Question 1

What 1927 film was the first feature-length talkie?
The Blue Angel
The Wizard of Oz
The Black Pirate
The Jazz Singer

Question 2

Why did movie theaters thrive during the Great Depression?
Brief escape from reality
Prices relatively inexpensive
Subsidized by the WPA
Sources of current news

Question 3

How did Mohandas Gandhi convince the British to decolonize India in 1947?
Leading guerrilla resistance
Using passive resistance
Ceding Pakistan to Britain
Starting a civil war in India

Question 4

Why did Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicate to the Social Democratic Party in 1919?
Appease the Spartikusbund uprising
Satisfy the terms of the Treaty of Versailles
Avoid imprisonment by invading Czechs
Support the new Weimer Republic government

Question 5

In Franz Kafka's The Trial, why is protagonist Josef K. arrested and tried?
For being a communist
For being Jewish
For killing his mother
For an unknown reason

Question 6

What did Bertolt Brecht aim to accomplish by alienating audiences with his epic theater?
Expose the excesses of a capitalistic society
Make them view the characters critically
Shock them into turning to Marxism
Force them to identify with the main character

Question 7

Why did Hitler begin the tradition of carrying the Olympic torch from Athens to the Olympic venue in 1936?
Show off the Germans' athletic abilities
Advertise Germany's openness to other cultures
Suggest that Germany was the new classical Greece
Imply Germany's position as civilization's center

Question 8

On what condition would Picasso allow Guernica to be on permanent display in a museum in his native Spain?
Picasso himself was dead
Spanish people regain civil liberties
Francisco Franco was dead
Spain became a republic

Question 9

With what did Bauhaus School founder Walter Gropius equate his architecture?
Politics
Romance
Nationalism
Religion

Question 10

How many Jews are estimated to have been exterminated at Auschwitz-Birkenau?
85,000
444,000
1-2.5 million
6 million

Question 11

What is the central thematic concern of the Theater of the Absurd?
Futility of organized religion
Ridiculousness of the masses
Meaninglessness of existence
Fragmentation of the human psyche

Question 12

Why did a rooster have psychological meaning to Jackson Pollock, who painted one into his Guardians of the Secret?
Like the rooster, Pollock had an colossal ego
He grew up on a California chicken farm
A rooster had stolen his severed fingertip
Like his art, roosters symbolize honesty

Question 13

What work best characterizes the Beat generation?
Robert Frank's The Americans
Jack Kerouac's On the Road
William S. Burrough's Naked Lunch
Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"

Question 14

As discussed in the chapter's "Continuity and Change" section, in 1954 why did the U.S. Supreme Court rule that "separate but equal" schools for whites and blacks were unacceptable?
The races were alienated from each other
Separate by definition means inherently unequal
Not all districts could afford racially separate schools
The South was excluding blacks from education

Question 15

In Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, why does Godot never arrive?
He is dead
Audience never knows
He does not exist
He goes to the wrong place

Question 16

Why is Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist play titled Huis Clos (No Exit)?
Main character is in prison
Set in a concentration camp
Main character is in hell
Focuses on a loveless marriage

Question 17

Why do the works by Jean Dubuffet, such as Corps de Dame, look do disordered?
He practiced "ghost drawing," producing works while in a trance
He aimed for "authentic" art, divorced from convention and tradition
He modeled his works after the art brut created by psychotics and children
He deconstructed figures, reducing them to unraveled lines

Question 18

According to Søren Kierkegaard, why must Christians live in a state of anguish caused by their own freedom of choice?
They must endure the guilt of their sins
Belief in God requires suspension of reason
They hold responsibility for Jesus's sacrifice
Temptation awaits them at every turn

Question 19

To reap the full effect of David Smith's Blackburn: Song of an Irish Blacksmith, what must the viewer do?
See it in different lights
Move around it
Know Smith's background
See it move

Question 20

What does Roy Lichtenstein criticize in Oh, Jeff . . . I Love You, Too . . . But . . . ?
Comic book mentality
Georges Seurat's pointillism
Modern love's emptiness
America's obsession with Hollywood

Question 21

What did the electronic synthesizer allow composers to create for the first time?
Stereo and surround sound
Music without performers
The sound of pure vibration
A natural echo chamber

Question 22

Why did rap, or hip-hop, develop during the 1960s?
Perform during the Last Poets gatherings
Protest treatment of African Americans
Popularize works by African American poets
Protest the dominancy of white music

