Humanities 304
Dr. Michael Delahoyde
Washington State University — Spring 2022
BIG DAY: FRIDAY, APRIL 22nd, 1:00-2:00pm.
END-OF-SEMESTER EXAM
Your last significant obligation to this course will be an exam, questions drawn from the material only after the first exam: that’s Beckett plays, Kitchen Sink Art, Minimalist Music, on through to the end of all other materials since. To study effectively in supplement to your own class notes, check the online updated syllabus for a kind of index, and revisit Canvas Modules for all art movements and images, music tracks, and links to literature notes and quotations. Here is the plan for the last exam.
I. IDENTIFICATIONS. [Total 30 points = 15 questions, 2 points each.]
Short-answer questions will ask you to identify who is “A…” or the composer of the music of Koyaanisqatsi — that kind of question. On the designated day for this second exam — Friday, April 22nd, at 1:00pm — you will receive from me an e-mail containing identification questions similar to those on the midterm exam. Attached will be a Word document with the same questions, so that you can type the answers in whichever mode is safest and preferable to you.
II. QUOTATIONS. [Total 40 points = 8 questions, 5 points each.]
The same e-mail/document will contain bigger questions, mostly (but not all) quotation-based: combinations of identification and, more importantly, significance questions based on quotations from the literature, art images, music excerpts, film clips, and the other relevant materials selected for their representativeness of our discussions on key points ever since the previous exam. You should plan to e-mail your completed exam back to me by 2:00pm. (Since probably very few of us are used to taking exams remotely like this, to depressurize the time frame note that I have reduced the numbers of questions in both portions.) You may work in coordinated cooperation with another member of the class, in which case only one of you should e-mail back to me with both names designated.
III. ESSAYS. [Total 30 points.]
In accordance with traditional WSU policy, you should submit these two mini-essays also on Friday with the other portions of the exam as a separate document to a designated space on Canvas. But, through the generosity and benevolence of me, you are afforded an automatic extension to Monday, April 25th, 12:00 noon. Answer the following questions with brilliant critical thinking, originality, and superb writing skills. The essays should each be a virtuoso piece of glory manifested in impressive eloquence, with facile reference to specifics from the materials, properly documented, to the tune of about two pages each, double-spaced.
- 1) You have won a highly-competitive NEH grant (National Endowment of the Humanities) because your high-school enemy submitted a proposal in your name. Now you have to produce a Postmodern piece. This can be literary, musical, architectural, fine arts (painting, sculpture), or other interdisciplinary creation. Describe in approximately two pages your brilliant planned piece and its purpose, or your vision.
- 2) One of the objectives of this course has been “To increase intellectual maturation and clarification of our own values through examination of ideas and attitudes in literary/cultural contexts and through articulation of these.” So what have you learned about yourself in relation to the arts and humanities of the last century? In a minimally two-page double-spaced essay, identify what content in this class made an impression on you and explain why.
BIG DAY: FRIDAY, APRIL 22nd, 1:00-2:00pm.
ESSAY EXTENSION TO: MONDAY, APRIL 25th, 2:00pm.