THESIS SUPERVISIONS

Theses supervised at the University of Fribourg

B.A. Theses since 2007 (and comprehensive oral exams, beginning 2017)

  1. Mathilde Waeber, “Blackness and / as Social Construction in Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen,” BA 2007
  2. Eric Miller, “Scarlett and Blanche: An Evolution of the Southern Belle,” BA 2007
  3. Ivana Plechaty, “Carl Gustav Jung in Saul Bellow’s Herzog and Henderson the Rain King, BA 2007
  4. Maribel Bueno, “Anishinaabe Spirituality in Louise Erdrich’s Works,” BA 2008
  5. Martin Häsler, “To Alter Destiny–an Irresolvable Quest [Kurt Vonnegut],” BA 2008
  6. Francesca Sartore, “Cities and Sewers in Baudelaire and Eliot,” BA 2008
  7. Alexis Wilson, “Literary Characteristics of American Contemporary Comic Books,” BA 2008
  8. Santiago Cruz Petersen, “Form and Effect of Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself,’” BA 2009
  9. Cinzia Minervini Jordan, “Riding Towards Freedom: Moral Responsibility in the Work of Arthur Miller,” BA 2009
  10. Emmanuelle Bourguet, “Hopelessness in the Plays of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams,” BA 2009
  11. Karine Antille, “Patriarchy, Women’s solidarity and their impact on inter-sexual relationships in Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place and The Men of Brewster Place,” BA 2009 (supervised by Dr. Weik von Mossner)
  12. Pierre Defferrard, “Childhood in the Deep South: Influence of family, friends and society on Huck Finn, Scout Finch and Richard Wright,” BA 2010
  13. Niklas Fischer, “New Orleans vs. Chicago: Two Types of Carnival in Nelson Algren’s A Walk on the Wild Side and The Man With the Golden Arm,”BA 2010
  14. Dana Antonioli, “Violence in Bastard Out of Carolina, Coming of Age in Mississippi, and Desert Flower,” BA 2010
  15. Julia Bachmann, “Bebop influence on the conceptualisation of time in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road,” BA 2010 (supervised by Dr. Weik von Mossner)
  16. Åsa Semple, “Religious and Moral Decay in The Great Gatsby,” BA 2010 (supervised by Dr. Weik von Mossner)
  17. Thomas M. Meier, “Science and Entertainment in Contemporary Ecological Films,” BA 2010 (supervised by Dr. Weik von Mossner)
  18. Fabio Gramegna, “Madness in Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales: ‘The terror of the soul’,” BA 2010
  19. Jeremy Gremaud, “Edgar Allan Poe’s, Mark Twain’s and Ambrose Bierce’s Satire: The Effect of the Civil War on the ‘Ritualized Attack’ Against Society’s Ignorance,” BA 2011
  20. Christian Keist, “The Representation of History and Time in the Black Arts Movement’s Drama and the Influence of the Nation of Islam,” BA 2011
  21. Aurélie Morard, “‘Unsilencing’ the Outcast. From Postcolonial to Global Literature,” BA 2012
  22. Nora Studer, “Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye: The reciprocal influence of the protagonists’ disorder/disease and their estrangement,” BA 2012
  23. Veronica Sergi, “How do unreliable narrators contribute to the reader’s aesthetic awareness?,” BA 2013
  24. Jessica Saillen, “The survival of American Indian traditions in James Welch’s Fools Crow and Louise Erdrich’s The Bingo Palace,” BA 2013
  25. Nadja T. Camesi, “A Tough Guy–The Male Hero in Western and Hard-boiled fiction,” BA 2013
  26. Fanny Maendly, “Manhood Behind Bars: An Analysis of Malcolm X’s Autobiography and Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying,” BA 2013
  27. Anita Pervanic, “Joan Didion: Home of Words,” BA 2013
  28. Loïc Obertüfer, “Obsession and Madness in Narrating Wieland, Pym, and Ethan Frome,” BA 2013
  29. David Schwery, “Black Politicians and Their Speeches,” BA 2013
  30. Anne-Laure Boéchat, “Gender Determination in Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden,” BA 2013
  31. Patrick Puzdrowski, “Women in Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Stories,” BA 2014
  32. Preethy Alex, “Troy Maxson: An Interconnected Collective. A Lacanian Analysis of August Wilson’s Fences,” BA 2014
  33. Nathalia Schweizer, “Postwar Youth in J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey and The Catcher in the Rye,” BA 2014
  34. Valentin Bruegger, “American Expatriate Writing: Framing the Paris Moment,” BA 2014
  35. Mélanie Balet, “Aspects of the Gothic in Horace Walpole, Charles Brockden Brown, and Edgar Allan Poe,” BA 2015
  36. Zita Buess-Watson, ” Native Americans in Western Literature and Art,” BA 2015
  37. Charlène Minster, “Catherine in The Garden of Eden: An Analysis Applying Feminist Criticism and Psychoanalytical Criticism,” BA 2015
