Walk on the Wilde Side: Senior Thesis Ideas

As senior thesis season reaches its peak, buzz around the projects has similarly spiked. While this time is strenuous and rewarding for seniors, it is also a reminder (and maybe a warning) to Amherst juniors about what awaits them.

While there are many, many questions that plague the mind of a prospective thesis writer— How much will I have to research and write? Who will my advisor be? How should I present my findings? — this edition of Walk on the Wilde Side will do its best to ease perhaps the most pressing question: “What will I write my thesis about?” by offering some inspired ideas for the Amherst student population.

1. Saturdays Are for the Boys: The Creation of the Five-Day Work Week and its Effects on Industrial Capitalism

How did we go from the slogan, “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what you will” to Barstool Sports’ commodification of weekend leisure?

2. Fake it ’Til You Make It: A Study on the Phenomenon of the Female Orgasm and its Roots in People-Pleasing Behavioral Science

Perhaps you can relate … Amherst men am I right? (I’m a lesbian)

3. Snitches Get Stitches: The Development of Medical Anonymity

A historical and public health approach to explain why your therapist can’t gossip with you about their other patients.

4. When Life Gives You Lemons, Invest in Bitcoin: The Rise of Crypto and Its Impact on Global Currency Exchange

Perhaps it is time to drop the can-do approach to lemonade-making and tell our kids to start investing early.

5. Get Your Bread Up: Researching the Probiotic Effects of Yeast

Maybe you got really into bread making over the pandemic and just want an excuse to bake lots of sourdough in the name of “research.”

6. “No Ragrets”: The Psychology of Tattoos and Permanent Body Modifications

Analyze that stick and poke you got when you were 14 from a psychological lens: Is it actually a reminder of how much you’ve grown? Or was it a mistake?

7. From Shakespeare’s Iago to Harry Potter’s Voldemort: Shaping Evil in English Literature

A great excuse for an English major to write 80 pages about Harry Potter while still fangirling over Shakespeare.

8. Girl Math: At a Certain Point, What is TikTok Doing to Feminism?

A sexuality, women’s & gender studies (SWAGS) approach to explaining the internet trend legitimizing various financial decisions in the name of “girlhood.”

9. The Five Second Rule: What Does Your Stomach Bacteria Have to Say About Germs?

Are you really into enzymes? Are you clumsy? Do you frequently drop your food on the ground? Boy, do I have a thesis idea for you!

10. Art and AI: Can Spotify Really Tell Me My “Listening Aura?”

Confused as to why your “daylist” Spotify playlist is titled “sample boom bap thursday afternoon?” The computer scientist in you can explore the algorithms Spotify uses to track and manipulate your data!