Humanities Chapter 15

Following the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, how is the African-American experience best described?

Harsh treatment, segregated housing, and unequal employment

What group of people make up the largest ethnic minority in the United States?

Hispanics

How can the state of the world following World War II be best summarized?

The world's population was in a state of shock and disillusion.

According to language theorists, a text refers to what feature?

Any mode of cultural expression

What characteristics are common in the work of video artist Bill Viola?

Buddhist thought Slow motion Explorations of mortality

What tool enabled molecular biologists to successfully map the human genome?

Computer

Which author, in his novel Underworld, captures the cinematic rush of our media-driven infotopia, and the Postmodern penchant for mixing "high" and "low" elements?

Don DeLillo

True or false: Postmodernism is pluralistic; it suggests that meaning is absolute and fixed; and that the individual has numerous (and often contradictory) identities.

False

What literary genre considers the future consequences of present-day human activity?

Science fiction

Which character type finds expression in postwar literature?

The existential antihero

Which of the following statements about the global village and the Information Age are true?

There has been an information explosion of vast proportions. Every new development potentially affects every global villager.

Whose novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, is a sensitive exploration of youthful experiences in Harlem?

James Baldwin

refers to culturally prescribed constructions of masculine or feminine identity.

Gender

What idiom describes the style of Postmodern architecture?

"Less is a bore."

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty is an example of what type of art?

Environmental

The most revolutionary musical invention of the late 1960s was the

synthesizer

How has the Cold War been described?

A contest for world domination

What radical new Modernist style originated in New York City in 1945?

Abstract Expressionist

What quality features prominently in the arts of the twenty-first century?

Activism

Which filmmaker was prominent in postwar cinema?

Akira Kurosawa

What was the result, in 1947, of Islamic liberation movements in India?

An independent Pakistan

Which liberation movements impacted the second half of the twentieth century, from about 1930 to 2000?

Anticolonialism Civil rights

What was a condition fundamental to existential philosophy?

Anxious estrangement from God

Which statements about contemporary photography are true?

Artists may produce photographs of images they did not themselves originally capture. Some photographs are the result of digital manipulation.

In which ways has contemporary art changed over the last several decades?

Artworks have become more interactive and participatory. Installations take up increasingly larger spaces.

What aspect of New Media art adds digital information to real-time life?

Augmented reality

Which film used pure CGI to depict alternate realities?

Avatar

Which of the following are characteristics of poetry of the last sixty years?

Belief that language shapes and articulates the self Concerns with global issues are common themes

What features in contemporary cinema resulted from advances in digital technology?

CGI High definition

In what way did postwar cinema search for meaning?

Challenge to traditional moral values

Which are characteristics of Postmodern fiction?

Characters undergo little or no development Plots often lack logical direction

What did Robert Rauschenberg call his monumental assemblages of "found" images?

Combines

What element marks John Ashbery's poem, "Paradoxes and Oxymorons," as Postmodern?

Deconstruction of language

What is the literary genre that gives an original and fictionalized narrative context to contemporary events and situations called?

Docufiction

What is the principle advocating equal social, political, and economic rights for men and women?

Feminism

Postwar era reform movements were primarily aimed to achieve what result?

Freedom from oppression

Which authors are known for writing in the Magic Realist style?

Gabriel Garcia Márquez Salman Rushdie

Match each concept to its corresponding definition.

Gender → A culturally prescribed construct of masculine or feminine identity. Sex → A biologically determined construct of male or female identity.

What futuristic innovations were predicted by William Gibson in his 1984 novel, Neuromancer?

Genetic engineering

Works from Frank Stella's "Protractor" series are classified by what term?

Geometric Abstraction

Which artwork is an example of the close interactivity in contemporary art, allowing the viewer to be both creator and spectator?

Graffiti Nature: Lost, Immersed, and Reborn

Which composer used microtones to achieve instrumental tone clusters that shimmer and murmur hypnotically?

György Ligeti

What are features of the style known as New Realism?

Indifference to social issues Representational content

What features did Robert Venturi's theory of architectural Postmodernism emphasize?

Individuality Visual complexity Wit and playfulness

Which of the following are characteristics of Cunningham's choreography?

It focuses on abstract form. It embraces everyday actions, such as running and falling.

What describes the impact of social media in the geopolitical realm?

It has helped organize political revolutions.

Match each author and corresponding description.

James Baldwin → Observed that black people were strangers in a modern world, whose traditions were claimed by whites. Ralph Ellison → Probes the black estrangement from the white culture with surrealistic intensity.

Who was the leading philosopher of the twentieth-century philosophical movement called existentialism?

Jean-Paul Sartre

What mid-century American composer is known for his experimental combinations of sound, noise, and silence?

