Senior Honors Thesis Program
Is the Senior Honors Thesis for you?
Preparing for the Honors Thesis
How to Apply
Research Funds for Honors Students
Previous Students and Thesis Topics
Click here to read an April 2004 Duke Dialogue article on the senior honors seminar.
Senior Honors Program Director: Professor John
French
Phone: (919) 684-2536
Office: 223 Carr Building
Email: jdfrench@duke.edu
Lasting for the entire academic year, two sections of the Senior Thesis Seminar (History 197S/198S) offer senior history majors the opportunity to produce a Senior Thesis, representing an original contribution to historical knowledge. Seminar students choose their own thesis topics. Under the supervision of individual advisors--usually members of the History faculty--and the Seminar Leaders, Raymond Gavins, and another faculty member, students engage in research and writing about their topics. Most Seminar meetings devote themselves to students presenting research and writing in progress. Seminar students thus work to become a community of scholars, providing vigorous criticism and mutual support for each other's work.
The high critical standards, recurrent scrutiny, and accelerated pace of the seminar encourage the clear conceptualization, intensive original research, and lucid writing that distinguish successful theses, which can earn the graduating senior Distinction in the Major. A Senior Thesis of particularly high quality, as judged by a committee of History Faculty, will receive the William T. Laprade Prize(sometimes shared by two students). Students winning the Laprade prize automatically graduate with highest distinction in the major. The Honors Committee may also grant, as it deems appropriate, highest distinction and/or high distinction to other students whose theses have been accepted.
Enrollment in the seminars are limited to motivated and qualified students who must receive the permission of the Seminar Leaders in order to enroll. History majors normally apply for membership early in the spring of their junior year. It is thus important that interested students begin to plan for the Thesis Seminar early. Such students are strongly encouraged to gain experience in research and writing, as well as general background for their topics, before their senior year. Students can gain such experience and knowledge from enrolling in a relevant 100-level seminar before their senior year.
Those accepted into the Thesis Seminar ordinarily take both the Seminar and an appropriate 195S/196S, 200-level course, or Independent Study with their thesis advisors. Students not accepted into the seminar may pursue a thesis through independent study with a faculty member.