Each year, the Program may award a Hellenic Studies Senior Thesis Prize for the best senior thesis written on a topic in Byzantine or Modern Greek Studies.

  • Class of 2023 - Grace Chung (History) - “Mothers of Empires:  Power Embodied in the Divine Figures of Juno and Mary” 
  • Class of 2022 - Ilia Curto Pelle (History) - “The Transformation of Balkan Society in the 7th Century” 
  • Class of 2021 - Joanna Zhang (Philosophy) - "A Place of Influence, an Inheritance of Generation:

    Mapping Epistemology, Authority, and Anthropology in Albertus Magnus’s De Natura Loci"

  • Class of 2019 - Rafail Zoulis (Classics) - "Cultural Syncretism and Royal Ideology in Ptolemaic Egypt"
     
  • Class of 2018 - Rachel Adler (History) - "Greek Contemporaries, Italian Antiquities: Byzantine Pedagogues in Late Quattrocento Veneto and Their Reception"
     
  • Class of 2017 - Harrison Blackman (History) - "Planning for Ecumenopolis:  Constantinos A . Doxiadis' Quest to Design Postwar Athens, The United States, and the World"
     
  • Class of 2017 - Ayelet Wenger (Classics) - “ἤρξαντο λαλεῖν ἑτέραις γλώσσαις Greek in the Arukh of Nathan ben Jehiel”
     
  • Class of 2016 - George Papademetriou (Woodrow Wilson School)  - "Turkey's 'Little Brother':  Evaluating the Impact of Domestic Turkish Politics on Settlement Negotiations in Cyprus"
     
  • Class of 2015 - Gregory Smith (History) - "Reclaiming the Sea:  Arab-Byzantine Naval Warfare in the Aegean During the Ninth and Tenth Centuries"
     
  • Class of 2014 - Christoper G. Cochran (Classics) - "The Hymns of Synesius of Cyrene in the Christian and Clasical Traditions"
     
  • Class of 2013 - Mary Balzer (History) - "The Building Projects of Constantine and Justinian"
     
  • Class of 2012 - Emily Kirkegaard (Classics) - "Byzantium in Carolingian Eyes: Strategies of Competition and Distinction"
     
  • Class of 2010 - Lucas P. Barron (Classics) - "Philosophy as a Way of Death: Prophyry and the Strains of an Ancient Discipline"
     
  • Class of 2009 - Matthew James Prisco (Sociology) - "A Sociological Approach to Language Death and Language Revitalization in Grecia Salentina"
     
  • Class of 2008 - Michael John Kotsakas Kratsios (Politics) - "Economics and Voting in the Third Hellenic Republic: An Aggregate and Individual-Level Analysis of the Greek Electorate, 1985-2007"  and Whitney Beth Mosery (Classics) - "Classical Paradigms in Markopoulos’ The Illiac Passion"
     
  • Class of 2007 - Christian Casey Sahner (Art & Archaeology) - "Heaven on Earth in Late Antiquity: Rome, Constantinople, and the New Jerusalem"
     
  • Class of 2006 - Henryk Jaronowski ( Classics) - "Justinian's Laws Against Heresy and the Closing of the School at Athens"
     
  • Class of 2001 - Peter Constantine Nomikos (History) - "Philanthropy and Imperialism: The Historical Precedents of the Greek Refugee Loan, 1923-24"
     
  • Class of 2000 - Karen Emmerich (Comparative Literature) - "Translation (with an Introduction) of Margarita Karapanou, Rien ne va Plus"
     
  • Class of 1999 - Nancy A. Khalek (History) - "The Significance of the Gestures of Prayer: Late Antique Holy Men Meet the Followers of Early Islam"
     
  • Class of 1998 - John Pantelis Maris (Woodrow Wilson School) - "Democracy and European Integration: Accession and Democratic Consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe"
     
  • Class of 1997 - Jacqueline Gigantes (History) - "Crossing the Aegean: The Transmission of Greek Studies from Byzantium to Italy in the First Half of the Fifteenth Century" and Katie Katsigera (Woodrow WIlson School) - "In Deep Water: The Greco-Turkish Dispute over the Aegean Continental Shelf"
     
  • Class of 1996 - Emmanuela Kantzia (Comparative Literature) - "The Year I Wrote In, A Confessional Box" and Dorothea Yessios (Woodrow WIlson School) - "Unity or Disunity? The Case of Cyprus and the European Union"