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Question 31

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Passage Until the 1970s, many states mandated that women assume their husbands' surnames upon marriage.  Today, women are no longer bound by this constraint, and some, like journalist Ellen Goodman, have argued that future generations will view the tradition of married women changing their names as a kind of madness.  That tradition remains strongly ingrained in society, however, and the freedom to reject it comes with social costs.Law professor Elizabeth Emens notes that although cases such as Kruzel v Podell and Dunn v Palermo established in 1975 that a married woman may legally decline to become "Mrs. His Name" (a term used by psychologist Jean M. Twenge) , it is still customary for children's surnames to be conferred patrilinearly.  Hence, a prospective bride faces a dilemma of symbolic identity; she may either retain her nominal connection to her parents and past self or create a nominal connection to her husband and future children.  Meanwhile, Emens continues, "her husband has the same name as his parents and his child and thus continuity across all three generations of his family."  Alternatively, a woman might attempt to bridge both worlds through hyphenation, by which "she alone bears the hassle of all the computer forms that apparently can't accommodate such a name, and the people who can't seem to remember it, and the people who think she's constantly trying to make a point about her independence."Other disadvantages are associated with societally atypical naming choices.  These difficulties range from the mild, like eliciting confusion when introducing oneself, to the more egregious, such as a woman whose new neighbors would not believe she and her husband were truly married.  Men also experience social backlash if they choose to adopt or incorporate their wives' names, such as movie reviewer Sam Van Hallgren, who acquired the "Van" from Carrie Van Deest.  Those cases are rare, however; thus, it is women who primarily endure these kinds of burdens.Nevertheless, there are some who see the issue differently.  In a 1996 Good Housekeeping article, Peggy Noonan advocates for the value of name changing as reflecting the couple's commitment to marriage.  In particular, she writes that the typical "bride in her 20s grew up in the Age of Divorce" and that "[t]his bride and her husband…may have fewer misconceptions than their parents about how important freedom and self-actualization are.  They may think other things are more important."  Noonan goes on to suggest that "for these brides, taking their husbands' names is a declaration not only of intention, but of faith…faith in yourself and your spouse."  Noonan ends her article by applauding the trend of more couples choosing to share a married surname.Emens criticizes this stance.  As she argues, equating commitment to marriage with a woman's willingness to change her name makes sense "only when there is no realistic possibility of him or both changing" to create a shared surname.  Legal scholar Kelly Snyder faults an argument from Laura Dawn Lewis on similar grounds, observing: "It is unclear why these [reasons] should explain a woman's choice to change her name, but not a man's."  Like Emens, Snyder stresses the importance of name to a person's sense of self as well as the legal inequities surrounding traditional marital naming.  In her view, the best way to promote a woman's freedom to make a genuine choice about her name is to facilitate men's ability to change names when marrying.  If men no longer face arduous legal and social challenges to changing their own names, then the idea of a woman doing so will no longer be seen as the natural default position. -The author's claim that a prospective bride faces a "dilemma of symbolic identity" (Paragraph 2) suggests that:

A) a prospective bride loses her identity upon marriage.
B) a woman's social identity cannot be fully expressed once she marries.
C) traditional naming practices help to resolve issues surrounding identity.
D) it is more complicated to choose one's social identity than one's legal identity.

