Arts & Entertainment

Thesis Title: “My Wealth in Ivy Island”: The Use of Fantasy and Fable in the Works of P.T. Barnum

What Now: Screenwriter

What Next: Further literary and historical pursuits

During my thesis research, I learned that Harvard University holds, deep within its...

Thesis Title: “Make America Fit Again”: SUPERMAN #170 and the Rise of Youth Fitness Culture in Cold War America, 1953-1964

What Now: VP of Development, Tricky Knot

In so many ways, I owe the Hist & Lit department for helping me realize the vast...

Thesis Title: The Ghostly Grotesque: The Revolutionary Satire and Intersectionality of H.T. Tsiang’s The Hanging on Union Square

What Now: Comedian & Writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers

What Next: Would love to get a dog someday

I loved concentrating in...

Thesis Title: Tout va mal: Americanization and the Cinema of Jean-Luc Godard

What Now: Director, Jazz at Lincoln Center

History & Literature was, for me, an invaluable education in teasing out unseen connections. My field—France & America—encourage me to...

Thesis Title: "It Was the Wild Wild West Out There": Queer Utopia and The Frontier at Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco, 1977-1996 

What Now: Sound Mixer / Sound Designer - Co-owner, Wild Shape Sound

In addition to my written thesis, I created a 20...

Thesis Title: “Books Like these are Burned!’: The 1933 Nazi Book Burnings in American Historical Memory

What Now: Editor, Simon & Schuster

I started my History & Literature thesis with several questions—about the 1933 Nazi book burnings and the 1943...

Thesis Title: Literary Progeria in the Works of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor

Follow Conan: @ConanOBrien (Twitter)

No joke! Before he was a Simpsons writer, talk show host, and leader of TeamCoco, Conan O'Brien graduated with a degree in History &...

Thesis Title: Traditional Typography in the Service of Modern Typology: Textual Materialism and the Modernist Print Innovations of the Kelmscott and Hogarth Presses

What Now: Analyst at The Type Founders

I came to Hist & Lit drawn to the ways books, ideas...

Thesis Title: "Martinka's on Saturday Night": The Society of American Magicians and the Professionalization of Magic

What Now: Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Sycamore Studios

When I started at Harvard, I knew I wanted to work in film eventually...

Thesis Title: Lifting up the Lower East Side: Uptown Jewish Women, "Ghetto Girls," and the Effort to Redeem Jewish Female Delinquency in New York, 1900-1924

What Now: Producer of Poetry in America, Co-Founder of Verse Video Education

What Next: Producing...

Thesis Title: "please / no american mierdas:" Shattering Silences, Salvadoran (In)visibilities, and Imagined Nation in Javier Zamora's Unaccompanied 

What Now: MFA candidate in Fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and General Education Literature...

Thesis Title: Shifting Visions: The Generic and Gender Legacy of the Female Outlaw in Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise

What Now: Creative Executive, Orion Pictures

What Next: Hopefully bringing stories of brave women and marginalized voices to more screens...

Thesis Title: Fleeing the Poetic Convent: Elena Shvarts's Works and Days and Problems of Female Authorship in the Late-Soviet Literary Underground

What Now: I have my MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and I am PhD candidate in Literature at the...