  38. Mélanie Voyame, “A Structuralist Analysis of Three Detective Novels,” BA 2015
  39. Michèle Cirelli, “Justice and Power in Young Adult Fiction: An Analysis of The Giver, The Hunger Games, and To Kill a Mockingbird,” BA 2015
  40. Diana Helfer, “ Crying for a Vision: The Lives and Visions of Margery Kempe and Black Elk,” BA 2015 (co-supervised with Prof. Elisabeth Dutton)
  41. Aurélie Zurbrügg, “Whitman’s ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’ and Crane’s The Bridge: A Journey Into a New Era,” BA 2015
  42. Lorenzo Ghiggia, “A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ernest Hemingway’s War Novels Seen through the Eyes of Two Soldiers in Love,” BA 2016
  43. Clelia Alberici, “The Female Character in Young Adult Novels,” BA 2016
  44. Fabienne Eberhard, “Thornton Wilder beyond Our Town,” BA 2017
  45. Celine Scheidegger, “Nature in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and The Blithedale Romance,” BA 2017
  46. Amélia Godel, “Women Characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Works,” BA 2017
  47. Arusa Chughtai,“On Hybridity: The Millennial Muslim,” BA 2017
  48. Marie Gaspoz, “African American Women’s Self-actualization Within the Black Community,” BA 2017
  49. Patricia Machado Soares, “Imperfections Beneath Suburban Life: A close reading of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit and Revolutionary Road,” BA 2017
  50. Baptiste Arnoux, “The Experience of Expatriation and its Consequences on Personality in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast,” BA 2017
  51. Noella Tinguely, “The Impact of Domestic Ideologies on the Slave Mother’s Self-Identity in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave-Girl (1861) and Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987),” BA 2017
  52. Kathrin Schütz, “Who am I? – Loss of Control and Personal Space Through the Environment in Dystopian Fiction,”BA 2017
  53. Samuele Ramelli, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2017
  54. Méline Murisier, “Between Dystopia and Uchronia: A Shift in Reality.  Perspectives on the Totalitarian State in Three American Novels,” BA 2017
  55. Justine Salvadori, “John Fante and the Italian-American Myth of Assimilation in Wait Until Spring, Bandini; The Brotherhood of the Grape and West of Rome,”BA 2017
  56. Olivia Stettler, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2017
  57. Kevin Maillard, “Frederick Douglass – The Self-Taught Slave Who Became an Accomplished Writer,” BA 2017
  58. Laura Muehlebach, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2017
  59. Leandra Hörler, “Truth and Lying in Four Plays by Arthur Miller,” BA 2018
  60. Anna Borella, “The American Justice System on Trial: Confronting the Role of Race and Class,” BA 2018
  61. Andrea Leu, “Violence and Identity in Native American Literature: Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda and Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer,” BA 2018
  62. Anna Vestermark Caccia, “Displaced and Misplaced: Cultural Syncretism and Plural Identities in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck,” BA 2018
  63. Elsa Berset, “The Madman as Hero in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road,” BA 2018
  64. Fabienne Widmer, “Constructed Masculinity in Junot Diaz’s ‘The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma,’ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This Is How You Lose Her,” BA 2018
  65. Julie Beytrison, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2018
  66. Patrick de Azevedo, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019
  67. Sanida Meša, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019
  68. Jessica Turpin, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019
  69. Mylène Schuwey, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019
  70. Claudia Jenrich, “Depression in Recent Young Adult Novels: The Memory of Light and All the Bright Places,“ BA 2019
  71. Martina Piffaretti, “Abuse and Objectification of African American Women in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself and The Color Purple,” BA 2019
  72. Jeannette Widmer,Comprehensive Oral Exam,BA 2019
  73. Talena Zbinden, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019
  74. Zofia Brunner, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2019