E) B) and C)
F) None of the above

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Question 32

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Passage An untamed but generative masculine spirit, ubiquitous though often elusive, haunts the interconnection of humans with nature.  Among its most prominent images are the carved faces, formed from leaves or sprouting them, that peer out from medieval church ceilings and walls.  At once comic and forbidding, this foliate head is neither a gargoyle nor a merely decorative motif, but an archetype whose history stretches as deeply into the mists of time and myth as the roots of a tree.  Nevertheless, it was only as recently as 1939 that British scholar Julia Hamilton Somerset, better known as Lady Raglan, noting a carved face of entwined leaves in a church in southeast Wales, initiated a study of similar images and christened this mysterious male presence the "Green Man."Like many mythological figures, the Green Man is syncretic, interweaving several images and themes or variations on a pattern.  He is, as writer John Matthews claims, "far larger than any simple attempt to define him."  Chiefly, the Green Man symbolizes the union of humans and nature.  Indissolubly linked with the vegetative cycle and the agricultural year, he exudes vitality and fertility and signals both material and spiritual abundance.  Whether as the foliage-covered King of the May Day, also called Jack-in-the-Green, or as the King of the Harvest, John Barleycorn, the Green Man has been an indispensable element of traditional European village celebrations.  He is Keeper of the Forest as well as woodwose, the wild man of the woods, and is sometimes recognized as the consort of Mother Nature.Green Man images can be found in mosaics and carvings from the early Roman Empire.  Originally a pagan icon, the Green Man was incorporated into early Christian iconography, reaching a zenith of architectural popularity in Europe from the eleventh through the fifteenth century.  Notably, Chartres Cathedral in France, built in 1194, features 70 foliate heads, while in Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, constructed in 1446, no fewer than 103 such heads can be counted.  The Green Man was also known farther east; for instance, near Hatra in present-day Iraq, an imposing leafy countenance stares out from the façade of an ancient temple.The Green Man's lineage is multifaceted.  In the West he is a variant of Dionysus, the god of the vine who dies and is reborn.  Indeed, the fifth-century BCE statue of a leaf-clad Dionysus or Bacchus in Naples, Italy, is perhaps his oldest surviving image, although Dionysus may himself descend from the green-skinned Egyptian god Osiris who likewise dies and rises.  The Green Man is thought to be related to the rustic Greco-Roman deities Pan and Silvanus, and, more speculatively, to Cernunnos, the Celtic horned god of the hunt and lord of the animals.  In the East this mythic being manifests in the figure of Al-Khidir, the Verdant or Green One who is a spiritual guide of heroes in the Koran.Green Man figures also pervade Western literature, which was influenced at its origin by the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and its character of Enkidu, a wild, shaggy nature man fashioned by the gods as a counterpart to the young King Gilgamesh.  Later the medieval tales of King Arthur feature the baffling Green Knight, who, like the eastern Al-Khidir, is a warrior guide.  In the fifteenth century, the Green Man reemerges as Robin Hood; in the twentieth century, J. M. Barrie's eternally youthful Peter Pan is tellingly "clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that flow from trees."In Matthews' view, the Green Man is the embodiment of "unvanquishable greenness."  This perspective might explain the recurrence of his image and its recent adoption by environmental awareness movements as an assurance of ecological renewal. -The author's central point in discussing the examples of the Turkana and Samburu tribes is that those who research other cultures should:

A) keep in mind the cultural effects caused by the prevalence or rarity of literacy.
B) strike a balance between intellectual openness and rigid thinking.
C) be receptive to the idea that obvious interpretations may indeed be correct.
D) avoid closed-mindedness in interpreting cultural practices.

E) C) and D)
F) A) and C)

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Question 33

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Passage Since the 1950s, scholars have been engaged in reconstructing a multifarious collection of ancient sacred texts, now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, from a welter of as many as 100,000 fragments of disparate size and shape.  With some fragments no larger than a postage stamp and covered with barely decipherable writing, the formidable paleographic project presents a jigsaw puzzle of epic proportions and frustrating intricacy.  Yet, despite the fragmentary condition of the scrolls, their discovery has turned out to be the most important religious archaeological windfall of the 20th century.The scrolls were found in large pottery jars hidden inside the caves that dot the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, at a site called Khirbet Qumran, 13 miles east of the city of Jerusalem, by Bedouin goatherds in late 1946.  In the desert near Qumran, members of a Jewish sect known as the Essenes had established a small community during the latter half of the Second Temple period that began in the 6th century BCE and lasted into the first century CE.  The Essenes are noted in the works of the Roman statesman and historian Pliny the Elder, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, and the Jewish historian Josephus.  In the first century, Pliny described the Qumran community as a monastic brotherhood that followed an ascetic lifestyle of work, prayer, and the study of sacred law and esoteric doctrine.  The Essenes differed from the mainstream Jewish community in objecting to animal sacrifices and subscribing to the heretical dictum that fate is "the mistress of all."  The group had migrated to the desert, eschewing urban areas, as Philo reports, "because of the ungodliness customary among the city-dwellers."The scrolls date from approximately 250 BCE to 68 CE.  Scholars speculate that they represent either the library of the Essene community or the collected works of various local Jewish groups.  It is likely that the Essenes stashed the scrolls in jars and placed these inside the caves when they fled the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple (Herod's Temple) by the Romans in 70 CE.  The more than 900 identified manuscripts include parts of every book in the Old Testament canon except the Book of Esther, some with as many as 39 copies.  Only one scroll, the Great Isaiah Scroll, offers a virtually intact book: its 24 feet of parchment features all 66 chapters of the Book of Isaiah.  Other scrolls contain noncanonical texts, including apocrypha and pseudepigrapha-late pseudonymous writings ascribed to various biblical prophets and patriarchs.  Before the scrolls' fortuitous discovery, some of these works were known only through translations, or even translations of translations.  A few scrolls contain extra-biblical texts, chiefly sectarian manuals cataloguing the rules of the Essene community.Over 75% of the parchment and papyrus scrolls are written in Hebrew; most of the others are in Aramaic (a related language that had become the standard linguistic currency in the Near East) , while a smaller number are inscribed in ancient Greek.  The writing on the scrolls moves from right to left with only the occasional paragraph break for punctuation, which makes deciphering the manuscripts almost as daunting a task as piecing together their fragments.The manuscripts demonstrate remarkable consistency with the Masoretic or medieval Hebrew text used for many English translations of the Bible, notably the King James Version. Thus, the scrolls, which predate the Masoretic text by about 1,000 years, largely substantiate its reliability and authoritative status.  They also offer a window onto a critical period in Judeo-Christian culture; in particular, they confirm the religious diversity of the time and the similarity of an eschatological, messianic Jewish sect of the first century to early Christian communities. -Based on the passage, one can most reasonably infer that the discovery of the scrolls was of great significance because it:

