Honors Projects

Procedures

The registrar's office deadlines, requirements for honors, and honors project registration instructions can be found at Registrar: Honors Projects. The Bowdoin library's guidelines for formatting the finished honors project prior to submission, important deadlines, and support the library offers honors students can be found at Library: Services for Honors and Independent Study Students.   Below are procedures and a timeline specific to English honors. Additionally, students may attend an Honors Information Session, which takes place in the fall semester.

Thesis Requirements

A student who has maintained an A/B average in the courses offered in the English major may decide to become an honors candidate and pursue in depth a topic of interest to them.

In the spring of their junior year, the honors candidate presents a definitive plan for their honors thesis to a department faculty member within whose field the project falls. Work begins in earnest in the fall semester of the student's senior year.

The honors work is graded and may count (at the 4000 level) as one or two of the elective course units required for the major.

The honors thesis must be a thorough and sophisticated literary essay growing out of:

• a course paper, as an expansion of it (in which case it may do double duty only with the consent of the instructors involved)
• an English course
• an extension of an English course, or
• a fresh subject not explored in another connection

Strict compliance with the directions for manuscript preparation specified by the library—where the original copy will be permanently filed—is required.

Students contemplating application to graduate school should be advised that honors, or even candidacy for honors, is a highly significant element of their record.