  75. Blerina Hoti, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  76. Maria Martinovic, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  77. Barbara Rossi, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  78. Vanessa d’Antino, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  79. Andrea Lehmann, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  80. Blerina Abdula, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  81. Justine Dubail, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  82. Elisa Zaccaria, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  83. Katja Andlauer, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  84. Madeleine Antille, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  85. Océane Page, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  86. Lisa Dusina,“Hawthorne, Baum, and Miller: Witchcraft and Utopia in Selected American Texts,” BA 2020
  87. Léa Ducrest, “How can a black immigrant woman feel equally at home in two different places?,“ BA 2020
  88. Antonio Pedro Fangueiro Pires, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  89. Benedita Lucau, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  90. Myriam Miraoui, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  91. Anna Tedeschi, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2020
  92. Noemie Jeannet, “Social justice and capitalism in literature:  The Grapes of Wrath and The Jungle,” BA 2021
  93. Yanik Brawand, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021
  94. Damien Elsig, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021
  95. Celia Arnold, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021
  96. Alina Müller, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021
  97. Sophie Jacquier, “Controlling Sex, Reproduction and Motherhood in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Sheri S. Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country and Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God,” BA 2021
  98. Sofia Vassere, “The Oxygen Man” as a Double Bildungsroman,” BA 2021
  99. Jeremy Wright, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021
  100. Gioja Weibel, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021
  101. Maurizio Vannetti, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2021
  102. Francisca Domingues dos Santos (advised by Aurélie Zurbrügg), ” Creating Identity: Jazz Features in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Toni Morrison’s Jazz,” BA  2021
  103. Noemi Aebli (advised by Aurélie Zurbrügg), “Social and Hierarchical Structures in American Alternate Histories. An Analysis of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle and Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America,” BA 2021
  104. Joanne Waeber, “The Art of Immersive Storytelling in Taylor Swift and F. Scott Fitzgerald,” BA 2021
  105. Hervé Pollet, “Edith Wharton’s Critique of New York High Society in The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence: Fashion, Gender Roles, and Money in the Gilded Age,” BA 2022
  106. Marine Bussard, “The Representation of Hurricanes Okeechobee and Katrina in Literature,” BA 2022
  107. Emma de Reyff, “Examining the Challenges to Black Femininity in Nella Larsen’s Passing and Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun,” BA 2022
  108. Giosuè Rocco Antorini, “Space and Place in Contemporary Mexican Immigration Novels: a Literary-Geographical Analysis of Signs Preceding the End of the World and American Dirt,” BA 2023
  109. Inès Baltic, “Identity of California Women in Joan Didion’s Fiction. An analysis of female characters in Run River and Play It as It Lays,” BA 2023
  110. Muriel Amstutz, “Police Brutality and Systemic Racism against African Americans in American Literature,” BA 2023
  111. Julie Pfammatter, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2024 
  112. Pauline Allemann, “Women in Dystopias: Power, Reproduction and Resistance in The Power by Naomi Alderman and Red Clocks by Leni Zumas,” BA 2025
  113. Aileen Sankaynagi, “Post-colonial? The US government’s continuous efforts to inhibit Native American self-determination in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks (1988) and The Round House (2013),” BA 2025
  114. Yves-André Mabillard, Comprehensive Oral Exam, BA 2025 
  115. Ines Faria Gonçalves, “‘Light of his life, fire of his loins’: Dolores Haze in Lana Del Rey’s Born To Die,” BA 2025
  116. Elisa Terminio, “Soul and Struggle: The Rhetoric of Aretha Franklin’s Lyrics in the Historical Context of the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements,” BA 2025 
  117. Anja Baggio, “Words of Fire and Hope. Exploring Christian Poetry and Preaching in America,” BA 2025 
  118. Amira Khali, “‘Riding more than bulls’: The archetypal (homo)sexuality of the Cowboy in Annie Proulx’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’,” BA 2025