Question 23

According to Jean-Paul Sartre in "Black Orpheus," what about black people confirmed their authenticity-defined them?
Skin color
History of enslavement
African diaspora
Music and religion

Question 24

In The Feminist Mystique, why does Betty Friedan reject Freud's idea that women envy men?
Assumption that women are inferior to men
Too much emphasis to female sexuality
Denial of the chance for inequality to be eliminated
Acceptance that culture determines gender roles

Question 25

In his mural F-111, how does artist James Rosenquist equate the military with consumer culture?
Juxtaposes consumer products with the fighter plane
Paints product advertisements on the plane's body
Symbolizes the war with various product labels
Shows American consumers in awe of the bomber

Question 26

What was a main effect of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Running Fence?
Spirit of collaboration in its erection
Political statement that it offered
Extraordinary images of it from space
Reusability of the 24.5 miles of fabric

Question 27

In 1963, why did Birmingham, AL, officials stop distributing food to the city's needy?
To stop the segregation protests led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
In response to the black community's boycott of Birmingham stores
To force the poor black families to relocate to another city
In retaliation for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church

Question 28

Why did Smithson use the spiral shape for his land art?
Association with pagan religions
Symbolism of rebirth and renewal
Prevalence in nature and ornamentation
Reflection of the Great Salt Lake's shape

Question 29

How did television's An American Family star Lance Loud create controversy in the mid 1970s?
He was openly gay
He was divorced
He supported abortion
He posed nude for Andy Warhol

Question 30

According to composer Philip Glass, what made the score for Robert Wilson's Einstein on the Beach so difficult?
Many repeating patterns
Interweaving of text and music
Patterns that almost never repeat
53 brief thematic fragments

Question 31

Why did African painter Chris Ofili support The Holy Virgin Mary on two balls of elephant dung?
The dried and varnished dung made sturdy mounts
Dried elephant dung is considered good luck in Africa
He wanted to make himself more known through controversy
The Zimbabwe viewed elephant dung as a fertility symbol

Question 32

What is a key question for grasping meaning in Gerhard Richter's photographic paintings?
Why he selected a particular photograph
Why he deviated from the photograph's reality
Why he omitted certain details from the photograph
Why he blurred some details and not others

Question 33

How is deconstruction, the act of analyzing a text to see what has been omitted or overlooked, integral to postmodernism?
Determine a reader's response to a work
Draw attention to the individual words
Become aware of culture's influence on a text
Expose the possibilities of meaning

Question 34

What has Santiago Calatrava designed the Port Authority Trans Hudson station at the World Trade Center site to resemble?
Stepped-terrace memorial garden
Rainbow bridge spanning Ground Zero
Series of monoliths of graduating heights
Bird being released by a child's hands

Question 35

What does David P. Bradley expose in his painting Indian Country Today?
Defacement of Native American lands
Assimilation of Native American and white
Commercialization of Native American tradition
Revitalization of Native American lands

Question 36

Why did Zhang Huan invite 40 Chinese peasants to be photographed standing in a pond to raise the water level?
Make it into the Guinness Book of World Records
Show how Western culture was drowning the Chinese
Raise Beijing officials' consciousness about the poor
Show how the Chinese class system caused loss of self

Question 37

Why did the Chinese government demand Zhang Hongtu's painting Bird's Nest, in the Style of Cubism be removed from China?
Inclusion of words in English, not Chinese
Imitation of French Cubism style
Inappropriate muted palette for celebration
Use of number 8 to mock Chinese superstition

Question 38

Why did playwright Luis Valdez produce Zoot Suit?
Call attention to police brutality against Latinos
Raise awareness about Hispanic farmworkers' low pay
Help César Chávez unionize Hispanic farmworkers
Celebrate the Hispanics' success in American culture

Question 39

How does Renzo Piano's Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center in New Caledonia qualify as "green architecture"?
Ten pavilions function as wind scoops and cool the inside
Open, unfinished pavilions are used to collect rainwater
Open center is used for cultivating bamboo for construction
Southern orientation provides passive solar heating

Question 40

In Thomas Pynchon's novel V. why can protagonist Herbert Stencil never fulfill his quest for the mysterious V?
V. died in Italy during World War II
Not a person, V. is an unreachable vanishing point
V. moved to Africa and changed her name
V. was a figment of his father's imagination.