{"id":150584,"date":"2022-12-16T08:53:07","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T13:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=150584"},"modified":"2025-05-12T10:43:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T14:43:58","slug":"thesis-binding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2022\/12\/16\/thesis-binding\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ba-ha-ha Mitzvah’: Thesis binding with Frances White ’23"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just outside Ladd Library, a group of Bates friends chats happily, sending clouds of breath into the still, chilly December air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the group steps Frances White \u201923 of New York City, with a fresh copy of her senior thesis in hand, joined by a new friend from the first-year Class of 2026. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a
Before the binding, Frances White ’23 takes a moment to read aloud her acknowledgments page, which includes thanks to friends, family, faculty members, and folks at the Multifaith Chaplaincy. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After she reads the acknowledgments page aloud and makes a few jokes (a possible title for the thesis was \u201cBa-ha-ha Mitzvah\u201d),White holds open a black thesis binder as her helper, Fenna Oliphant-Linden ’26 of Bethesda, Md., places the stack of crisp, white pages inside. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then hugs were had, congratulations and thank-yous were traded, and bottles of champagne and cola were shaken and popped. Another edition of a sweet Bates ritual, melding academics, friendship, and community, neared its end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Bates, the emergence of this ritual, of a senior and a younger student binding the senior’s thesis, is a fairly recent one, but its significance is timeless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Phyllis
Frances White ’23 holds the thesis binder open as first-year Fenna Oliphant-Linden ’26 of Bethesda, Md., slides the pages of White’s thesis into place. Asking Oliphant-Linden to help her was a way to pass on the tradition of thesis binding, White says. “I knew he was going to be excited and would bring love to it.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Besides lending a tangible note of capstone accomplishment (all theses are digitally delivered), the ritual gives seniors a chance to bask in their friends’ congratulations. The senior also gets to share their gratitude and bring a young friend into what’s been called “the Bate cycle<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I wanted to find a first year who meant a lot to me,” White said. And that was Oliphant-Linden. “I knew he was going to be excited and would bring love to it. And he did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As White waved her completed and bound thesis, laughter filled the air \u2014 in more ways than one. White’s thesis, “Women with Chutzpah,\u201d is about what makes us laugh, specifically \u201cthe subversive means of Jewish humor for Jewish women,\u201d says White, whose thesis looks at five female Jewish comedians: Sophie Tucker, Toby Fields, Gilda Radner, Ilana Glazer, and Tiffany Haddish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Phyllis
Fellow seniors and best friends Ilana Rosker of Lexington, Mass., left, and Lucie Green of Pittsburg, Penn., right, pose for a post-celebration picture with White, center. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a way for me to take what I love doing, which is making people laugh and using coping mechanisms of humor, and then seeing how that works in scholarly discourse,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her thesis adviser, Professor of Religious Studies Cynthia Baker, helped White stay on track and informed about the complex topics she was researching, \u201clike making sure that when I’m using the term ‘Jew,’ I’m aware of the hegemonic practices around it, making sure that I’m not perpetuating [stereotypes], and making sure the way I talk about Jews is inclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"students
Adding a non-alcoholic option \u2014 cola \u2014 to the celebration made the thesis binding more inclusive, said White Plus, “it’s my favorite drink, and it really helped me through making this thesis,” she laughs. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

White, who is minoring in Africana, says that understanding conceptualizations of race helped inform the focus of her thesis \u2014 in particular, how Judaism can be seen as simultaneously a racial, ethnic, cultural, or a religious identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA big part of my thesis was looking at the idea of making fun of identity, and how humor is different if it’s your identity than someone else’s,\u201d says White. The women in White’s thesis used humor to “reclaim Jewish pride in a Jewish body through Jewish women. But when other people are saying or using stereotypes [about Jews], it holds a very different impact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting on her thesis experience and the binding ritual, White might’ve summed up what Bates often means to seniors heading down the home stretch. “Funny and enjoyable \u2014 and also kind of empowering and important to myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hugs were had, congratulations traded, and champagne and cola shaken and opened. Another edition of a sweet Bates ritual, melding academics, friendship, and community, neared its end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1422,"featured_media":150616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":150614,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":"summary_large_image"},"categories":[4,224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-society-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150584"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168995,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150584\/revisions\/168995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}