M.A. Theses & License Mémoires

  1. Sina Lenherr, “Back to the Reservation: Three Male Character in their Search for Identity in Selected Novels by Louise Erdrich,” License 2007
  2. Lenka Curdova, “The Family Conflict: Three Plays of Eugene O’Neill,” License 2008
  3. [external advisor] Anne Jobin [Université de Neuchâtel], “Shifting Identities: Mixedbloods in Native American Literature,” License 2008
  4. Helen Walker, “The Inescapable Past: Form, Family and Denial in Arthur Miller’s Plays All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Price,” MA 2008
  5. Sabine-Anna Marro, “Two Turn-of-the-Century California Novels: María Amparo Ruíz de Burton’s The Squatter and the Don and Frank Norris’s The Octopus — ‘Novels with a Purpose’?,” MA 2008. Recipient of the 2008 SANAS Teaching Travel Award.
  6. Naomi Hasler, “The Portrait of a New Woman? How Margaret Fuller’s political ideology and Henry James’s fictional reality clash,” MA 2008. Winner of the Prize for Equality and Gender Research of the University of Fribourg 2010.
  7. Julie Hoogewoud, “Beyond Minimalism: Silence as Narrative Strategy in the Fiction of Raymond Carver,” MA 2009
  8. Laura Tschanz, “The Importance of Knowing One’s Past in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Tar Baby,” MA 2009
  9. Mauro Ciresa, “Investigation in Edgar Allan Poe’s Detective Tales,” MA 2009
  10. Eric Miller, “Adams and Jefferson: True Friends or Friendly Foes?” MA 2009
  11. Mélanie Baillifard, “Literary Responses to Indian Policies from 1800 to 1840. From Poetical Justification to Real Protest,” MA 2009
  12. Stefania Russo, ” The Poetry of Phillis Wheatley as the Anti-Slavery Campaign of  a Black Woman in Revolutionary America ,” MA 2010
  13. Roberta Vaghi, “Magical Realism in Selected Novels by Toni Morrison,” MA 2010
  14. Elisa Burri Monnard, “Women’s Lives in Essays and Stories in Godey’s Lady’s Magazine,” MA 2010
  15. Mathilde Waeber, “American Indian Cultural Identity and the Search for Affection in James Welch’s Winter in the Blood and The Death of Jim Loney and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony,” MA 2010
  16. Francesca Massei, “Women in the Gothic Narratives of Matthew G. Lewis and Charles Brockden Brown,” License 2010
  17. Luzia Wicki, “Shockingly Wealthy: The High as a Way of Life,” License 2010
  18. Ola Madhour, “Degeneration and the ‘Lost America” in Henry James’s Roderick Hudson and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises,” MA 2011
  19. Alexis Wilson, “Magic in Chicano Magical Realism,” MA 2011
  20. Claudia Furrer, “Sociolinguistic Concepts and Literary Analysis: The Outsider Protagonist in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood and John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces,” MA 2011
  21. Julia Bachmann, “F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Jelly-bean,’ Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and all that Jazz,” MA 2012
  22. Emmanuelle Bourguet, “Courageous Souls: The Portrayal of Women in Chopin’s The Awakening and Wharton’s Summer,” MA 2012. Recipient of the 2012 SANAS Teaching Travel Award.
  23. Jeremy Gremaud, “Canadian, Female and Individual Identities in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye and Alias Grace,” MA 2012
  24. Carine Maffli, “The Legacy of Satan: A Reading of Melville’s Ahab in the Light of Milton’s Satan, MA 2012
  25. Cinzia Minervini Jordan, “Being and Becoming: A Reading of Arthur Miller’s Focus and The Crucible in the Light of Giorgio Agamben,” MA 2012
  26. Ryan Kopaitich, “Narrating Postmodernism: A Study of Two Postmodern Novels,” MA Comparative Literature 2012
  27. Andrea Meier, “Marginal Communities and Ethnic Conflicts in Selected Novels by Louise Erdrich and Toni Morrison,” MA 2012
  28. Lawrence Faulstich, “War as a Prism of 20th-century American Identity,” MA 2013
  29. Nathalie Codina, “Emily Dickinson’s Poetics and Weltanschauung,” MA 2014
