CMS Senior Capstone Examples

A. How to develop and narrow the scope of a research project

    1. GENERAL AREA: A student is interested in the representation of children in Greek tragedy. Their advisor suggests they consider Euripides.
    2. INITIAL OBSERVATIONS: The student observes that children are frequently killed in many Euripidean plays. In Bacchae, Agave kills her son, Pentheus. In Hecuba, Hecuba kills King Polymestor’s two sons. In Trojan Women, the Greeks kill the Trojan prince Astyanax. In Iphigeneia at Aulis, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigeneia. The student tries to explain why filicide is a repeating motif in Euripidean tragedy. They study the period in which Euripides lived.
    3. DEVELOPMENT OF THESIS STATEMENT: This thesis explores how filicide in Euripides’ plays Medea, Bacchae, and Iphigeneia at Aulis registers Euripides’ criticism of the damage to Greece’s youth during the Peloponnesian War. The thesis title is The Social Significance of Filicide in Three Plays of Euripides.

In sum, the student transformed a general interest in children in tragedy to an examination of Euripides’ depictions of children murdered by their parents. They then narrowed their focus to three plays and developed a hypothesis about the reason for this repeated motif in Euripides’ plays.  

B. An example of a creative capstone project

A student in CMS interested in theater and theater history took a play-writing workshop AND a Latin class in which they read Seneca’s Hercules Furens. For their senior capstone project, they wrote an essay on Seneca’s Hercules Furens that focused on how the play treated masculinity and introduced their adaptation of the play set in Lewiston, Maine, after a mill closure.

C. An example of two theses on one topic for double majors

Students with two majors may complete two one-semester theses in each unit that address the same topic. A student who majored in CMS and Japanese Studies compared honor and masculinity among Japanese samurai and Roman gladiators. They wrote a one-semester thesis on honor and masculinity in samurai culture in Asian Studies and a one-semester thesis on honor and masculinity among Roman gladiators in CMS.