Papers #1 and #2 both need a thesis that relates two of the three course areas, and at least one of the two papers must be research based (see the syllabus for what that means). Most students wait until #2 for this, and these suggestions assume that's what you'll do. However, it is perfectly OK to use sources other than the texts, even if you don't use enough for your paper to count as research based.  Doing so might well enable you to write a better paper!

Overall advice.  A paper that is narrow in scope and detailed in content is always better than one that is broad and shallow!  (See the example papers.)  So, focusing on just one of several characters in a story, or one slavery defender, or one of Socrates' points, or one or two incidents in someone's life . . . will definitely result in a better paper than one that is vague, very general, and deals only with broad issues or topics.

Relate CW Era history (CWEH) to CW Era literature (CWEL). 

• Relate a literature account (Douglass, Jacobs) of someone or some issue with historical (Finkleman) accounts of the same sorts of things: Do things Douglass or Jacobs present support or refute an argument or claim of one of the slavery defenders? You don't have to limit yourself to assigned readings; all of the texts include interesting stuff that was not assigned.

• General topics (which definitely would need to be more narrowly focused) include: religion, the Bible, wealth and poverty, social structures, legal issues, property rights, mental health, intellectual abilities..

Relate the Republic to CWEH or to CWEL (either way, the basic relate-to approaches will be about the same).  Things from the Republic that might fairly readily be related (compared/contrasted) to CWEH or CWEL: definitions of justice (Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, Glaucon, Adeimantus); the structure of Kallipolis as an "ideally" just society;  Socrates' 3-part soul model for a just or an unjust individual; the four cardinal virtues, or lack thereof (in a society or in an individual); Socrates' views on: women; civil war (in society, in the soul); slavery (in society, in the soul).

• Socratically analyze a person's character: Wise? Tested thoroughly?  Did he care for the whole? Courageous? What did s/he fear or not fear? How do you know?   Moderate, self-disciplined?   Just? (requires all 3 of the above). If unjust, then how unjust, since injustice comes in degrees. Or, instead of dealing with all 4 virtues, focus in detail on one! The person you use could be Jefferson, Douglass, Jacobs, or one of the slavery defenders in Finkelman. Would that person qualify as a ruler, auxiliary, or producer?

• Or do a similar analysis of a country or organization: the U.S. as a whole; the north; the south; a plantation.  Who would be the rulers, the auxiliaries, the producers?  To what extent did they do their proper job? You would base such an analysis on what's in the readings so far, since #1 is not a research-based paper.

• Relate Thrasymachus's "justice is the advantage of the stronger," and injustice is virtue, to something from the other texts. Would slaveowners turn out to be virtuous, and escaped slaves to be unjust? Remember that in Bk 2 Glaucon and Adeimantus elaborate on Thrasymachus.

• Relate Socrates' view of lies to something from the other texts. Who might have been a victim of a true lie? Or spread around some useful lies in words? Or some non-useful ones that Socrates would want censored?