  30. Jessica Meier, “Ecofeminism and Dualisms in Terry Tempest Williams,” MA 2014
  31. Céline Sidler, “The American Dream’s Mythology in Three Immigrant Women’s Novels,” MA 2014
  32. Rekik Scholler-Mekonnen, “Speculative Encounters: Negotiating Survival and Kinship in Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Dawn,” MA 2014
  33. Alain Wider, “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hybrid Poet,” MA 2014
  34. Robert Zenhäusern, “The Conversion Paradox: New World Christianity and African Spirituality in Selected Slave and Neo-Slave Narratives,” MA 2014
  35. Biljana Vuchovska, “The Value of Green Visions: Environmental Philosophy in Walden, Ecotopia and The Word for World is Forest,” MA 2014
  36. Åsa Semple,“From Abasement to Strength: Gender Identity in Toni Morrison’s Sula and Paradise,” MA 2014
  37. Sibylle Lüthi, “Representational Affirmation: Examining Sherman Alexie’s Struggles with the Language of Authenticity,” MA 2015
  38. Valeria Cruz Petersen Rast, “‘A wild night and a new road’: From Death to Poetics in  Emily Dickinson’s Poetry,” MA 2015
  39. James Violette, “The Judge and the Boy: Violence and Holiness in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and The Road,” MA 2015
  40. Fanny Maendly, “Female Protagonists in Slave and Neo-Slave Narratives: Jacobs, Williams, and Butler,” MA 2015
  41. Anne-Laure Boéchat, “Land, Gender, and Ethnicity in Willa Cather’s Characters,” MA 2015
  42. Patrizia Zanella, “‘universal mirrors that are my eyes’: The Gaze in Louise Erdrich,” MA 2015
  43. Olivia Oberson, “The Challenges of Nonconformity: Communities in Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs, Chopin’s The Awakening, and Wharton’s The House of Mirth,” MA 2015
  44. Maria Teresa Delgado, “Switzerland as an In-Between State in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and Selected Short Stories,” MA 2015
  45. Jessica Saillen, “The Influence of Mixed-race Identity in American Literature Through Three Perspectives: Native American, African American and Hispanic,” MA 2015
  46. Tania Pannatier, “Double Consciousness. Mixed-race women characters in William Wells Brown, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, and Nella Larsen,” MA 2016
  47. Loïc Obertüfer, “Tennessee Williams’s Dramatic Development: The Magic Tower, The Purification, The Glass Menagerie & Suddenly Last Summer,” MA 2016
  48. Edith Carron, “Lily Bart and Gertrude Stein: Contrasting Two Modernist Performances,” MA 2016
  49. Preethy Alex, “The Third Continent — the Domestic Space of Malayali Americans and Bengali Americans in the United States,” MA 2016
  50. Andrew Niemann, “Finding Meaning in the Everyday: Understanding Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine through William James,” MA 2016
  51. Anita Pervanic, “‘layers of violence and tenderness wrapped like bulbs’: The Southern Grotesque and Ideal Femininity in the Fiction of Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers,” MA 2016
  52. Simon Weisskopf, “Bob Dylan. The Poet Who Aged in Public,” MA 2016
  53. Patricia Fux, “Demystifying the Lost Generation: A Collection of Data,” MA 2016
  54. Sabie Zenku Baftiri, “Ambiguous Mother(hood) in Sylvia Plath’s Poetry and Prose,” MA 2017
  55. Sharon Reidy Miller, “Is Eleanor Roosevelt’s Portrayal of Women Both Honest and Truthful?”, MA 2017
  56. Melis Öner, “‘You’re Not the Indian I Had in Mind’: Self-Representation versus Stereotypes in Sherman Alexie and Thomas King,” MA 2017
  57. Alicia Szüts, “Women and the Holocaust: A Double Victimization,” MA 2017
  58. Noémie Fragnière, “Struggling Female Artists in Selected Novels by Louisa May Alcott, Kate Chopin and Willa Cather,” MA 2017
  59. Nathalia Schweizer, “Female Authenticity in American Literary Naturalism,” MA 2017
  60. Michèle Cirelli, “Contrasting Critical Approaches to Wharton, Fitzgerald and Dos Passos,” MA 2017
  61. Célia Germanier, “The Blues as Musical Legacy of African-American History,” MA 2017¨
