English Honors
Applications for the 2025-2026
English Honors Cohort will Open in Spring 2025
tentative application deadline: Friday, February 28th at 5:00pm
The English Honors Program provides an opportunity for our best and brightest English majors to engage in advanced research in a supportive community of undergraduate peers. The program is designed for students who
- plan to pursue a graduate degree in a variety of fields, including literature, writing, rhetoric, communication, library studies, and law.
- want to quantify their research skills and demonstrate research proficiency to future employers.
- want to develop problem-solving, critical thinking, and analytical skills that will enable them to excel in their chosen career field or field of study.
English Honors Eligibility
Course & Credit Eligibility: To be eligible, by the end of Spring 2025, applicants should have
- completed at least 60 credits towards their B.A. degree and 15 1 credits towards the English Major
- completed or be enrolled in ENG 3822: Introduction to Literary Studies OR LIT 3213: Literary Theory / PHI 3882: Philosophy of Literature 2
GPA Eligibility: 3 Applicants should have a GPA 4 of 3.0 and a GPA in the English Major of 3.5 or higher.
1. The English Undergraduate Committee may consider excellent students with fewer than 15 credits in the major and/or 60 credits towards their B.A. degree.
2. Students who have not yet taken ENG 3822 or LIT 3213 / PHI 3882 can petition to take either concurrently with Honors Seminar; approval will be granted at the discretion of the English Undergraduate Committee.
3. The English Undergraduate Committee may consider excellent students who do not yet meet GPA threshold(s).
4. Students can use either their institutional GPA or overall GPA.
Honors Courses
The English Honors Program entails taking two related courses (3 credits each), taken in the fall and spring and completing an Honors thesis between 20-30 pages.
ENG 4932: Honors Seminar
▪ 3 credits; fall
Prerequisites or corequisites: ENG 3822 and LIT 3213 / PHI 3882
Honors Seminar is required for honors students but open to those interested in more advanced literary study. This course allows students to synthesize the literary knowledge and critical skills gained in the English major. The seminar is more intensive and interactive than the Department's other courses and will be organized in ways that anticipate graduate-level courses. The seminar is offered every fall and topics change yearly. (ENG 4932 can be counted as either Category I or II in Fall 2025.)
ENG 4910: Honors Research (RI)
▪ 3 credits; spring
Prerequisites: ENG 4932; honors only; department permission required
This Research Intensive (RI) course facilitates completion of the honors thesis—a 20 page project (double-spaced) that makes a contribution to the discipline. Honors Research will expose students to the standards and best practices of research-level literary scholarship while also preparing the ground for the students' intended research topics. The course may include library research visits, presentations on different research and analytical methodologies, and peer editing workshops. At the end of spring semester, students will present their theses at an Honors Research course event or the Undergraduate Research Symposium. Honors Research is offered once each spring.
Fulfillment & Honors Designation
On satisfactory completion of the requirements below, at graduation, students will receive the designation "Honors in English" on their transcripts. At their graduation ceremony, honors students and may wear an FAU silver/white/blue double cord in recognition of their academic achievement and honors status.
- Fulfillment of all normal field distribution requirements for the English major.
- Completion, with a grade of "B" or higher, of Honors Seminar and of Honors Research.
- Achievement of an overall GPA of at least 3.0 and a GPA of at least 3.5 in all English courses at the time of graduation.
- Completion of a thesis of substance and quality that meets with the approval of the course instructor and/or thesis director.
Students in the Honors Track in English who complete all requirements, but who do not meet the GPA requirements for honors at the time of graduation, will receive credit for all work completed, but will not be certified as having received honors. Students who engage in academic dishonesty will be dismissed from the Honors program and face additional penalties from the university.
2025-2026 English Honors Program Application
For more information please contact Prof. Regis Fox at mannr@touchmediahk.com.
Students & Projects
2024 ENGLISH HONORS PROGRAM
Leslie Rose Chacon
| The Religious Satire and Commentary of Brave New World
Dakota Darwin
| Sonic Futures: Janelle Monáe’s Afrofuturistic Soundscapes of Queer Liberation
Idrissa Dial
| Comparative Analysis on Which Challenger of H.P. Lovecraft and Author of Speculative Fiction Was Most Effective in Their Work: Victor LaValle, Matt Ruff, or Misha Green?
Alexander Esquen
| Sensing A Connection: Examining Rhetoric in Don't Shake The Spoon
Maria Fair
| There Are Much Worse Games to Play: The Consequences of Violence Within The Hunger Games
Arwen Paredes
| “Something to Care For”: Empathetic Gameplay and Representations of Trauma in Baldur’s Gate 3
Sara Pierson
| An Analysis of the Problematic Consistency of Labor Estrangement and Structural Inequalities Within Dystopian Literary Fiction
Ren Shamburger
| Giving Our Kids Goosebumps: How Popular Children’s Horror Shows Us the Value of Scary Stories
Pamela Smith
| The Fantastic: Harry Potter and the Morals of Christianity
Sasha Switz
| So This is Love?: The Postfeminist Popular Romance of Ali Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis
2023 ENGLISH HONORS PROGRAM
Vanessa Allen
| The Fallacy of Postcoloniality: How Globalization is the Neo-Manifestation of Colonialism in the Caribbean
Arianna Nicole Bartolone
| A Science Fiction and Dystopian Fantasy Have Reinforced Societal and Historical Stereotypes of the Feminine Role and 21st Century Novels Seek to Reconstruct Women's Assertion in These Genres
Ryan Dakin
| What Year Is It?
