Senior SOAN majors fulfill the integrative exercise by writing a senior thesis on a topic approved by the department. Students must enroll in six credits to write the thesis, spread as the student likes over Fall, Winter, and Spring terms.
We’re especially proud of our SOAN comps and enjoy advising our seniors as they each develop and explore their own research questions. Every year brings us topics from several continents that address questions of law, health, media, economics, ethnicity and much more.
Yumo Lu ’23 – Who am I?: Chinese Artists’ Search for Distinctive Identity in Post-Economic-Reform Artistic Field
Marte Borgmann ’23 – Labors of the Heart: Experiences of Refugee Resettlement Organization Workers
Naiya Karl ’23 – Hemp, Hemp, Hooray!: An Exploration of the Relationship and Impacts of Industrial Hemp Within Indigenous Communities
Nectaree Thao ’23 – “Our Food Actually Tells Where We’ve Gone, Where We Currently are, and Where We’re Going”: Exploring Foodways of Hmong Mekas (Hmong Americans) to Understand Identity
Aisha Dem ’23 – Navigating Space on The Cultural Spectrum: How Second Generation Gambians Form and Express Identity in Minnesota
Lily Horne ’23 – “Wonder is wonderful”: How Children Give Us License to See Nature Differently
Cristina Camarillo ’23 – Maintaining and Creating Relationships with Rural Homeland Communities: An Ethnographic Study of Regalitos Being Exchanged between México and Texas
Zoë Bonnell ’23 – From Gratitude to Grief: Conceptions of Identity and Belonging Among Chinese American Transracial Adoptees
Annabel Cohen ’23 – Keeping the Faith: Being Jewish in Officially Christian Academic Spheres
Jeremy Fong ’23 – A Shared Beginning: Understanding the Divide between Urban Planning and Urban Sociology
Joe Radinsky ’23 – Getting Off: Uses and Expectations of Pornography Among LGBTQ+ College Students
Jason Min ’23 – Modernity as a Moral Experience: Articulation of Mingyun in a Chinese County
Alicia Telle ’23 – Community Tourism in the Freedom Village: Discrepancies Within the Visions of a Community Tourism Project in Nzulezo, Ghana
Sophia Maag ’23 – Contesting Dualisms: Collective Effervescence and the Self in Ecstatic Dance