  62. Cynthia Staehlin, “Representing Terrorism in Hersey’s Hiroshima, DeLillo’s Falling Man and Updike’s Terrorist,” MA 2017
  63. Mirella Arimondi, “Power and Behavior in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Butler’s Kindred and Eggers’s The Circle,” MA 2017
  64. Aurélie Zurbrügg, “‘I just wanted to go home’: Toni Morrison’s Quest For the Ideal Home in Her Fiction,” MA 2017
  65. Elisa Pagliaro, “‘I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do’:  James Baldwin’s Phenomenological Ethics,” MA 2018
  66. Marie Budon, “Journey into the Dark: Emily Dickinson’s Gothic Imagination,” MA 2018
  67. Valentin Brügger, “Vanishing Points: Escape and Separation in the Early Works of Jane & Paul Bowles,” MA 2019
  68. Michelle Riedberg, “Authentic Depiction or Wishful Projection: Children in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Alcott’s Little Women,” MA 2019
  69. Samuele Ramelli, “A Mirroring of Mankind’s Fears Through American Dystopian Literature,” MA 2019
  70. Amélia Godel, “’This life is a life of vicissitude’: Nineteenth-century American Women’s Letters, Between Duty and Disillusionment,” MA 2019
  71. Marie Gaspoz, “’I am a stranger to myself and a stranger now in this strange land.’ The Immigrant Experience in the United States Through Three Contemporary Narratives,” MA 2019
  72. Nora Rickli, “‘To See What Is. … Possible.’  Reproductive Freedom in Contemporary Speculative Fiction,” MA 2019
  73. Camille Merkofer, “Living the Ideal Life in American Suburbs and German Dörfer:  An Analysis of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, Juli Zeh’s Unterleuten, and Arno Camenisch’s Ustrinkata,” MA 2019
  74. Christopher Bignasca, “Bob Dylan: The Leader Who Did Not Want to Be Followed,” MA 2019
  75. Fabienne Eberhard, “Changing the Rules of the Game: A Literary Investigation of Social Systems of Oppression From Slavery to Mass Incarceration,” MA 2020
  76. Anna Caccia, “‘Two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings’: Blackness and Americanness in Contemporary African American Memoirs,” MA 2020
  77. Jonathan Modesti, “Wronged and Oppressed Identities: Abuse and its Effects on Women Characters in Stephen King’s Carrie, Gerald’s Game, and Big Driver,” MA 2020
  78. Anna Borella, “Making a Movement: Pathos and Social Justice in Novels by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Chesnutt,” MA 2020
  79. Céline Scheidegger, “Performing Personalities: Women on View in Selected Novels by Wharton, Cather, Yezierska and Larsen,” MA 2020
  80. Valentina Prati, “Social Justices Debates in Chicana Literature: Castillo, Chávez and Cisneros Reinterpreting Anzaldúa,” MA 2020
  81. Laura Carnal, “A Century of African American Identity: Wallace Thurman, Lorraine Hansberry, Danzy Senna & Ta-Nehisi Coates,” MA 2020
  82. Milena Calcagni, “Advancing Socialism through Literary Advocacy in the United States: Engagement and Failure,” MA 2020
  83. Simon Metry, “‘Who shall say where the one ends, and the where the other begins?’ Plagiarism and Literary Influence around Edgar Allan Poe,” MA 2020
  84. Noëmi Werthmüller, “The power of orality and literacy in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novels The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments,” MA 2021
  85. Prisca Genilloud, “Immigration in the United States: A Comparison of Immigrants’ Experiences in The Jungle, My Ántonia, Hunger of Memory and Jasmine,” MA 2021
  86. Isabella Bianchi, “Maya Angelou the Womanist, or How a Phenomenal Woman Comes into Being,” MA 2021
  87. Alida Savio, “The Representation of Black Women in Contemporary Literature,” MA 2021
  88. Simona Suardi, “The Good in the Bad: Dysfunctional Families in American Literature. Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle (2005) and Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime (2016),” MA 2021
