Honors in Humanities Program, and the Write Fellows Program at the Ott Memorial Writing Center. Undergraduate research has been funded through grants from the University Honors Program as well as the Mellon Foundation and other sources.

Marquette English majors have presented their research at local, regional, and national conferences including the Marquette Undergraduate Humanities Conference, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the annual conference of the International Writing Centers Association, and the annual conference of Sigma Tau Delta. Students have published research co-authored with faculty in the Perspectives on Undergraduate Research and Mentoring. A sample of undergraduate research completed in English courses is available on e-Publications@Marquette.  English Creative Capstone projects from 2022 are also available.

Recent Honors Senior Theses include:

2023-24:

• Elizabeth Andrzejewski '24, “Gender Roles and Reform in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities” (Mentor: Dr. Melissa Ganz)

• Margarita Buitrago '24, “Between Fact and Fiction: Ambiguity of Identity, Fourteenth Century Warfare, and Exoticizing Depictions of Iberia in the Voyage en Béarn” (Mentor: Dr. Liza Strakhov)

• Bridget Neugent '24, “Journeying to the Bitter End: An Introduction and Examination of the Archetypal Medieval Death [Anti]-Quest” (Mentor: Dr. Liza Strakhov)

• Mariah Olmo-Santiago '24, “If he wants me broken, then I will have to be whole:” The Hunger Games Trilogy and Feminism: Katniss as a Feminist Heroine” (Mentor: Dr. Gerry Canavan)

• Emily Schultz '24, “American Media Representations of the British Royal Women: Feminist Rhetorical Analysis on the Weddings of Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle” (Mentor: Dr. Lilly Campbell)

2022-23:

• Grace Dawson '23, "The Defictionalization of Pre-21^st Century Pandemic Narratives in Social Media Responses to COVID-19” (Mentor: Dr. Ben Pladek)

• Noah Smith '23, “Young Books, Old Sins: Necromancy and Adultery in Incunables of the Gesta Romanorum" (Mentor: Lezlie Knox)

2021-22:

• Katie Breck '22, "Reflections on the Value of the Humanities: An Argument for the Importance of Dynamic Humanism" (Mentor: Dr. Melissa Ganz)
• Mara McAndrews '22, "A Research Journey" (Mentor: Dr. Leah Flack)
• Courtney Michaelson '22, "Embellishing Reality: Analyzing Various Versions of Historiographic Metafiction in Contemporary Historical Fiction" (Mentor: Dr. Leah Flack)
• Emma Wyngaard '22, "The North Side" (Mentor: Prof. C.J. Hribal)

2020-21:

• Benjamin Aquino '21, "Feeding Back" (Mentor: Dr. Angela Sorby)
• Lily Regan '21, "Building Relationships and Breaking Barriers: Professional Development for Secondary Educators" (Mentor: Dr. Jenn Fishman)
• Betsy Richards '21, "Embracing Quiet, Defying Silence: The Journey of a Writer through a Virtual Year" (Mentor: Dr. Leah Flack)

2019-20:

• Jessica Brown '20, "Identifying and Categorizing Language Discrimination in the Legal Field" (Mentor:  Dr. Jenn Fishman)
• John Godfrey (Dec.) '19, "'You're the Expert Here': Evaluating Expertise and Collaborative Potential in Peer Writing Conferences" (Mentor:  Dr. Rebecca Nowacek)
• Aishah Mahmood '20, "Mind the (Acculturation) Gap: Hybridity in First-Generation Asian American Diaspora" (Mentor:  Dr. Christine Krueger)
• Maya Mocarski '20, "Aesthetic and Ecological Ideologies in Contemporary Science Fiction" (Mentor: Dr. B. Pladek)
• Jack Moore '20, "Dickens’s Rejection of Panopticism: The Justice of Observation in Bleak House" (Mentor:  Dr. Melissa Ganz)

2018-19:

• Oscar Guzman '19, "Rabbits and Tricksters: Narrative Sympathetic Imagination in American and British Children's Literature" (Mentor:  Dr. Sarah Wadsworth)
• Katherine Stein '19, "Legacies of Empire and Tides of Reform: The Perplexing Popularity of Charles Dickens in Nineteenth-Century Ireland" (Mentor:  Dr. Timothy McMahon)
• Abby Vakulskas '19, "Art in the Open: Milwaukee, Murals, and Community Engagement" (Mentor:  Dr. Deirdre Dempsey)