Possible Topics for Humanities Research
Paper—you can also propose topics of
your own choosing, but they will need to
be approved by your humanities teacher.
(Topics listed *** are difficult and will
require strong research skills):
Louisiana Purchase
Lewis and Clark Expedition
Immigration in America from 1776-1860
Missouri Compromise
Alien and Sedition Act***
Indian Removal
Impact of Westward expansion
Indian Wars
Oklahoma Territory
Trail of Tears
Slave rebellions
Nat Turner Slave Rebellion
Denmark Vesey
Dred Scott Case***
John Brown/Bleeding Kansas (KansasNebraska Act)
Education for Women (new schools for
women)
Women in the Westward Movement
(pioneer women)
Seneca Falls Convention/Declaration of
Sentiments (women's rights)
Suffragist Movement
Growth of trade unions
Textile Mills/Lowell, MA mill strikes (labor
and women’s issues)***
Illinois Statehood--Northwest Ordinance/
Land Ordinance***
Settlement of Texas and Texan
Independence (Steven Austin)***
Mexican War
Mormon Movement to the West
Fur Trade
Mountain Men***
The Alamo
The Gold Rush
Chinese Immigration to the West
Abolition Movement
William Lloyd Garrison and The
Liberator
Custer and the battle of Little Bighorn
Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and/or Chief
Joseph
Indian Boarding Schools
Civil War Battles, prisons, or political issues
Medicine in the Civil War
Photography of the Civil War—Matthew
Brady
Walt Whitman’s Journalism in the Civil
War***
Literature and poetry of the Civil War***
Amistad***
Transcendentalism
Henry David Thoreau and Civil
Disobedience
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wounded Knee
Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin***
The telegraph
Phyllis Wheatley – poems of a slave
Horace Mann and Poverty and
Education***
John Zenger and Freedom of the Press***
Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s
Cabin
North Carolina Regulators (revolutionary
rebels)***
Homestead Act and Exodusters
Buffalo Soldiers
Lincoln and slavery
The transcontinental railroad
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth
Amendments (Civil Rights)
Buffalo Bill
Annie Oakley
Civil War generals
Ulysses S. Grant
Robert E. Lee
Gettysburg Address
African American Soldiers in the Civil War
King Phillip’s War (early colonial period)
Sojourner Truth
Harriet Tubman
Seminole Wars
Free Black Settlement of St. Augustine***