The Wacky Side Of Senior Theses

In May of 1603, a thirteen-year old little girl named Marguerite Poirier was attacked by a wild, wolf-like beast as she tended to her flocks in the small French village of Paulot, in the province of Guyenne. Later that month a strange boy, Jean Grenier, was brought before the local judge for the crime. The wolfish animal, it was thought by the locals, had been young Jean. For Jean, it seems, was a werewolf.

Well, okay, so he wasn't. Since Greek and Roman times, though, one of the most powerful myths in all of Western culture has been the werewolf, that half-man, half-beast symbolic of the evil that lurks within the hearts of men. But little did young Marguerite and Jean know that one day, some 383 years later, their alleged skirmish would introduce Tom Mueller's History and Literature thesis on the werewolf legend throughout history. But it did.

Welcome, then, to the wild and the wacky, the brilliant and the offbeat. Enter, if you will, into the wide, wide world of senior honors theses.

Limits to the Laurels

Roughly 70 percent of tomorrow's graduating seniors will enter into the company of educated men and women with some sort of honors or another. However, honors requirements vary depending on the department. Most laurel-seekers, though, follow the well-worn, traditional path of the written essay. In what is supposed to be a well-written, well-argued essay of anywhere from 50 to 150 pages, theses writers try to sum up their four-year sojourn inside ivy-covered Har- vard through an in depth exploration of sometopic of their choice.

(The 150 page upper limit was imposed, in theGovernment Department, at least, after anambitious senior named Henry Kissinger '50 woreout the spectacles of his readers by handing in a350-page magnum opus.)

Others tend to the more eccentric and esotericin their quest for academic glory. Alek Keshishian'86, an Adams House resident, was one suchbuck-with-traditionster. He fulfilled the honorsrequirement for his special concentration(Literature and Film: Theory and Practice) byadapting Emily Bronte's classic novel of love goneawry Wuthering Heights for the stage.

The result, Wuthering Heights: A PopMyth, opened on the Loeb Mainstage earlierthis spring to popular, if not critical, success.But Keshishian was graded solely for his script,the actual adaptation, not for the production orits success. So his grade was not determined bythe box office take, nor by the number of kindwords New York Times drama critic FrankRich '71 might have had for the show.

The Visual and Environemtnal Studies (VES)Department is often fertile ground foridiosyncratic cum artsy projects. One of thebetter ones was handed in by Guy M. LaCrosby '86.A smooth-singing member of the Krokodiloes,LaCrosby is also a painter. His thesis was aseries of 30 oil and acrylic works done over aperiod of eight months. "The point was to see howI could break free of standardized ideas of how topaint," says LaCrosby. In his series ofprogressively more and more abstract andexpressionistic works, La Crosby does just that.

LaCrosby says the chief difference between awritten thesis and a visual one is that theartistic thesis never stops; both the project and,hopefully, the artist, can continue to grow. "Witha written thesis, you reach a point where you haveto stop--boom!--and type it up," he says.

But LaCrosby was able to stop long enough totrudge his paintings over to the Carpenter Center,where they, and other works by VES seniors, can beseen on display all of this week.

Even within the seemingly strict confines ofthe written essay, though, there is ample room forcreativity and the personal touch. Take a cursory1