Passage In the 1890s, the world of American dance underwent a profound transformation when a group of pioneering dancers dared to challenge the rigid 350-year-old protocols of classical ballet.  The likes of Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, and Ruth St. Denis rebelled against ballet tradition while simultaneously rejecting the alternative world of vaudeville.  Duncan, in particular, was a proponent of what was deemed "uninhibited freedom of movement."  Appearing on stage in a loose tunic with bare feet and her hair down, she performed natural, flowing movements she claimed "emanated from her solar plexus."  For her part, Fuller combined billowing costumes, dramatic lighting, and improvised movements in attempting to imitate natural phenomena, as exemplified by her "serpentine" dance.  Meanwhile, St. Denis and her partner Ted Shawn incorporated elements of Native American and East Asian ritualistic dance into their work.  These artists managed to break through the prejudice of tradition, clearing the way for the advent of modern dance in the20th century.The second generation of artists, which included Doris Humphrey and Lester Horton, continued to loosen dance from the restraints of classical ballet.  Many were also determined to raise the audience's consciousness about contemporary social concerns during a time that witnessed the aftermath of World War I, increased industrialization, the Great Depression, and the rise of fascism in Europe.  For a while, the modern dance movement became more than an assault on classical ballet; by dramatizing events on stage to inspire a collective emotional response, dance became a vehicle designed to spur sociopolitical change.Martha Graham, a student of St. Denis and Shawn, went on to develop a radical new system of movement.  The "Graham technique" originated from her cardinal belief that movement expresses the emotions that people attempt to conceal and words are inadequate to express.  The new technique was organic; based on the natural rhythm of breathing, it exaggerated the muscular contraction and release, as well as the consequent flexion of the spine, required to breathe.  The visual effects were startling, and the iconoclastic Graham went so far as to assert that the technique "represented the human being's inner conflicts."  Furthermore, the movement of contraction became a regular feature of modern dance, which, as some sources stress, was "used, altered, and redefined by many subsequent choreographers."As modern dance evolved, it became the antithesis of ballet, which followed strict patterns of movement and aimed to be light and graceful.  By contrast, the new dance style was often angular, jagged, and stark; the choreography featured nonlinear movements and irregular contours.  Instead of working against gravity as in ballet's sequences of vertical leaps, the contemporary style made gravity the dancers' ally in initiating movements from the lower abdomen with their bare feet rooted to the floor.  Whereas ballet emphasized the body's limbs, the new dance mode accentuated the torso.  While ballet was made to appear effortless, Graham's main goal as a choreographer was to display the physical exertion of articulating emotion through the body's movement.Graham also strove to make the works she created and choreographed holistic.  She collaborated with sculptor Isamu Noguchi on stage sets, consulted with the designer Halston on costumes, and partnered with composers such as Louis Horst and Samuel Barber.  Aaron Copland wrote the score to the highly acclaimed modern "ballet" Appalachian Spring, which Graham choreographed and in which she performed the lead female role in 1944.  Building on the foundation of her precursors, Graham-who continued to dance until age 76 and to choreograph until shortly before her death at 96-made modern dance, in one scholar's estimation, "an established art form that was no longer merely regarded as an avant-garde aberration." -According to the passage, the body of the Sphinx was dug out of the sand on at least 6 different occasions throughout its history.  The passage author would most likely conclude that those numerous excavations:

