But after a series of meetings this fall, he says, the Committee unanimously approved the new requirements.

The Committee was following the lead of concentrations such as Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, which also expanded thesis requirements beyond the traditional written thesis, Mitchell notes.

“We’re opening up for possibilities,” he says. “This is a recognition that not every student wants to go to graduate school and have an idea of exactly what they want to do once they leave Harvard.”

Deborah Foster, the director of undergraduate studies in folklore and mythology, acknowledges that this decision was made partly to offer students more opportunities to explore within their focus field in the concentration.

“We have begun to think seriously about the many ways in which knowledge can be represented and are expanding beyond the analytical essays to find other ways in which we can recognize the synthesis of knowledge,” she says.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS.

Folklore and Mythology concentrator Julia E. Cain ’11 does not boast of her knack for making tapestries, but she says that she could not fully understand her focus field in the culture of hand-made creations without practical experience.

“When I was working on finding a thesis, I knew that I wanted to do something with textiles,” she says. “But making them is an important part of being able to relate to it.”

Cain says that she first thought to create a tapestry for her senior thesis two years ago, and approached the Visual and Environmental Studies Department with a proposal.

“I approached VES to see if I should do a joint in the two concentrations, and they told me that they couldn’t help me because textile work wasn’t their wheelhouse,” she says.

But with her own concentration’s decision to expand the requirements, Cain’s proposal is now becoming a reality.

Cain is the first student to pursue the new thesis requirement, which will otherwise go into effect next year.

“I love that the Folk and Myth department is flexible enough to allow us to be creative in our thesis work,” she says.

Cain says that she feared abandoning her personal interests for the sake of a traditional written thesis.

“I like the scale, the grandeur, and the ability of things that I can include [within a tapestry] because I am working on that kind of a scale,” she says. “[Folk and Myth Department] knows that we are a creative group, and that sometimes a giant paper is not the best way to show everything that you’ve learned and to be representative of your time.”