What are the themes of "A Modest Proposal"?

The theme of this satirical essay by Jonathan Swift is apparently social welfare. The fictional writer of “A Modest Proposal” (a character invented by Swift) claims to have found a solution for the serious social problem of hunger. Because it is a satirical work, however, Swift’s real main themes are injustice and hypocrisy. Certainly, the Irish situation is dire, and people cannot afford to feed their families. There are many steps that need to be taken to remedy that situation. The ostensible writer fails to provide any real solutions but settles on a simplistic assessment of a highly complex problem. The equation he proposes is logical but immoral: there are too many babies and not enough food, so we should turn babies into food. By extension, Swift uses this reasoning to criticize other, equally draconian English policies toward Ireland.

How did military forces, warrior values, and military technology help shape world history? Don’t forget the "society" part of this theme: consider how warfare intersects with politics, culture, society, and economic affairs. Some examples to consider: Bronze Age chariot forces, the Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid Persian armies, Greek military forces (Athens and Sparta), and the imperial Roman and Chinese military systems.

There are countless examples of military technology advancing or promoting a civilization. One such example is when the Greeks adopted hoplite warfare (involving warriors using a shield and spear). These hoplites eventually used a phalanx formation that became distinctive to the Greeks. This formation involved the infantrymen locking their shields together and advancing as an impenetrable unit. This allowed the Greeks to beat the Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae. The Greek victory in the Greco-Persian Wars allowed for the development of the Athenian city-state, with its artistic and political legacies of tragedy and democracy, respectively (to say nothing of the advancements in science and mathematics centuries later in the Hellenistic period of Ancient Greece).
The short-range phalanx and the long-range bow and arrow were the two primary styles of fighting in the classical world. It is thought that the Greeks (even dating from Homer’s world, several centuries before the Persian Wars) thought that warfare at close range was more honorable than shooting one’s enemy at a distance.

How do I compare and contrast IDEA and Section 504?

You are correct that IDEA and 504 plans are similar, and you are not alone in finding the distinction sometimes hazy in practice. Both IDEA and 504 are designed to protect students from unwarranted discrimination or difficulty in receiving public education.
IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) ensures that all students receive a Free and Public Education (FAPE). Prior to this act, it was common enough that students with mental or physical disabilities were denied access to public education. Under the IDEA plan, students are entitled to six accommodations, which I have tried to put in simple language as much as possible:
1. Individualized Education Program (IEP): schools tailor an educational plan to the student so that the individual ability and disability are accounted for. Students are asked to do as much as they can that is comparable to general education students but are not penalized for what they cannot do. Various methods to scaffold learning to assist student growth are reviewed frequently to ensure the plan grows with the student.
2. Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE): based on the individual disability, the school must provide free educational services that meet the educational goals of the disabled student as much as the general education student; the federal government funds about 40% of the extra cost of education a student with special needs. The family does not pay extra for the remainder of the costs of special education.
3. Least Restrictive Environment (LRE): to the greatest extent possible, the student with a IEP should be in the general education classroom with the rest of the student population. This ensured that schools could not place special needs students in one area and ignore the social and developmental growth that occurs when being in the general education classroom. In some instances, a student with a profound learning challenge may be pulled for one or more courses and taught be a special education teacher, but will return to other classroom when learning isn't impeded. A student with a profound reading issue may be taught outside a general education classroom but return for math if numeracy is on grade level.
If disciplinary action is required for students with either an IEP or a 504, certain legal rights apply. For instance, if a student is removed from school for more than 10 days due disciplinary actions, the school must then offer the learning plan where the student is (home or other facility). Misbehaviors caused by the disability (such as with Emotional Behavioral Disabilities) are not treated the same as that which is unrelated to a disability.
4. Appropriate Evaluation: students with an IEP must be tested regularly to ensure that the accommodations are appropriate to the needs
5. Parent and Teacher Participation: parents, teachers and special education staff meet regularly to review the student's IEP and ensure that current accommodations are appropriate and offering the least restrictive opportunity for student growth
6. Procedural Safeguards: these largely give parents considerable access to their students' regards and offer legal options should a problem arise.
Each of these, along with a high benchmark for confidentiality, creates a guidepost for schools and families to use to make sure that public schools are following best practices when educating a student with an IEP. The statutes set a high bar, the accommodations may be highly individualized, and the ramifications for failure to follow the law are steep.
Students with an IEP protected by IDEA will often have a medical diagnosis that falls within 13 well-defined categories of disability. With 504's the bar is a little different. Students may often receive a temporary 504 due to a shorter-term disability such as a concussion. Other students with identified but harder to diagnose challenges may receive a 504 if they have at least one impediment to learning but do not qualify for an IEP. Often, ADHD, chronic diseases such as diabetes or allergies, or other hidden conditions may fall under a 504. Fewer specialists weigh in on the need and accommodations in a 504, and generally the learning plan will address a smaller range of accommodations. For example a student with ADHD may be given more time to complete a general education test or may take the test in a different setting; a student with an IEP may be given a modified test. While schools are required to offer a 504 when appropriate and are penalized if they do not, no federal funding supports 504 plans.
In both cases, schools are required to maintain strict confidentiality within reason regarding the student's condition and accommodation. The goal is to guide the student with a disability through the public education system and to do as much as can be done to assist them in their college or career goals. Within any given public school classroom, a teacher may be offering several different accommodations based on the IEPs and the 504s in the class. Some of these are quite easy and subtle to implement (seating a student in the front of the class) while others are more onerous (writing different assessments) but the overall goal is to try to level the playing field as much as possible while keeping as many students as possible in the same classroom.

