Answer all three parts of the exam in the bluebooks. Number the parts you answer.

PART 1 : Paired IDs

Choice of 5 out of 8; 30 points total; just under an hour

Briefly identify both parts of each pair (who, what, when, where) and write a paragraph about the connection between the parts. The connection is up to you. It can be a comparison, contrast, thematic, whatever - be creative, but support the connection you draw.

A. Mistress Auld AND Mr. Kantorek

B. Adam Smith AND Booker T. Washington

C. The Iron House AND the Birmingham Jail

D. Dr. Pangloss AND the Great Leap Forward

E. "A revolution is not a dinner party."

AND

"Satyagrahi's object is to convert, not to coerce, the wrong-doer."

 

F. "When white men had written history books, the black man simply had been left out."

AND

"It occurred to me one day that there was one thing peculiar about such

stories, and that was the absence of peasants who tilled the land."

 

K. Rose AND Gimpel the Fool

L. Okonkwo's son Nwoye AND Troy's son Cory

M. Isaac Newton AND James Cone

 

PART II: Focused Essay

Choice of 1 out of 3; 30 points; about 45 minutes

Choose one of the following questions focusing on a particular set of C&T readings this semester. In answering the question, you should have a thesis and be able to demonstrate familiarity with the major ideas and concepts of the readings. Use concrete details to illustrate your ideas.

1. Both Primo Levi's "The Drowned and the Saved" and the readings for the African-American unit illustrate the ways in which human beings survive and learn to express the horrible suffering and oppression of their experience with dignity, integrity and emotive power. Discuss, comparing "The Drowned and the Saved" with two of the readings from the African-American unit.

2. Consider Candide and Paul Bäumer as men of the Enlightenment. Are they the vision of the man of reason posited by Locke and Smith or do they more nearly resemble the ideal of man introduced by Marx, Nietzsche and Freud? In the essay establish the character of the Enlightenment and its view of man. Show how Marx, Nietzsche, and/or Freud modified or extended the Enlightenment perspective.

3. We have three views from our readings of Mao-Tse Tung. Is the Mao of Edgar Snow's Red Star over China, the same person as the Mao quoted in the Little Red Book and the Mao whose programs are described in Wild Swans?

PART III: General Reflective Essay

Answer 1 out of 3; 40 points; about 1 hour and 15 minutes

The following questions ask you to develop connections among the various modules and readings in order to explicate a central theme from the semester. Please be specific in illustrating your essay with concrete examples from the readings, lectures and films for the course.

1. Although the distinctiveness of different cultures and traditions is an important dimension of learning, the danger is that in the necessary generalizations about cultural uniqueness we often forget both the immense and rich diversity within a culture as well as those aspects of the human condition that are universal. Discuss, with reference to three cultures: 20th Century China, African-American, 20th Century Jewish, and post-Enlightenment Europe.

2. A central theme of this semester's readings in C&T seems to have been freedom or liberty. This would seem to be a straightforward idea -- everyone wants to be free, right? But is the concept of liberty as uncomplicated as that? Drawing on a range of the readings we have done this semester, write an essay discussing the concept of freedom. Questions you might consider in your discussion might include: What does freedom mean? Is it freedom from something, or freedom to do something? Is it always good, or is there a scary, insecure side to freedom? How many different people conceived of it and attempted to achieve it? Is freedom political, economic, social, intellectual? All of the above?

3. Violence and non-violence have been the complementary concepts filling many of our readings this semester. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Eric Maria Remarque and Primo Levi were advocates against violence; Nietzsche, Freud, Mao, Malcolm X, Chinua Achebe may be advocates for violence. Write an essay describing the principles of non-violence, and show how the readings took different sides on the issue. Explain why some recommended violence for the improvement of a culture and others did not. 

The Enlightenment and its Aftermath

LECTURE: The Enlightenment (Melissa Butler)

LECTURE: The 19th Century (Cheryl Hughes)

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Giuseppe Mazzini, "Young Europe's Pact of Fraternity,"

Heinrich von Treitschke, Selections from "The Nature of the State," "The Administration of the State," and Politics

Rudyard Kipling, "The White Man's Burden"

Friedrich Nietzsche, selections from The Portable Nietzsche

Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion selections

 

LECTURE: Crisis of the Enlightenment: the Holocaust (Stephen Webb)

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

Yiddish stories and slides

Primo Levi, The Drowned and The Saved

Holocaust poetry

Jonas, "The Concept of God after Auschwitz"

Elie Wiesel, "A Prayer for the Days of Awe"

 

LECTURE: The End of the Enlightenment? (Stephen Morillo and Paul McKinney)

Chinua Achebbe, Things Fall Apart.

Mohandas Gandhi "My Religion" and "The Liberty March"

Heinz Pagels, from the Cosmic Code

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Modern Art Slides

 

China in the Modern World

LECTURE: Revolutions and Modernization (Hall Peebles)

Lu Hsun, short

Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China

Mao Tse Tong, The Little Red Book

Jung Chang, Wild Swans

 

The African American Experience

LECTURE: Slavery, Emancipation and the Dream Deferred (Peter Frederick)

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

B.T. Washington, "Atlanta Exposition Address"

WEB DuBois, Souls of Black Folk,

Poetry

August Wilson, Fences

LECTURE: Malcolm, Martin and the Black Religious Experience (Michael Brown)

Video, "EYES ON THE PRIZE"

 

The Autobiography of Malcolm X,

Martin Luther King, "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

James Cone, God of the Oppressed

Video, "SAY AMEN, SOMEBODY

Alice Walker, The Welcome Table for Sister Clara Ward

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Colored People.