Passage Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her) own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self." -The passage author's use of the term "unreliable narrator" in Paragraph 1 implies that such a narrator:

Passage Evil can most accurately be defined as the direct antithesis of good.  However, when a human situation does not lend itself to clear designations of ultimate good and ultimate evil, or of right and wrong, then the best that one can hope for is to be able to make an informed decision about which course of action is "more right" and which is "more wrong."Consider the hypothetical case of Dr. Jones, who, in discovering the antidote to a poison (Poison H) has so far concocted only a single vial.  Now suppose that six citizens have drunk from a well whose water has been contaminated with Poison H, but Citizen A has consumed an inordinate volume of the contaminated water.  Accordingly, the doctor has only enough of the antidote to save either Citizen A or the five other citizens.It may seem clear that a doctor could not justifiably allocate the entirety of an antidote to preserving one citizen's life at the expense of losing five others.  However, suppose that Citizen A is the only patient currently present in the doctor's clinic, as the remaining patients are being transferred to Dr. Jones' facility by their respective physicians.  Citizen A is, in fact, Dr. Jones' longtime patient.  The doctor must therefore decide between two exigencies:  to save his own patient's life or to await the arrival of the five remaining citizens.Would Dr. Jones be acting unethically in sacrificing Citizen A given the prospect of administering the antidote to the remaining citizens in time?  This dilemma asks the judicious individual to take into account additional factors that might encumber his or her ability to save the citizens who have not yet arrived.  One should consider, for instance, how long each patient can survive without the antidote.  Unfortunately, no one has a crystal ball to predict future events.  A decision must be made in conjunction with the information available at the time.With this in mind, one may argue that the determination of good versus evil in making a decision lies in the doctor's motivations as he considers the consequences of his impending actions.  Imagine Dr. Jones' nurse exclaiming, "But the doctor cannot make an objective comparison between the lives of other citizens and his own patient!"  Yet, perhaps the doctor would be selfishly inclined to save Citizen A, as Citizen A is the only one whose death would be considered a grievous personal loss.But are such selfish human instincts then to be labeled as evil?  The same propensities labeled as selfish underlie characteristics classified as decent human virtues, such as compassion, empathy, and loyalty.  There are particular circumstances in which the doctor would indeed be remiss to the point of what could be argued as evil-as in cases where he opts to dismiss or distrust his individual conscience.  Consider the case in which he doubts his ability to arrive at a judicious conclusion and abdicates his responsibility for making this grave decision to the nurse.  Or consider the case in which he concludes that it is indeed more valiant to save the five citizens, yet fails to act on his decision out of personal anguish at losing Citizen A or to put an end to the ordeal.In such circumstances, the decision between right and wrong, or the moral dilemma, escalates into what is more accurately a personal determination of good and evil.  In this way, the relative construct of right and wrong, as determined by one's best attempts at logic and sense, must be subordinated to a moral imperative that may be said to be absolute:  namely, that one must abide by an internal commitment to what one has reasoned to be the right decision and follow a corresponding course of action in the allotted time. -Suppose that, following ingestion of Poison H by the citizens, Dr. Jones modifies the antidote slightly in an attempt to provide more to all affected patients.  Dr. Jones finds that as a result of the modifications, the efficacy of the antidote diminishes rapidly as time passes.  According to this new information, one can assume that the doctor would:

