The Senior Thesis is a fixture of the Thomas More College curriculum. It gives students the opportunity to delve more deeply into a work or topic that interests them under the guidance of a faculty member. A defense is then given publicly at the end of the spring semester, involving a précis and speech that afford the opportunity for further review and reflection upon the totality of the student’s work.
While the Class of 2023 recently wrapped up their Junior Projects, the Seniors had one last challenge to face before turning to their final exams. They defended their theses May 12–13, the culmination of a year’s worth of reading, writing, and reflection. Topics ranged from the complementarity of men and women to the defects of radical feminism to the sin of pride in the works of Austen and Dickens.
Peter Thompson ’22 chose to focus on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward after studying Gulag Archipelago for his Junior Project. For him, the topic represented what he most appreciated from his time at the College. It was also a labor done in community: “The most important thing I learned from preparing my thesis was how important my friends were in helping me clarify my thoughts through discussion,” he said. “It is easy to begin to doubt whether anything you say or think is coherent when you are so absorbed in working on a single topic.”
The Senior Thesis rounds out the TMC student’s undergraduate career by helping him or her to grow as a scholar. As some look forward to graduate school and others to starting their careers, for many the Thesis will remain the academic pinnacle of their time spent at the College.
Class of 2022 Senior Thesis Titles
“Fiction: The Most Effective Method of Relaying Ideas”
“Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Love and Its Compatibility with the Human Person”
“The Pretty and the Pensive: Preserving Objectivity in Aesthetic Judgements”
“Corruptio Optimi Pessima: An Exploration of the Degradation of Language”
“The Deadly Sin Debuts in Society: An Exploration of Pride in a Sampling of Austen and Dickens”
“A Diseased Art: Medicine Practiced as a Science Leads to a Dehumanization of the Person”
“An Exploration of the Defects in Radical Feminism and the Necessity of Authentic Freedom for a Proper Understanding of the Feminine Genius”
“Healing the Divide between Man and God: The Way of Charity”
“How To Suffer Well: Stoics, Epicureans, and Christianity”
“The Lord’s Day is not the New Sabbath, but a Celebration of the New Covenant Established by Christ”
“Complementarity of Men and Women”
“The Greatest of These is Love: Human Love in Search of Charity in Graham Greene’s Novels”
“Pietas and Patriotism: The Fall of Rome and the Decline of America”
“The Calling of the Gods: A Reading of C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces”
“The Strongman and the Strawman: On a Misrepresentation of the Conflict between Aristotle and Descartes on the Question of Certainty”
“A Man of Suffering, and Familiar with Pain: An Exploration of the Purpose of Suffering in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward”
“Awake, O Sleeper: A Study of the Role of Myths”