  89. Matthias Calderari, “Living on the Hyphen: Biculturalism and Latinidad in Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rican (1994) and Almost a Woman (1999), Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) and Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban (1992),” MA 2021
  90. Patrick Correia de Azevedo, “Masculinity, Race, and Queerness in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Plays,” MA 2021 
  91. Andrea Leu Escobar, “Travel Literature, The Other and Patagonia. An Analysis of Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia, Paul Theroux’s The Old Patagonia Express, Luis Sepúlveda’s Patagonia Express and Mempo Giardinelli’s Final de Novela en Patagonia,” MA 2022
  92. Elsa Berset, “Narratives of Moral Uncertainty: Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim and Toni Morrison’s Beloved,” MA 2022
  93. Jeannette Widmer, “Feminism and Afropolitanism in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah,” MA 2022
  94. Vanessa d’Antino, “Invisibility, Blackness and Whiteness in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, MA 2022
  95. Justine Dubail, “Misogyny and the Myth of Masculinity: Portrayal of Women in Hip Hop Lyrics,” MA 2023
  96. Svetlana Nikolic, “Identity Issues in the Theatre of David Henry Hwang,” MA 2023
  97. Maéva Uldry, “Orphan Girls in Early Twentieth-Century Children’s Fiction. A comparative analysis of Alice Hegan Rice’s Lovey Mary (1903), Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908) and Alice B. Emerson’s Ruth Fielding at Sunrise Farm or What Became of the Raby Orphans (1915),” MA 2023
  98. Sophie Jacquier, “An Intersectional Approach of Mutual Unknowability and Orality Between Mother and Daughter in American Literature: Toni Morrison, Natasha Trethewey, Louise Erdrich and Amy Tan,” MA 2023
  99. Michèle Wermeille, “Impossible Choices and Muted Voices. Female Agency and Abortion in Four American Novels from 1917 to 2017,” MA 2023
  100. Celia Arnold, “Indigenous American Autobiographies by Women: How White Settler Culture and Indigenous American Culture Influenced the Genre,” MA 2023
  101. Aybüke Karabiyik, “The Indigiqueer Body as Glitch: Confronting Settler Heteropatriarchy in Billy-Ray Belcourt’s Poetry and Life Writing,” MA 2024
  102. Joanne Waeber, ”Syllable and Sound: Dickinson’s Distinctive Musical Voice and its Communicative Function,” MA 2024
  103. Olga Gottifredi, “How Does the New Woman Speak? A Gender-Based Analysis of Three American Dramatists,” MA 2024
  104. Samuel Kilchör, “The Illusion of the American Dream in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden: A Critique of Wealth, Identity, and Moral Conflict,” MA 2025
  105. Giosuè Antorini, “Swiss-Italian Immigration to California: Reconstructing Migrant Experiences Through Letters,” MA 2025
  106. Jeremy Wright, “Unsettling Feelings: The Sentimental Politics of Lydia Sigourney and Susan Cooper,” MA 2025
  107. Emma de Reyff, “More Than a Mother: A Reconsideration of Fin-de-siècle Womanhood in Edith Wharton’s Short Fiction,” MA 2025

Ph.D. Projects

Completed

Mariacristina Natalia Bertoli. The Mirror, the Cup and the Crystal. Iconic Implications of Disappearance and Representation in the American Tradition of Riddle Poetry.  (October 2012)

Martin Moling. “Shake, Rattle and Write”: Rock Music in American Fiction Writing, 1966-2011. (October 2013)

Ola Madhour. “Knowledge of Necessity”: Maternal Origins in Elizabeth Bishop’s Epistemological Quest. (June 2015)  

Patrizia Zanella. The Border-Crossing Fiction of Louise Erdrich, James Welch, Tomson Highway, and Thomas King. Supported by a Doc.CH grant from the SNSF. (October 2019)

Mariam Taha. Literary Environmental Studies and the Representation of Urban Environments in Selected Novels. Co-tutelle with Cairo University, Egypt. (June 2022)

Aurélie Zurbrügg. The Message on the Wall. The Wall as a Medium in Public Art and Contemporary Fiction. (February 2023)

In Progress

Michèle Wermeille. “Between Creation and Control: The Depiction of Mothers and Motherhood in Feminist Speculative Fiction.”