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Rebellion
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What is Rebellion?

Rebellion as a subject of academic study spans history, literature, political science, and cultural analysis. It draws attention across disciplines because it sits at the intersection of power, freedom, and social change — asking why individuals and groups resist authority and what consequences follow. Courses in English literature examine rebellion as a creative and philosophical stance, as seen in Coleridge's challenge to eighteenth-century conventions, while history courses trace organized uprisings from Bacon's rebellion and the Nika revolt in sixth-century Constantinople to the broader currents of Revolutionary America. Dylan Thomas's resistance to passivity in "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" shows how rebellion also operates as a deeply personal theme in literary texts.

Student papers on this topic take a wide range of approaches. Historical case studies examine specific uprisings — Turner's rebellion, Tecumseh's pursuit of Indigenous leadership and unity, colonial-era revolts — analyzing their causes, their popular support, and their outcomes. Literary analyses focus on how poets and writers frame resistance and defiance. Comparative and thematic essays ask larger questions, such as whether rebellion grows from conformist cultures, or how revolution, rebellion, and resistance relate to one another across different contexts and governments.

A strong essay on rebellion establishes a clear, arguable thesis rather than simply describing events or texts. Evidence drawn from primary sources, whether historical documents or literary works, carries the most weight and should be analyzed rather than summarized. The most common pitfall is treating rebellion as uniformly heroic or uniformly destructive — a convincing essay acknowledges the complexity of power dynamics and the varied motivations that drive people to resist.

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Paper Doctorate

FBI counterintelligence surveillance of 1960s activist movements

This paper discusses the FBI program known as COINTELPRO. This program was about infiltrating and investigating organizations which the federal government and its head J. Edgar Hoover considered their enemies. Some of the crimes committed by federal agents included illegal surveillance, unlawful imprisonment, and murder.

Paper Undergraduate

The civil rights movement, the counter culture, and the Vietnam War in the 1960s

During the 1960s groups took action that caused the government to take responsibility in making and enforcing laws for equal rights of all citizens. Even though change came slow, the new legislation and newly created agencies enable citizens to exercise their rights. In this sense, responsibility and freedom can go hand in hand.

Research Paper Doctorate

Tilton's analysis of the evolving Pocahontas narrative tradition

Robert Tilton's book, Pocahontas: The Evolution of a Narrative, is ultimately a story about a story. Tilton's study does not largely concern itself with the real life individual whom we have come to know as Pocahontas,…

Blade Runner: merging film noir and science fiction

An analysis of Blade Runner as both a science fiction film and as film noir. Looked into moral and social issues that arise during the course of the film. Also analyzed film to demonstrate how it is reminiscent of classic film noir through analysis of retrofuturism. Also, the film's science fiction characteristics through technological and "alien" concepts that are present in many science fiction films.

Research Paper Undergraduate

Big Brother as symbol of totalitarianism in Orwell's 1984

Unlike the real dictators Hitler and Stalin, Big Brother does not really exist and has never existed, except as the symbol of English Socialism (Ingsoc) and the Party that controls all aspects of life in Oceania through totalitarian, police state methods. After all, a dictator with a physical body will eventually become ill, decline with age and die, Big Brother will live forever as the image of a Party that intends to remain in power forever. Its members will die off, even at the privileged Inner Party levels, but that matters no more than cutting off dead fingernails.

Research Paper Doctorate

Hebrew origins and the foundations of Judaism in ancient Mesopotamia

Hebrew history, as told by the Hebrews, begins in Mesopotamia, in the cities of Ur in the south and Haran in the north. With Abraham, the story of the Hebrews begins, and it is clearly stated that Hebrew origins lay…

Paper High School

Racial themes and linguistic strategies in three poems by Langston Hughes

The paper is about the poetry of Langston Hughes. The student is to select three of Hughes' poems to compare them. The paper locates several similarities among the poems "I, too," "Let America be America Again," and "Democracy." Hughes uses repetition, subjective language, and traditional American imagery.

John Brown's terrorism and the myth of American abolitionism

John Brown and his raid at Harper's Ferry have a symbolic importance, as he himself was well aware, to suggest that not all white people counted themselves complicit in the persistence of slavery within the antebellum…

Essay Doctorate

Kuhn's account of irrationality in scientific revolutions

The paper will contend that scientific revolutions are irrational because science is irrational. As will be demonstrated by Kuhn and other authors, there is no specific logic as to why some theories and paradigms become popular and other do not. To paraphrase Kuhn, often whoever presented the better argument rather than whoever had the superior argument was the one that became popular and supported. In addition, Kuhn sums up the nature of scientific theories, popular or not, in that all scientific theories are empirically successful, but ultimately proven false. Thus, the nature of scientific theory is irrational and the rise of popular theories is irrational. How would scientific revolutions not be irrational also? The paper supports and proposes that Kuhn's views are that scientific revolutions are partially irrational in nature; they are necessary to scientific developments; and scientific revolutions like all revolutions, have political, economic, and cultural implications. Change and revolution are radical and often spring from emotional, psychological or ethical conflicts of interest; when it comes to human emotions, psychology, and ethics, rationality often takes a backseat to irrationality. The paper supplies Kuhn's reasons to think that shifts in scientific revolutions are not wholly rational and that Kuhn's reasoning effectively demonstrates that shifts in scientific thought violate codes of rationality.

Paper Doctorate

Genovese's analysis of slave rebellions in the western hemisphere

In his 1979 book From Rebellion to Revolution, Genovese examines the change in the thrust of slave rebellions away from localized efforts focused on winning freedom to a movements couched in Marxist world view that were intended to overthrow slavery as a social system. Eugene Genovese examines the slave revolts that occurred in the New World against a backdrop of modern world history. The great feat that Genovese accomplishes here is to connect the ideology of the slave revolts to that of the major revolutions that occurred in the late eighteenth century. He accomplishes this by grounding his comparison in an examination of conditions in the western hemisphere that fostered revolution and in his discussion of the history of slave guerrilla warfare.

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