If you're free as to content, here's some quick ideas that don't require too much exposition...and will probably keep you from boring both yourself and the teacher...
One of my favorite ploys: be a contrarian. You don't have to believe in any of this, as long as you can argue these points. Your peers aren't reading the paper, nor are your parents. So take your arguments with your parents, and turn them on their head!
If you want to talk about Alice in Wonderland, remember that your instructor has read every possible slang variation on the phrase “acute drug psychosis”. Instead, mention that most people might have believed that Carroll was a habitué of then-not-illegal recreational substances, but this was in no way in fact the case. (Extra style points for this not being your thesis statement, however. Since people have seen in Alice everything from a critique of Non-Euclidean geometry to Victorian notions of toilet training, you’re pretty much free to make something up.)
Here’s another: Cleopatra was not “Black”, in that her family tree was largely, if not entirely, Macedonian Greek. From there, you can talk about the Fayyum Portraits, the Hellenic Greek Empire, and loads of other stuff you can’t get on the History Channel. However, you can also go the other route, and wonder at exactly what "black" and "white" mean outside of the narrow sphere of the American South, where Black means "from a small group of Benin tribes" and White means "Irish, or Ulster Scots".
The Bible is just too easy. Which means you can up the bar, with any resource that doesn’t deal with NIV. Don’t play the card that “since this proves the Bible is wrong in this particular case, we can throw it out the window”, even though that’s how you might feel. Depict David and Jonathan as gay lovers, and make a study of Biblical sex practices, from temple prostitution to polygamy. Make the point that since the Bible depicts a world that’s so violent that our own is amazingly peaceful in comparison… Failing that, disprove Revelations. Point out that The Beast of the Apocalypse was the Emperor Nero, and anything that it might have referred to is long over.
Saying something new about witches is easy-peasy, as long as you actually read an historic grimoire, and stick to established facts (as in, from a history book, not a Llewellyn book). The Witch and the Neighbors is a good one. Avoid the common mistake of saying witch trials were a feature of the Middle Ages, and condemned by the Inquisition: actually they were at their worst when the Catholic Church was at its weakest, during the Protestant Reformation, and were instigated by neighbors of the witches involved (the Inquisition was mostly about Jews in Spain). Oh, and by the way, it was Giordano Bruno who was killed, not Galileo. Galileo got put into house arrest, not for being a Copernican, but for being a wiseass to the Pope. (Not a good career move.) If you truly feel like a good BBQ of sacred cow, question Goddess worship as anything other than a hypothetical construct of German Romantics, and point out that all we know about Norse mythology was written by monks.
Snopes is your friend, along with the Skeptical Inquirer. Inflate the opposition's statements: Catherine the Great did not keep a stable of "loving stallions" (but was a victim of of a smear campaign against an effective female ruler). Emphasize the beauty of Nostradamus's “twin lions” quatrain, but point out that in his symbol system, there’s no united Italy, no New World, and no Asia, outside of the Ottoman Empire.
Go with the underdog: Bruno, de Sade, Alester Crowley, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary. Nikola Tesla’s autobiography is easy and fun to read, and he’s good at explaining his discoveries. The late Julian Simon has a plethora of fun facts to play with. Find fault with some fashion among your peers, suggest that Madonna was overhyped, and not a "serious artist", complain that movies based on comic books are vapid and shallow (whether this is a disservice to comic books, or to film is your call, however). If you can write, even semi-literately, about Fanny Hill, the Satyricon (not a bad movie...either), or Lysistrata, you can be sure of getting a good grade, if only because of your sheer nerve.
The point is not to toady to GrownUps, but to suggest that you’re different enough from your peers that you might actually have a few original thoughts. Hey, if it worked for William F. Buckley….