Passage The destruction of the White House was not the fault of its original builders.  When James Hoban designed a presidential palace to reflect George Washington's vision for a residence in 1792, he upheld the best architectural standards of his day.  By the time of the 1948-1952 renovation, however, there were plenty of people to blame for the White House's condition.  A combination of poor planning, carelessness, and neglect throughout the intervening years caused a catastrophic deterioration.Robert Klara recounts a history of changes to the White House that gradually compromised its structural integrity, beginning as far back as 1833 when Andrew Jackson had pipes installed for running water.  Subsequent presidents added modern conveniences in pace with technological developments: gas lighting for James Polk, a telephone system for Rutherford Hayes, and air conditioning for Chester Arthur, among others.  None of these advancements could have been anticipated by Hoban, and they had the dual effect of increasing the load borne by the house while decreasing its ability to bear that burden.  The builders responsible for the many additions performed "careless and foolish maneuvers that a first-year architecture student would never have made," such as installing doorways in load-bearing walls or destroying the keystones of a brick arch.  Deep cuts were carved into crucial support beams to make room for pipes, wiring, and air ducts, weakening the beams and concentrating weight that would otherwise have been more evenly distributed.By the turn of the twentieth century, the structural failings of the White House had become difficult to ignore.  The building was likely beyond saving at that point, and President Roosevelt didn't help matters by allowing architect Charles McKim only four months to make repairs.  McKim reinforced the second floor as well as he could within the time allotted, but his efforts only delayed the inevitable.  In 1925, Calvin Coolidge scoffed at reports that the White House roof was unsafe until "[a] chunk of it broke off and bonked President Coolidge in the head."  Poetic justice notwithstanding, the repairs to which he only then begrudgingly agreed had a disastrous side effect: the weight of the roof was shifted away from the stronger outer walls to the weaker inner ones, causing enormous structural strain.The need to reconstruct the mansion reached a breaking point during the Harry Truman administration.  Walls continued to sink and pull away from ceilings; heavy chandeliers swung dangerously from movement on the floor above them; the entire East Room required scaffolding to prevent the collapse of its ceiling.  More dramatic incidents involved daughter Margaret Truman's piano.  Not only did the floor of her sitting room begin to sway up and down while she was playing a duet with a friend, but no steps were taken to move the piano away from the weak floor afterward.  Predictably, White House residents and staff were later horrified when one of the piano's legs crashed through, puncturing the overtaxed wood and sending debris cascading into the room below.  As for Margaret, Klara relates how she called the Steinway company to ask for "a man who could come over to rescue a piano."That event was the crescendo in a long string of architectural warnings.  Ultimately, there was little choice but to tear down and rebuild the White House.  The exterior façade was preserved, as were a few of the interior's furnishings and decorations.  Still, the extensive transformation left many feeling that the White House was no longer the same. -Which of the following historical facts would be most unexpected, based on passage information about events from the time of the White House's construction to its eventual renovation?

Passage The fledgling public television industry faced an uncertain future in the late 1960s.  Near the end of his presidency, Democrat Lyndon Johnson allocated $20 million to create the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  In 1969, however, his newly elected Republican successor Richard Nixon hoped to reduce government spending and was considering a cut of 50% or more to that appropriation.  Before a final decision was made, public broadcasting representatives were invited to appear before Congress to make their case for the full funding.  One of their leaders, future Public Broadcasting Service president Hartford N. Gunn, Jr., asked TV personality Fred Rogers to join him in testifying as a key advocate for public television.As the creator and host of the show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Rogers embodied moral values, a deep sense of purpose, and concern for the welfare of children, all of which would later make him one of the most beloved figures in television history.  At the time of the congressional hearing, however, Rogers' show had aired nationally for only a year.  Although highly regarded by his current audience, Rogers did not yet possess the level of recognition he would eventually obtain.  His televised appearance before the Sub-Committee on Communications would be many Americans' first time seeing him.  In addition, despite having studied early childhood development under such prominent psychologists as Benjamin Spock and Margaret McFarland, Rogers was not widely known as an expert in that field.  In short, Rogers was an unusual figure to be chosen to testify before Congress.  Rogers' biographer Maxwell King describes Gunn's decision to depend so heavily on Rogers' testimony as "a pretty big gamble."Chairing the sub-committee hearing was Democratic senator John Pastore of Rhode Island, portrayed by King as "a blunt, no-nonsense social conservative who shared the Republican interest in keeping federal spending in line."  Pastore had also been critical of the television industry for what he saw as its promotion of immorality.  Although those criticisms had been leveled primarily at commercial programs, Pastore's views certainly couldn't have helped the case that Rogers needed to make.  The unproven nature of public television as a recent enterprise added an additional hurdle to securing the funding.Nevertheless, despite the odds stacked against him, Fred Rogers greatly impressed Pastore and the rest of the sub-committee.  Rather than giving the type of formal testimony that might have been expected at such a hearing, Rogers simply spoke earnestly about what, in his view, made public television so important.  He shared Pastore's worries about television's content, and was especially concerned about television geared toward children.  Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which addressed children directly and acknowledged their unique perspective, was based on Rogers' vision of public programming as a positive social force.  As he explained, taking children's problems seriously and showing them that their lives can be understood and managed makes a profound difference in the type of people they become and the society they help to create.The highlight of the testimony came when Rogers recited the lyrics to one of the songs from his show, which had been inspired by a child's question about how to deal with anger.  The song acknowledges the frustrations and fears of childhood while affirming each child's ability to control his or her feelings and behavior.  Rogers' simple but encouraging words clearly moved the sub-committee members, including Senator Pastore, who responded: "Looks like you just earned the twenty million dollars."  Hartford Gunn's gamble had paid off.  In an interesting twist of affairs, Pastore himself testified the following year at the White House Conference on Children-an event chaired by none other than Fred Rogers. -The main idea of the passage is that:

