These are sample instructions for both parts of the exam--short answer and essay. Following is a list of terms from the first part of the quarter which will be covered on the midterm. Please comment if you have questions.
Short Answer (60%)
Answer SIX out of the following eight questions in 3-5 sentences each. Be sure to respond to each of your six questions directly with specific information from texts, lectures, and class discussions. Your answer must show knowledge of the texts in question. This section of the exam should take you 25-30 minutes. This section is worth 60% of your grade on the midterm.
***one or two of the short answers might also be a passage identification from Shakespeare.
Essay Question (40%)
Answer ONE of the following two questions in a substantial, well-organized essay that takes account of each part of the question. You should offer an introductory paragraph with a thesis claim (which answers all parts of the question). Then offer supporting paragraphs, each with evidence from texts, support, and explanation. In the support section, be sure to provide specific information about the texts you discuss. This section of the exam should take you 20-25 minutes. This section is worth 40% of your grade on the midterm.
Possible themes for the Essay Question: Meanings of the term “making”; Cultural making: weaving of various media, plots & traditions; Role of holidays, celebrations in theater & painting; Various attitudes towards making & the crafts; Art vs. craft; Role of class differences in making of theater & painting; New ambitions for the status of theater & painting; Art and its political context; Art as ideology (reflection or reinforcement of existing political/economic structures); Art as weapon (critique of political/economic structures); Artists to Consider: Botticell (Primavera)i, Hoch (Cut with the Kitchen Knife), Grosz (works from lecture), Kathe Kollwitz (from lecture), Heartfield (Hitler Swallows Money and Spews Nonesense); Photomontage and Film as “new” forms of Art (Hausmann,Heartfield, Grosz, Baader, Brecht)
*****terms below in green are less important.
List of Exam Study Terms
Writer’s Guide
genre
comedy
tragedy
active reading
textual explication
primary vs. secondary sources
Shakespeare
Drama
Comedy vs. tragedy
Reality/Fantasy
Meta-theater
Fancy/Imagination
Forest vs. city
Power and Authority (Athens as Aristotelian City)
Socioeconomic Class
Relationship of crafts (rude mechanicals) to theatrical making
Shakespeare as a “maker”
Shakespeare as a weaver of traditions
Classical myths in MSND
English folklore & holidays in MSND
Function of magic in MSND
Function of holidays for real communities and for MSND
Metamorphosis
Shakespeare’s several audiences
Shakespeare’s ambitions for new theater (poetic art plus craft)
Arguments about marriage & its significance in MSND
Political significance of marriage
Coercion, consent, accommodation
apprehension / comprehension (Theseus’ speech on the imagination)
constancy (Hippolyta’s reply)
wall, chink, moonshine (their significance as metaphors)
Gains & losses for the characters at the end of MSND
Naming, as a form of Making
Alberti
Renaissance humanism
Alberti’s ambitions for painting as an art
Liberal arts (esp. geometry and rhetoric)
Alberti’s use of Aristotle’s rhetoric
Logos (istoria)
Ethos (in painting); dignity; appropriateness
Pathos (in painting)
Formal aspects of painting: line, composition, color
Commentator figure
Various audiences for painting (according to Alberti)
Painters’ education
Botticelli
La Primavera (1482) [link available on our section website under “Paintings” tab]
Botticelli’s connection to the crafts
Occasion for the production of La Primavera
Intended placement & function of La Primavera
Istoria of La Primavera
Ethos & pathos of figures
Chloris & Zephyr
Flora
metamorphosis
Calendimaggio
Three Graces: Chastity, Desire, Beauty
Liberality
Venus (compare Venus from The Birth of Venus)
Cupid
Mercury
Types of love depicted in La Primavera
Art in Weimar/Nazi Germany
Methods of the historian
Context
Making & doing together (“Can a maker ever NOT be a doer?”)
6 C’s of Historical Understanding
Relationship of art and politics (“Can art be political? Can artists help make a revolution?”)
Karl Marx
Relationship of art and economics
Capitalism
Communism
Socialism
Bourgeoisie
Proletariat
Ideology
Labor expropriation (surplus value)
World War I
Treaty of Versailles
War Guilt / war debt
Russian (Bolshevik) Revolution
Lenin
Weimar Republic
Majority Socialists (Ebert)
Spartacus League (Liebknecht, Luxemburg)
Dadaism
Dada Manifesto
Expressionism
Dadaists’ complaints against “art”
“Art Scabs”
Bauhaus
Gropius
Grosz: political arguments in his art (see images on Moeller’s site)
Heartfield: political arguments in his art (see images)
Photomontage & its political significance
Hoch: political & gender arguments in her art (see images)
“The new woman”: androgyny, same-sex relationships
Aesthetic
Brecht, Realism
Function of Art: Communication, Expression, Document
Study Question Link: https://eee.uci.edu/08w/29011/home/Questions+from+Britannica.doc
4 comments:
Will we be answering the midterm in a blue book? If so, which size should we get?
yes, blue book 8 1/2 x 11.
Hi Erin, I had a question regarding surplus value. I don't understand how the working people are benefiting the bourgeois and their art work.
the working people are not. the bourgeious benefit from the working class--the idea is that their labor is worth more than they are paid for and they do not receive that money. this is the surplus. the people who benefit from that labor are all others (bourgeios and upper classs) in society. it might help to think about it in terms of low-wage workers today, like the whole wal-mart thing, or barbara ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed.
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