Paper Topics | Fall 2026 | Paper 2
Due Saturday, October 10, 2:00 p.m. to your conference leader
Target length: 1,500 words
Concepts are not transhistorical; that is, their meanings are not stable across time and place. Prompts 1–5 ask you to start practicing the skill of defining and tracing a concept within a work. Rather than relying on a dictionary definition of that concept, use evidence from the work you are analyzing to build a definition from within the work itself. Identify the role that the definition plays within the work. Make a case for how the work uses the concept and how carefully defining this concept by way of evidence from the work helps us to better understand the work as a whole.
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Genesis 1 repeatedly uses “good” (1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). Argue for a definition of the concept, drawing on the text of that chapter. Then select one more story in Genesis that uses the concept of good. How does your selected story define the concept? Make an argument for one way this definition relates to the one you found in Genesis 1.
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Genesis is filled with acts of deception and lying, both real and apparent, ranging from the serpent in the garden to Abraham’s repeated attempts to pass off his wife as his sister to Joseph hiding his identity from his brothers. Analyze at least two such acts and make an argument for how the text conceives of these acts and what they accomplish.
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Household relations are central to Genesis, and the household includes both family members and enslaved people. Choose one type of household relationship (for example, father-son, husband-wife, brother-brother, enslaver-enslaved) and analyze at least two instances of this relationship in the text. What does the text suggest this relationship involves? How does this relationship illuminate or complicate the relationship between God and humans?
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The human fear of death is one of Lucretius’s central concerns in offering his explanation of the nature of things. What is his conception of death? How does it clarify what Lucretius means by the fear of death?
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Lucretius writes of his project “that it is difficult to throw light / upon the obscure discoveries of the Greeks in Latin verses” (1.136–7). Throughout his work Lucretius engages in various acts of “translation” of concepts through analogies, metaphors, similes, and other figurative language. Analyze at least two of these figurative acts of translation. Argue for one way to understand how the act of translation is significant to Lucretius’s project.
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To what extent is eyesight the privileged sense in On the Nature of Things?
In Hum 110, you may not use generative AI tools. You may not use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or Gemini to brainstorm or generate ideas, to summarize or paraphrase the ideas of others, to compose content, or to revise or substantially correct your work. (Tools that automatically flag spelling or grammatical errors as you write are allowed, but not tools that offer suggested revisions or completions of your sentences.) Violations of this policy will be considered academic dishonesty and reported as academic dishonesty.
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. The HUM 110 Paper Night for Paper #2 is October 2 (5-7 pm in Library 41).