Passage Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her) own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self." -What does the passage author imply in the last paragraph about Italian printer Aldus Manutius?

Passage To consult diverse interpretations is beneficial, especially in literature purporting to speak to the fundaments of human experience.  Reviewing alternative readings not only undermines complacency in scholarship, it reminds us that questions of meaning should seldom be viewed as settled but instead as suggestive of various avenues of discovery.Nevertheless, another pitfall lies at the opposite extreme.  The fear of missing genuine interpretive possibilities may lead one to imagine more differences in readings than truly exist, obscuring a hidden homogeneity among seemingly divergent understandings.  It has been said that to truly understand a people one must synthesize its stories; we must also acknowledge that to truly understand a story one must synthesize its interpretations.David McKee's deceptively rich Not Now, Bernard is an instructive example.  The plot initially concerns the futile attempts of a child to gain his parents' attention, to which, no matter the circumstance, the busy adults invariably reply: "Not now, Bernard."  The culmination of these encounters comes when Bernard informs them of a monster outside that wants to eat him, only to receive the same dismissive response.  Bernard walks into the yard and approaches the monster, whereupon "The monster ate Bernard up, every bit."The reader's shock at this turn of events is only increased upon seeing the reaction of Bernard's parents, who are entirely unfazed.  Indeed, they are entirely unaware.  The monster enters the house, eats Bernard's dinner, breaks Bernard's toy, and even bites Bernard's father, all the while finding itself just as ignored as Bernard had been.  Finally facing the indignity of being tucked into bed, the monster complains: "But I'm a monster," only to be told-naturally-"Not now, Bernard."Marina Warner views this delightfully savage story as informed by the same primal motivations which produced the carnivorous fiends of traditional fairy tales.  Referencing the psychoanalytic theories of Melanie Klein, Warner writes: "the ogre who used to stalk children has now been internalized as the image of inner compulsions, especially greed and the ferocious survival instinct….  [I]t is the child who can be understood to be the potentially insatiable devourer, the possible monster of greed and gratification and excess."  Bernard's parents "cannot tell the difference between a tiny tot and an angry beast because the two are all the same to them: that is how they see Bernard."  Thus Warner casts McKee's tale as an incisive commentary on "parents who are so automatic in their oblivion-and rejection-that they do not notice when their child has been eaten."Intriguingly, writer Sheila Hancock assumes that Bernard's parents are not oblivious.  On her interpretation no one has been eaten and replaced; rather, the monster is Bernard.  It is worth noting that of the two lines spoken by the monster, the first is simply "ROAR," a bestial vocalization that makes little impression upon Bernard's mother ("Not now, Bernard") .  The human-sounding "But I'm a monster" comes later, after a series of events in which the presence of a monster in the house has been treated as unremarkable.  The apparent powerlessness of the monster to be perceived as anything but mundane suggests it could be merely the external manifestation of the child's frustrated psyche.Even so, Hancock's view would not completely absolve Bernard's parents, who consistently ignore their son even if they do not literally allow him to be devoured.  Nor does the story lose its significance on Hancock's symbolic interpretation of events; rather, the latent psychological motivations identified by Warner would be just as operant.  Hence, whether the monster is literal or metaphorical, these seemingly divergent interpretations in fact exhibit a clear and striking coherence. -Marina Warner's analysis of the events in Not Now, Bernard (Paragraph 5) would be most challenged if which of the following were true?

