Humanities 110

Paper Topics | Spring 2026 | Paper 7

Due Saturday, April 18, 2:00 p.m., to your conference leader

Target length: 1,400-1,600 words

Choose one of the following topics:

1. Analyze how W.E.B. Du Bois uses irony, sarcasm, and questioning in “The Souls of White Folk” to critique whiteness, empire, and racism. How do these rhetorical strategies help Du Bois critique global white supremacy and expose contradictions in European claims to civilization and moral authority?

2. Analyze the role of family in character formation and education in José Emilio Pacheco’s Battles in the Desert OR W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Of the Coming of John.” How does the work connect familial dynamics to social patterns? How do changes in perspective and narrative stance within the work contribute to its messages?

3. Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois both discuss freedom as paradoxical for African Americans. Consider this position through close analysis of key passages from the assigned sections of Southern Horrors OR The Souls of Black Folk. How does each writer balance specific examples with larger claims about what freedom entails?

4. Analyze the interaction between sound and lyric in any one spiritual song included in the March 20th assignment. What is the relationship between the song’s lyrics and its instrumental accompaniment? You may, for instance, consider rhythm, tone, and the specific expression of any individual performance. You might also weigh the claims of W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, or Zora Neale Hurston concerning the meaning of this music.

5. Christian Kroll introduces the rhetorical concept of parrhesia in his lecture on the EZLN (March 6), but one could apply the concept broadly to several works we have studied this semester. Choose ONE work from the following list, and analyze the extent to which the work’s formal features can be understood to support or conform to the practice of parrhesia. What does thinking about this work as an instance of parrhesia allow us to understand about its form and function? What aspects of this work do not conform to parrhesia in form or function? Make sure to define parrhesia as part of your essay.

Elena Poniatowska, Massacre in Mexico 

Subcomandante Marcos, “Fourth Declaration of Lacandon Jungle” OR “Mexico City: We Have Arrived. We are Here” OR “The Story of the Questions”

Zapatista Army of National Liberation, “6th Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle”

“Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Law”

Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors

6. In the context of the Harlem Renaissance, intimate practices such as love, pleasure, and desire were not simply personal matters but were shaped by questions of race, gender, freedom, and social expectation. With attention to the genre and formal characteristics of the work in question, analyze how personal desire, love, pleasure, or rejection are framed as politically meaningful in ONE of the following works:

Zora Neale Hurston, “Sweat”
Richard Bruce Nugent, “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade”
Saidiya Hartman, any one of the assigned sections from Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

7. In consultation with your conference leader, devise your own topic.

Using generative artificial intelligence or large language models such as ChatGPT to compose all or part of your paper will be considered academic misconduct.

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.