Reed College
Reed College

Humanities 110

Introduction to the Humanities

Paper Topics | Fall 2021 | Paper 3

Due Saturday, November 13, 5:00 p.m., in your conference leader’s Eliot Hall mailbox.

Target length: 1,500 words

Choose one of the following topics:

  1. Richard Neer contrasts philosophers with both the vase painters and poets: “[T]he poetry of the symposium may be used to illuminate the pottery, for the simple reason that both participate in the same social rituals” (10).  He goes on to argue that vase painters, like poets, “downplay the sacred or ‘truthful’ aspect in favor of a rhetoric of craft, skill, and pleasure" (12). By contrast, “’ambiguities of the banquet’ . . .  are no fit pastime for philosophers” (13), who value truth. Choose two of the following among the assigned readings/visuals: a lyric poem, a vase, and/or a pre-Socratic philosophy fragment. Through a close reading (or visual analysis), defend or dispute an aspect of Neer’s distinctions.

  2. In the Histories Herodotus voices the claim that environment impacts a society’s “character”:  as Cyrus says at the conclusion, “Soft countries breed soft men. It is not the property of any one soil to produce fine fruits and good soldiers too” (IX.122). Focusing on one geographical area, discuss how far Herodotus’ historical narrative supports or undermines Cyrus’s claim.  

  3. To what extent do the Works and Days and the Theogony promote the same ideas of justice, the use of violence and the proper distribution of rights, freedoms, authority and resources across the social order?

  4. Select a point of comparison with which to investigate the texts of any two of the following authors:  Sappho, Archilochus, Tyrtaeus, Parmenides, and Hesiod.  Construct an argument that demonstrates something interesting or surprising about the texts by virtue of their differences or similarities. Your conclusion should go beyond a list of differences or similarities.

  5. In their lectures on Persepolis and the Parthenon, Tom Landvatter and Christian Kroll both argue that state-sponsored architecture is almost always created with a political, religious and/or cultural agenda in mind. Compare how the sculptural programs of the Parthenon and the Persepolis complex realize such an agenda. Think about the similarities and differences, as well as the historical, political and cultural context of each building, and make an argument about the uses and abuses of state-sponsored architecture.

  6. How does the characterization of Cassandra in the Agamemnon extend, complicate, confirm, or challenge Patterson’s conception of slavery?

  7. Female speech and agency (Clytemnestra, Cassandra and Athena, for instance) are central throughout The Oresteia. What do the plays tell us about Athenians’ anxieties regarding the status and power of women and their relation to democracy and justice?