Passage Since its origins in India around the 5th century C.E., the game of chess has gradually evolved into the modern form now played across the globe.  Although most people have some idea of what chess entails, there are many misconceptions about its practice.  For instance, a non-player might wonder about the maximum number of moves that can be planned in advance, but an experienced player would find that question naïve.  The unsatisfying but accurate answer is that it depends on the position, because the opponent's potential moves will at some points require calculating numerous possibilities but at other points will be an entirely forced sequence.  Similarly, a common scenario in fiction is for a player to defeat an opponent by sudden surprise-the rival's look of confidence morphing into complete disbelief as the winner unexpectedly proclaims "Checkmate."  In real chess such abrupt triumph occurs rarely or never, as the inevitability of checkmate will have been readily apparent to both sides.Checkmate is the primary goal of chess, but it is not the only way in which games may end, nor even the only way in which games may be won.  Indeed, at higher levels of play checkmate is uncommon, because the losing side typically resigns rather than prolong an unavoidable defeat by playing until checkmate has occurred.  One may also win "by flag" if the opponent runs out of time.  Nonetheless, not all games of chess result in a win for either side.  A draw may ensue by agreement of the players, by stalemate, or under certain other conditions.Public discourse about chess can occasionally veer into the ridiculous.  In 1912, it was reported that a move made by chess champion Frank Marshall elicited such admiration from onlookers that they showered gold pieces onto the board.  While the move may indeed be considered a brilliancy (thought by some to be the most beautiful chess move ever played) , the story must otherwise be spurious.  Even supposing that the viewers were so impressed as to engage in such specific and effusive praise, precisely how much gold were they supposed to have had?At one time, the prospect of machines playing chess was widely deemed absurd.  Writer Edgar Allan Poe declared that its impossibility could be established a priori because, unlike the steps of a mathematical demonstration, "[n]o one move in chess necessarily follows upon any one other."  In the early 19th century, a human-shaped machine labeled "The Turk" toured the United States as a supposed chess-playing automaton.  Although its owner claimed and seemed to prove that it was purely mechanical, Poe correctly concluded that the device was actually operated by a real person hidden inside its cabinet.  Despite this subterfuge, however, machine chess was not fundamentally impossible as Poe believed.  The early chess computers of the 1960s possessed only limited abilities, but by 1997 IBM's "Deep Blue" had defeated world champion Garry Kasparov.  Today, the strongest chess computers are unbeatable in fair contests by even the most skilled human grandmasters.Nevertheless, however unassailable in the realm of calculation, computers will always lack the most valuable trait of any chess player.  Blaise Pascal once wrote: "When the universe has crushed him man will still be nobler than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and of its victory the universe knows nothing."  In a similar sense, although computers may "win" at chess, they can never experience their victory.  The artistry of a move like Marshall's will forever be lost on them, while a human being can view and partake in its beauty, making the enjoyment of chess a distinctly human pleasure. -Based on passage information, one should expect:experienced chess players to be unsurprised by a loss.novice chess players to rarely achieve checkmate.human chess players to lose to a strong computer.