Why do you think the authorities forced the Jews to live in the kitchen?

In the time of the Nazi regime in Germany, as described in the novel "Milkweed," conditions for Jews were horrendous. The book details the slum life that they lived in, these ghettos that were created specifically for Jews, with Nazi soldiers enforcing curfew and distributing paltry supplies for them all. They are forced to do many things that are disgraceful and endure abuses that make them feel less than human.
The authorities forced the Jews to live in these conditions simply because they could—they enjoyed tormenting the Jews under their care because the Jews were seen as less than human and responsible for the downfall of Germany. So, these authorities forced them to live in the small, cramped kitchen quarters.

What is the tragedy of old age?

King Lear is about the universal tragedy of old age. This theme shows that Shakespeare had a broad world vision (Weltanschauung), as evidenced in that famous soliloquy in As You Like It where Jacques says, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Growing old is a tragedy in itself—a tragedy for every man and woman who lives long enough to have to experience it. Lear and Gloucester both suffer through the tragedy of being old, despised, unnecessary, and unwanted. The fact that both find themselves homeless in the wilderness is symbolic of the cold and lonely condition of old age. They have both been displaced by the younger generation. They both had their "entrances" and are about to make their "exits" from the world stage. They have lost their property and their rights. Somebody has to take care of them, as if they are children. Gloucester has even lost his sight. They both understand life as they never understood it before. Schopenhauer writes,
Only the man who attains old age acquires a complete and consistent mental picture of life; for he views it in its entirety and its natural course, yet in particular he sees it not merely from the point of entry, as do others, but also from that of departure. In this way, he fully perceives especially its utter vanity, whereas others are still always involved in the erroneous idea that everything may come right in the end.
Both Lear and Gloucester comment on the "utter vanity" of life. It is significant that the two old men in the play were once rich and powerful, surrounded by people and highly esteemed. Lear was actually the king, and Gloucester was an earl. They learn the bitter truth about old age is that they will soon have to die and will be deprived of everything, including their bodies. Nobody really cares about old people. They are only in the way. Younger people find them boring and annoying.
In Act II, Scene 4, Lear tells the plain truth to Regan when he says,
Dear daughter, I confess that I am old;
Age is unnecessary

What is the view of life presented in Atalanta in Calydon?

Atalanta in Calydon is a poetic tragedy by Algernon Charles Swinburne published in 1865. It made the young poet famous overnight.
The tragedy is based on the ancient Greek material, the myth of the Calydonian hunt. No Greek tragedian had used this story, so for Swinburne, this was an opportunity to build his own myth on the classical model.
The myth, which is fully developed in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is about hunting the boar who is sent to the Calydonian fields as a retribution for irreverence toward the goddess Artemis. The protagonist, Meleager, kills the boar and gives the spoils to the virgin huntress Atalanta, but he dies because he has broken the laws of his kin.
Early in the work, the theme of fate, or doom, transpires.

Upon his birth came the three Fates and prophesied of him three things, namely these; that he should have great strength of his hands, and good fortune in this life, and that he should live no longer when the brand then in the fire were consumed. (1, p. xi)

The protagonist’s life depends on the piece of wood, and his mother, Althaea, must guard it to perpetuate his life.
Althaea is conscious of the futility of life as she talks about the human predicament in reference to the destiny allotted by the gods:

Weeping or laughing, we whom eyesight fails,Knowledge and light efface and perfect heart,And hands we lack, and wit; and all our daysSin, and have hunger, and die infatuated.For madness have ye given us and not health,And sins whereof we know not; and for theseDeath, and sudden destruction unaware.What shall we say now? what thing comes of us? (1, p. 78)

Before Atalanta comes to the stage, Meleager is in harmony with his mother, which reflects life in its natural cycles of birth, growth, and death.
The first chorus praises the return of spring, the time of renewal. At the same time, it conveys the main truth of the tragic universe: even though the process of transformations and changes is continuous, there is no happiness in life to be found. There is only the pursuit of it.
This truth is picked up by the second chorus, which contains a paradigmatic definition of man’s destiny:

In his heart is a blind desire,In his eyes foreknowledge of death. (1, p. 17)

The whole of Swinburne’s tragedy artistically confirms this fatal truth. The climax of the work is Meleager’s last soliloquy, in which the motifs of the incinerated brand, of winter, and of the night coalesce. The brand, which is reduced to ashes, and Meleager’s "ashen life" (1, p. 108) symbolize delusive attempts to attain a transcendental ideal.

How would you relate "The Use of Force" by William Carlos Williams and Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"?

William Carlos Williams's short story "The Use of Force" is a clear demonstration of the phallocentrism and erotic violence discussed in Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema."
In Mulvey's piece, she uses psychoanalytic and feminist theory to understand the ways in which the objects of looking in film and narration can bolster patriarchal ideology. She talks about the different pleasures of looking through voyeurism and scopophilia.
In Williams’s short story, a first-person narrator physician is trying to examine the throat of a young girl who will not cooperate. He eventually forces her mouth open to find that she has diphtheria. In this story, the physician can be read as a scopophilic phallocentric narrator; her later admits to taking pleasure in the girl's resistance to his force. The child's parents can be read as the voyeuristic audience, as they watch only to scold their daughter, the object of the erotic violence. In the midst of the physician's attempts to utilize force, he highlights the pleasure he takes in the little girl:

I had to smile to myself. After all, I had already fallen in love with the savage brat, the parents were contemptible to me.
http://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/155