Humanities 110

Paper Topics | Fall 2023 | Paper 4

Due Saturday, December 2, 5:00 p.m., to your conference leader

Target length: 1,400-1,600 words

Choose one of the following topics:

1. Slavery is a major theme in Agamemnon, in the cast (the war captive Cassandra), in the imagery of yokes and enslavement itself, and in the ways in which the characters talk about their own exercise of power. How is slavery understood in this play and what function does this prominent theme fulfill in the play? You might consider some or all of the following questions: Do the terms in which slavery is expressed in the play reflect Patterson’s definition? Is slavery represented as a natural condition or as a result of circumstance?
    
2. Analyze the conflicts and tensions between the needs of the family and those of the city-state/polis in one of the following: one play in the Oresteia, “Against Neaera,” or the Lysistrata. You might want to consider the following questions: How does the work present the relationship between the family and the state? What is the relationship between one’s political status and one’s status as a member of a family? How does one navigate competing demands between those identities?
    
3. According to Thucydides, because of the power of “human nature,” past events “will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future” (1.22).  What does he mean by “human nature” and how does it influence the course of events in his History? According to Thucydides, can “human nature” ever be controlled and if so how? If historical events will simply repeat each other forever, what is the point of writing history? You might consider the following scenes: the plague at Athens and Thucydides’ comments on Pericles (2.47–65); the Civil War in Corcyra (3.69–85); the Melian dialogue (5.84–116); the Athenian debate on the Sicilian expedition (6.1–32); and Thucydides’ narrative of the failure of the Sicilian expedition in book 7 (7.55–87).  
     
4. Analyze the use of humor in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. What elements in the play does Aristophanes rely on to create the comedic effect? How does humor work as a tool for political critique? Does Aristophanes use humor to contest or uphold gender relations and, more generally, the role of women in Athens?
    
5. Pick two of the texts listed below and discuss how political membership and exclusion are constructed and contested. Do these two texts use similar or different methods? What are the elements they use to define membership or exclusion? And what role does difference play in both texts? Possible texts: The Book of Esther, “Against Neaera,” Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War, and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. 
    
6. How does persuasion operate in the speeches that Thucydides includes in his History? What strategies seem to persuade the various audiences in the text? What strategies fail? What do these speeches tell us about Thucydides’s understanding of human motivation in times of war?
   
   
7. In consultation with your instructor, write 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.