Humanities 110

Paper Topics | Fall 2011 | Paper 3

Due Saturday, November 12th, 5 p.m., in your conference leader's Eliot Hall mailbox.
Suggested Length 1500-1800 words

Write an essay in response to one of the following prompts. Structure your essay around a strong, analytical claim, and provide specific, detailed evidence from the primary texts to support that claim. You will want to focus on specific characters, episodes, relations, themes, or claims in the texts, rather than provide general summaries.

1. Analyze the tribulations of Job in the Book of Job in relation to Gods testing of Abraham in the binding of Isaac episode (the Akedah) in Genesis. In what ways do these two narratives either celebrate or threaten to undermine God's covenant with Abraham?

2. Compare the strategies employed by Moses and either Cyrus or Darius to establish political legitimacy. Your analysis should include a careful discussion of the Book of Exodus (especially chapters 20-22), and either the Cyrus Cylinder or the Bisitun inscriptions.

3. Consider the depiction of love in one of the lyrics of Sappho in relation to a love lyric by another poet. Focusing on diction and imagery, discuss the ways in which both poets describe the phenomenon of love. In both cases, what is the effect of love on the lyric speaker (the poetic I)? To what extent does the speakers gender determine his or her responses?

4. Analyze Greek views of Persians in either Aeschylus The Persians or Herodotus Histories (esp. 1.134-135), with an eye toward describing what the Athenians are trying to say about their own political or cultural identity. 

5. Examine Israelite/Jewish attitudes toward outsiders in one of the following texts: the Book of Exodus, the Book of Ezra, the Book of Nehemiah, or the Book of Esther. What does the text tell us about the political aspirations or concerns of the specific community that produced it?

6. Discuss with as much specificity as possible the nature and qualities of monotheism as it is found in either Genesis or Exodus. Compare this emerging monotheism with the notions of the divine in the work of the Presocratic philosopher Xenophanes.

7. Examine the roles of three female characters in Genesis. How do their actions affect the relations of God to his people? How do they affect relations among people? How are the authority, strengths, and weaknesses of women presented differently from those of men?

8. What ideals of male excellence are put forward in the Greek kouroi sculptures, and in the lyrics of either Alcman or Tyrtaeus?

9. In consultation with your conference leader, write an essay on a topic of your own devising.

In addition to consulting with your conference leader, you can get help with all stages of the writing process from peer tutors at the Writing Center. You can find links to the Writing Center hours on the Drop-in Tutoring Schedule website. Extra tutoring help will be available in the week leading up to paper due dates.