Madeline Keitel | Jane Austen Wrote in Breeches not Petticoats
Rachel Long
| It’s Not Really Orwellian
Taylor Pack
| There’s No Place Like Home: The Importance of Intersectionality for Black and Brown Lesbians
Gianni Ramirez
| The Graphic Novel and Its Reimagining of Complex Personal Narratives
Shiloh Romero
| The Queer Experience: A Critical Commentary on the Effects of the Heteropatriarchy on LGBTQ+ Main Characters in Coming-of-Age Novels
Elizabeth Searles
| Passing as a Double-Edged Sword: Safety and Threat Through Loss of Community
Tiffany Whisler
| Indigenous Knowledge Today
2022 ENGLISH HONORS PROGRAM
Darlene Antoine | Deconstructing Settler Colonial Ideology in Popular Culture through Indigenous Voices
Brooke Bailey | Madwomen Tell No Tales: The Feminine Neurotic as a Reclamation of Power and Complexity in the Era of the “Batshit Bitch"
Autumn Bryan | Escaping Spectacle through Animal’s Eyes and Approaching Activism: Victims of Violent Voyeurism in “Literary Humanitarianism"
Kayla Connors | Finding Joy in Destruction: Liberation from Petroculture
Nyla Hussain | Post-industrial Environmental and Community Health Devastation Caused by Oil and Chemical Producing Factories Owned by Large Global Energy Companies
Isabella Marin | Magic as Resistance: Extractive Stories and Indigenous Visions in Colombian Oil Encounters
Gabrielle Rodriguez | Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss: A Transhistorical Analysis of Lady Macbeth’s Online Representations
Nicole Rogers | A Neurodivergent Approach to James Joyce: Reimagining the Character of Stephen Dedalus
Cameron Suh | Breaking the Chain: The Toxic Influence of Nostalgia in Apocalypse Fiction
2021 ENGLISH HONORS PROGRAM
Sarah Bagnall | Case Studies in Translation and Translatory Ethics won first prize in their group of presenters
Maegan Barber
| The Transformation of Negative into Positive: Black Creativity and the Complicated Space it Creates presented
Talia Magielnicki | Politics and Poetics: A Comparative History of the Social-Political Spectrum of Literary Censorship
Tristan Sheridan
| You Don’t Get a Choice:’ Fallen Hero: Rebirth and Unsettling Expectations of Agency in Interactive Fiction first prize in their group, also now finalizing a version for publication in FAU’s undergraduate research journal
Maiya Xirinachs
| Playing with Old Norse: Early Nordic Medievalism and White Supremacy in the Gaming Industry second prize in their group
2020 ENGLISH HONORS PROGRAM
Ariana T. Anderson | Pacific Island Literature: Understanding the Genre
Erika Blankman | Irish Landscapes of Traumas, Ghosts, and Fate: Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and J. M. Synge’s The Aran Islands
Maycee Forester | The Process of Death Eating in Literature with Real World Applications
Jessenia Hernandez | Prophet Instead of Priest: The Transition from Oppressive Religious Upbringing to Liberating Spiritual Possibility in Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges are not the Only Fruit
Amanda Peebles | The Dystopia of Women’s Natural Bodies: How Post-Apocalyptic Patriarchy Uses Religion to Control Women and Nature in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road
Amanda Serano | The Fairer Sex: False Empowerment and Game of Thrones
Asuka Takahashi | Magic as Strength: Witchcraft in Pop Culture and Women’s Empowerment
2019 ENGLISH HONORS PROGRAM
Madeline Elizabeth Garcia | Ecological Mutations, Compound Organisms, and Intelligent Life in Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation
Morgan Hunn
| Mythic Unity: Challenging the Violence of the Human/Non-Human Binary through Mythologically-Inspired Literature
Rebecca Nicole Montana | “A Child Weaned on Poison”: Surviving Madness, Motherhood, and Munchausen’s in Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects
Shaimaa Quadr | De-Formed Personhood: Traces of the Impersonal in Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Brontë’s Villette
Charlie Richards | “The Beautiful Flower Bed Beyond the City Wall”: Nature, the Garden, and the Botanical Other in E.T.A. Hoffmann
Franco Smigliani | Violence in Watching: Exploring Social Media’s Narrative Perspective, Representation, and Narcissism through Jeffery Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides
Tully Turk
| Man’s Clones: Anthropomorphosis Understood through Pope’s Essay on Man and Ginsberg’s “Howl”
Ellie Vilakazi
| Intermediating Politics through Subjectivity in Tlhabi’s Khwezi: The Remarkable Story of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo
English Honors Class of 2019