John Cage

Absurdist plays feature which characteristics?

Lack of dramatic expression Characters undergo little change Dialogue contradicts actions

What characteristics can be found in the Geometric Abstraction works of Frank Stella, such as his "Protractor" series?

Machinelike purity Impersonal style Simple shapes

What literary genre features magical elements that appear in an otherwise realistic setting?

Magic realism

The use of musical intervals smaller than the semitones of traditional European and American music, but common to the music of India and the Near East is called by what term?

Microtonality

Who is considered the "father of video art?"

Nam June Paik

Duane Hanson's Tourists sculpture is an example of what style?

New Realism

Where did abstract expressionism originate?

New York City

What characteristics describe Postmodernism and Postmodernist texts?

Offers alternatives to Modernist expression in the form of parody, whimsy, paradox, and irony Appropriates preexisting texts and images from history, advertising, and the media

Match the Latino author with his or her work.

Oscar Hijuelos → The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Sandra Cisneros → The House on Mango Street Junot Diaz → The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

What aspect of ethnic identity is summarized in the Yoruba proverb: "I am because we are; What I am is what we are"?

Perception that one belongs to a group that shares the same cultural values

What two styles of art emerged in China during the 1990s?

Political Pop Cynical Realism

What style of art embraced the imagery of consumerism and celebrity culture as mediated by television, film, and magazines?

Pop art

In ______ fiction, characters undergo little or no development, plots often lack logical direction, and events—whether ordinary, perverse, or fantastic—may be described in the detached tone of a newspaper article.

Postmodern

What outcomes are possible from the successful mapping of the human genome?

Prediction of hereditary diseases Preventive treatment of gene-related diseases Produce robotic body parts

During the information age, what phase did philosophy enter, which denied any true or uniform system of thought?

Radical skepticism

What is a primary feature of Pop art?

Realist imagery

Who monumentalized the art of assemblage in works that incorporate old items such as broken furniture, tires, and street signs?

Robert Rauschenberg

What genre of music is considered an expression of youth culture in the 1960s?

Rock

_____ was a fact of American life for 250 years, until the end of the Civil War.

Slavery

What work of environmental art is considered one of the most important of the late twentieth century?

Spiral Jetty

Islamist nationalism in Iraq and Iran has been hampered by which factors?

Sunni and Shiite conflict British interference

In an attempt to reconcile Einstein's theory of relativity with quantum physics, theorists seek to establish a "theory of everything."

Superstring

What instrument allows a musician to control the texture, timbre, and intensity of electronic sound?

Synthesizer

Which contemporary composer wrote The First Emperor, an opera that rings together two radically different operatic styles, Western and Peking?

Tan Dun

What is one of the greatest threats to the global community?

Terrorism

Which of the following are characteristics of The Ghosts of Versailles, composed by John Corigliano and classified as the first Postmodern opera of the twentieth century?

The story takes place in three different worlds. It was scored for orchestra and synthesizer. The score combines traditional and contemporary musical styles.

How can String or Superstring Theory best be described?

The universe is multidimensional and united by globules of matter.

Which feature is shared by the Political Pop and Cynical Realism art styles?

They both seized on Western icons and popular commercial advertising techniques to satirize issues.

Which two major crises challenge the global community of the twenty-first century?

Threat of terrorism Environmental protection

Rock music is associated with which of the following aspects of 1960s culture?

Tradition Sexual freedom Rebellion

True or false: Absurdist playwrights rejected traditional dramatic structure.

True

What social media websites have helped create and solidify the global village?

Twitter Facebook

Which of the following describe the existential antihero in postwar literature?

Uncertain of purpose Alienated by nature Trapped by freedom

Which two nations confronted one another in hostile distrust following World War II?

United States Soviet Union

The Cold War was a battle between which of the following two superpowers?

United states and Soviet Union

What is the computer-driven form of interactive art that allows the user to interact with a computer-simulated environment?

Virtual reality

The music of John Cage is ______, or based on chance or random procedures.

aleatoric

Traditional photography has undergone radical changes in the past sixty years in large part due to the proliferation of ______ photography.

digital

Effects of modern industry such as sulfur emissions, pollution, and nuclear leaks threaten the global .

ecosystem

The term ______ refers to the ecological community and its physical environment.

ecosystem

A major theme in the global perspective is ______ identity, one's bond to a group that shares the same cultural traditions, culture, and values.

ethnic

The principle advocating equal social, political, and economic rights for women equal to those of men is

feminism

In the information age, electronic modes of communication have shrunk the distances between inhabitants of the world community, resulting in what Canadian sociology Marshall McLuhan referred to as a(n)

global village.

The deliberate and systematic use of violence against civilians in order to achieve political, religious, or ideological goals refers to

terrorism