Past Senior Thesis Topics

2007
Seizing the Future and Shunning the Dead: Funeral Reform in Rural Wenzhou - Hoopes Prize Winner
Provincial Government and Regional Identity in China: The Case of the Chongqing
Accelerating Development: Can Labor Market Dynamics in El Salvador be Improved through Selectively Adopting the Japanese Lifetime Employment Model?
Pihuang, Violins, and Infallible Heroes: Internal Contradictions in the Model Operas
The Search for Utopia and Self Definition in Japanese Society: the Identity Crisis in Haruki Murakami' s A Wild Sheep Chase and the anime Naruto
Constructing Identity: A Study of Internatioal Adoptees and their Place in Korean Society

2006
FDI and Economic Diplomacy: The Prioritization of Economic Interests in Relations with China
Guanbi Minfan: Taishicun and Organized Resistance in the Chinese Countryside
History, Ethnicity, and Place in a small town in western China
Hong Kong Disease: Entrenched Family Capital Control and its Effect on Corporate Growth
Real Estate and Stratification in Contemporary Urban China
Separate Bridges: Cultural Memory and Personal Trauma in the Works of Liang Xiaosheng and Yang Jiang
Short Term Loan (Poetry)
20/20 Hindsight: A look at the US response to the South Korean Nuclear Program

2005
Blood and Sand: The Frontier Poetry of Cen Shen
Everything You Wanted to Know about Baomu: Maids and Modern Migration in Shanghai
Examining Recent Changes in North Korean Education: 1980-2003
Harnessing the Lancang-Mekong River: Chinese Dam Development and the Downstream Social Consequences
Innateness and Spontaneity in Xunzi
Minzu Opportunity: Ethnic Identity and the Shape of Development in Yuan Nan Province, P.R.C.
Not Exactly Shosetsu: Haruki Murakami's Dead Heat on a Merry-go-round
Redefining the Beneficiary of Mao's Cultural Revolution: The Rise and Fall of Ji Dengkui
The Revolutionary Hero and the External World: Cultural and Cross-Cultural Crises in Andre Marlaux and Ba Jin
State of South Korean Sovereignty during the Korean War Armistice Negotiation (1951-1953)

2004
Media Space: The Constructed Experience of International Pop Music in Contemporary China
Japan's Convoy System: Demise or Resurrection
The Poet as Outsider: Self Representation and Transmission in Du Fu's Poetry
The Secret Whispering of Walls: Village Spatial Formation in Southeastern China
Sacred Space and Marketplace: Constructing Tibetan Identity in Nepal
Securing Stability: Migrant Workers and the Fragmentation of the Labor Interest in Contemporary China
The Arduous Struggle for Liberation: Historical and Sociological Perspectives on Chinese Women's Literature of the 1980's
Notes from the Khabarovsk Market: An Ethnographic Study of the Chinese Trading Minority in the Russian Far East
Qigong, Heterodoxy and Human Rights: Examining Different Perceptions of Falun Gong and its Political Controversy in Contemporary China
From a Social Economist's Perspective: Happiness in East Asia
Rainy Day Driving Fees and Washing Machine Wars: Market Segmentation for Industrial Goods in Post-Mao China
Corporate Philanthropy and Social Capital in China: A Case Study of Guanxi and SARS
Economic Assimilation of Rural Migrants in Shanghai
Owning a Share of Press Freedom: How and Why Political Restrictions and Media Conglomerates are Threatening Freedom of the Press in Hong Kong
Society and Sacred Will: The Construction of Agency in American and Japanese Religion and Social Structure

2003
Conversions in China: Religious and Cultural Adjustment in the Jesuit and Mormon Missionary Institutions
Depictions of Children in PRC Propaganda Posters
Facilitating Democratization in China: The Role of U.S. NGOs in Developing Village Elections
Holy Whores: Women and Sexuality in Chinese Buddhist Literature
Looking Back: The Role of Nostalgia in Lou Ye's Suzhou He
Master Yinshun and Pure Land Buddhism
Measuring the Returns to Education: An Empirical Study of the Cultural Revolution
The 1979 Foreign Joint Venture Law and the Future of China
Ordinary Heroism: Individual Identity in the Films of Ann Hui
Out of Many, One: Teresa Teng's Performance of 'Heri jun zailai?' and its Expression of Hybrid Identity in 1970s Taiwan
Out of the Ashes: Examining Japanese Children's Literature on the Atomic Bombings
Pitch-accent at the Utterance-level in Tokyo and Kansai Japanese
The Political Economy of the Ming Dynasty -- An Assessment of Two Interest Groups and Their Roles in Economic Policymaking
The Role of Language in China's Minority Education: A Study of the Xishuangbanna Dai and the Yanbian Koreans
Unwilling to Commit: Factors Contributing to Peace in the Taiwan Strait