Any student who has maintained an overall GPA of 3.25 or higher is eligible to be considered for honors. Students who wish to receive honors must submit a bachelor's thesis. This paper is read by two members of the department and, if judged to be of superior quality, the student is recommended for graduation with honors. With the consent of the departmental adviser, honors students are required to enroll in at least two quarters of the Senior Thesis Tutorial (EALC 29500, 29600, 29700), typically autumn and winter.
2024
Christina Byun: North Korean Refugees Crossing Through China and Southeast Asia: Encounters With Christian Missionary Groups and Paradoxical Agency
Fione Tse: A Translation of Yun Yung by Yin Lo
Yike (Aaron) Huang: The Making of Courtly Opera: Vernacular Music Reforms in the Qianlong Court, 1736-1746
Zoë F. Osborn: Legal Reform During the Deng Era: An Analysis of Changes in Individuals’ Perception of Fundamental Rights
2023
Sophie Koock: “It Was All, Generally, Going to Hell”: The Affective Dimension of Instability in Three Rooms and “The One Hundred and First Resume and the First Commute"
Grace Lyons: Law and Politics of Chinese Art Repatriation
Astor Tam: "Men are trash!": Stand-up Comedy and Online Gender Wars in Contemporary China
Cassie Zhu: Translation of Lu YinYin’s “Bodhisattva”
2021
Mary Imperiale: Shifting the Subject: Global Discourse Formation Around the Comfort Women Issue
C. Aiko Johnston: Memorial Rites for Credit Cards: The Framing of Kuyō by Shrines and Temples in Japan
Shane Rooney: Modernizing the Peasant: The History of Rural Modernization in China
2020
Yufan Chen: Spectacular Surfaces: Lure, Transaction, and the Limits of Self-Representation
2019
Joseph Along: The Decline of South Korean International Undergraduate Presence in the United States
Grace Bologna: Political Dysfunction, Social Stigma, and Political Illiteracy: Falling Youth Voting Rates in Japan
Hayley Gray: Overlapping Meanings: Omamori in the Lives of Japanese Young People
Noa Solomon-Auger: Looking Through ‘Flower and Smoke’: Gendered Representation and Discourse of Opium Smoking in China
2018
Samuel Baureis: Ethical Failure in the Analects: Managing Desires Through Action
Gabrielle Dulys: How to Speak Like an Otaku: Otaku Identity Through the Lens of Self-Referentiality, Commodity, and Art.
2017
Nicolle Bertozzi: The Global Chajin: Evolving Traditions in the Japanese Tea Ceremony
Aliyah Bixby-Driesen: What’s New about New Baihua? Language Change and Indirect Contact in Chinese Vernacular Literature, 1790-1924
Celine Kwon: Shifting Landscapes of Labor: Female Entrepreneurship in Post-Mao China
Michelle Shang: “I Almost Forgot I Was A Girl”: Maoist Gender Politics and the Memory of Gender in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976
Andrew Wonjay Shin: The Changing Face of Fatherhood in Contemporary South Korea
2016
Rosaley Gai: Real and Ideal: Practicing Gendered Consumption in Contemporary Gurume Manga
Shauna Moore: Sore na!: Youth Politeness Strategies on Japanese Video Blogs
Jacqueline Oshiro: Aloha Pankêki: Changing Patterns in the Commodification of 'Hawaiiana' in Contemporary Japan
Hannah Rausch: Testing the Limits of Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China
Alina Scotti: Journal as Medium: Visual Language of Xiaoshuo yuebao (The Short Story Magazine), 1919-1921
2015
Keyao Pan, “Dissecting the East Asia Reparation Movement: a Case Study of the Unit 731 Germ Warfare Reparation Class Suit”
2014
Anna Gustafson
"Catching Meanings in Their Nets: Two New American Translations of the Dao De Jing"
Yasmine Krings
"The Futility of a Self-Made Identity: Sex and the Abject in Murakami Ryū's 'Tamago'"
Jeffrey Niedermaier
"I Shall Tell Both Home and Name: The Imperial Voice and the Yamato Political Imaginary in the Man'yōshū"
2013
Angela Sherman
"Exotically Familiar: Half-Korean Male Actors in Contemporary South Korean Television Drama"
2012
Steven Pelcovits
"Brave New Words: Borrowed Terms for Queer Conceptions of Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan"
Feiyang Sun
"Dreams within Dreams: Fiction Commentary and the Later Dream of the Red Chamber"
2011
Yini Shi
"Stories of the Stone: The Multiple Voices of Honglou Meng"
Dennell Reynolds
"Finding the Horizon: Tourism, Ethnicity, and Landscape in China's Shangri-La"
Arieh Smith
"Democrats or Dictators: The CCP in Western Eyes"
2010
Hannah Airriess
“Suffering as Resistance: Subjectivity, Genre, and the Female Body in Masamura Yasuzo's A Wife Confesses”
Bailey Pickens
“My Henro”
James Stand
“Peking, Duck! A Century of Modernization and Historical Preservation in the Old City of Beijing, 1911-2010”
2009
Michael Carbone
“Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Life: Hu Shih and John Dewey in China”
Camilia Dodik
“Eros and Resistance: Politicized Portrayals of Sexual Deviance in Two Post-War Japanese Works”
Kate Lipkowitz
“The Case of the Two Katherin Masfields: Ling Shuhua and Katherine Mansfield in China”
Dana Lutenegger
“China’s Galileo: The Criticism of Ma Yinchu and Factionalism in Chinese Politics”
Jillian Marshall
“In Search of Place: Colonial Korean and Taiwanese Identity Formation during Kominka’s National Language Movement and Military Volunteer Programs, 1937-1945”
Charlotte Sœsanto
"It's a Butoh-ful Life"
2008
Lauren Kocher
“Japanese Feminisms and the ‘Gender-Free’ Controversy”
David Pisano
“People and Emperor: Reform in the Japanese Imperial Household”
John Thompson
“Tears that Flutter and Fade: Emo, Authenticity, and the Market in Beijing”
2007
Mike Yong
“Beyond Fragmentation: Yokmitsu Riichi’s ‘The Machine’”
2006
Michael Monteleone
“Knocking from Within: Contemporary Social Unrest and its Consequences for a Stable China”
Marianne Tarcov
“Beautiful Shadows of Ugly Things: Translations of Kuroda Saburo”
2005
Adam Bronson
“Japanese Folklore Studies and History: Pre-War and Post-War Inflections”
Dan Cadwell
“Land of the Kami, Ruler of Realm”
Mehan Jayasuriya
“Overcoming Postmodernity: Commodity, Femininity and Subjectivity in the Literature of Haruki Murakami”
Juliane Jones
“Musical Chinoiserie: Turandot and the Assertion of Ambiguity”
Matt Jong
“The Philosophy of Psychology in Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s Naomi”
Pui Hoon Ong
“To Leave or Not to Leave, That’s Not the Question: An Examination of Ba Jin’s ‘Families’”
Julie Parks
“American Prostitutes in Colonial Shanghai: The American Girl Image and its Power”