Passage For decades, socialism has been a pervasive bogeyman laying siege at the periphery of the American psyche.  Policies and candidates alike are dismissed out of hand by pronouncing them "socialist," the term sufficing to preclude further consideration.  However, such reactions to any topic ought to give us pause: have we truly judged an idea as unworthy, impractical, or unjust?  Or do we simply demonstrate an unreflective fear of a label?Initial prejudice notwithstanding, legitimate scrutiny is warranted.  Perhaps the gravest threat of socialist programmes to capitalist America is their perceived unfairness-that the rewards of labor or industry will be siphoned from those who rightfully own or generate them and bestowed upon those who did not contribute to their production.Shall we accept without question, however, the assumptions intrinsic to such notions of "rightful" ownership, or more generally, those of fairness itself?  In fact, capitalists and socialists will likely agree on the broad outlines of what fairness entails.  The objection to redistribution of wealth rests on the idea that it takes from the more deserving and gives to the less-if not to the lazy or the layabout.  Given equality of opportunity, why should he who toils be denied the right of harvest?  Why should he who idles be afforded an equal reward?Nonetheless, this claim of initial social equality is precisely what socialism rejects as illusory.  Let us suppose that everyone in society begins life upon equal footing.  None are afforded a greater portion of opportunity, but all are competitors in open tests of skill over time.  By merit, coupled with the vicissitudes of fortune, some ascend to the heights of success, others plummet to the depths of failure, still more inhabit some middle ground.  Equality is shattered, but justly, and from an early uniformity of status rise differences in wealth, garnered according to the abilities and enterprise displayed by each person.As time passes, however, the wealth or destitution of one generation is bequeathed to the next, and then inequality becomes ingrained.  What was before an earned difference of outcome is now an unearned difference of potential.  One individual has an advantage that another lacks-not gained through striving and perseverance but inherited through accident of birth.Such effects only compound over time.  Inevitably, dynasties of wealth accrue by which a few through mere circumstance enjoy economic mastery over the many, who face through the tyranny of chance an undeserved impediment.  The socialist's claim, then, is that complaints against redistribution of wealth fail in light of the very concern for fairness upon which they are founded.This same concern has led various leaders throughout history to implement socialism.  For instance, eleventh-century Chinese statesman Wang An-shih instituted state control of the economy "with a view to succoring the working classes and preventing them from being ground into dust by the rich."  This noble goal met with only temporary success, however, as the system later fell to governmental corruption, private greed, and untimely droughts and floods.Are the dismissive reactions towards socialism then justified?  Not as such.  Capitalism has many virtues, but it is equally liable to exploitation.  In post-industrial America, governmental reforms and regulations on commerce and industry were required to redress the systemic injustices perpetuated by dynastic wealth, as well as to protect the welfare of a multitude bound to wages insufficient to secure life's necessities.  Perhaps the lesson to be drawn is that a "pure" form of either capitalism or socialism will ultimately prove destructive.  Rather than embrace or reject one system from the outset, we must avoid a focus on labels and instead inquire which ideas, and in what combination, best promote the justice whose value we profess. -A discussion of which of the following, if added to the passage, would most strengthen the author's argument that ideas from capitalism and socialism should be combined?

Passage Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's instantly identifiable painting Der Schrei der Natur or, more simply, The Scream, destabilizes the very concept of a work of art as discrete and unique.  Boasting two versions in pastel and two in oil as well as a lithograph-all generated between 1893 and 1910-Munch's masterpiece arguably constitutes not a single but a multiplicitous work.  Moreover, Munch originally conceived of the painting not as a freestanding piece but as part of a more ambitious project called the Frieze of Life.  The Frieze included 22 panels portraying life circumstances and moods, such as illness, love, and death; the panel depicting despair was the precursor for The Scream.In a poem based on an 1892 diary entry, Munch relates the genesis of what would become his most celebrated work.  He was walking across a bridge with two friends in the vicinity of Ekeberg Hill, overlooking Oslo, when "…the sun was setting-suddenly the sky turned blood-red-I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence-there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city--my friends walked on and I stood there trembling with anxiety-and I sensed an infinite Scream passing through nature."The artistic consequence of Munch's terrifying epiphany is a black-shrouded figure, ill-defined and ghostlike, whose sickly pale face stares out at the viewer against the menacing background of a bloodshot sky.  Mouth wide open, eyes bulging, hands clasped to its ears in a pose more horrified than horrifying, the figure appears to tremble on a bridge over turbulent waters.The Scream aptly captured both the self-indulgence and despair characterizing the turn of the twentieth century at the same time that it heralded the existential angst of the mid-century.  Influenced by luminaries such as the impressionist painter Monet and the more deeply expressive Van Gogh, Munch's free-form style, vivid colors, and striking juxtapositions mark this work as avant-garde.Nevertheless, as art curator Martha Tedeschi asserts, The Scream is one of only a handful of paintings in the history of art able to "communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every viewer"; its primitive character transmits a raw emotionality and subjectivity.  Unsurprisingly, then, the painting has over-spilt the bounds of traditional art to become an icon of popular culture.  In the 1970s, Andy Warhol mass-produced the image on silk, the serial replications reflecting the painting's own multiplicity.  Wildly appropriated and often misused, the image-through which Munch purported to be doing nothing less than studying his own soul-has appeared on everything from keychains to dormitory posters and is in danger of becoming kitsch.Interestingly enough, two different versions of The Scream have been the targets of unusual thefts; however, in both instances the paintings were recovered.  First, a version was stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo during the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer.  In an almost comical heist, two men employed a ladder to easily access a second-story window and abscond with the painting, taking the time to leave a postcard that read, "Thanks for the poor security."  Then, in 2004, robbers entered Oslo's Munch Museum in broad daylight, intimidated museum guards with firearms, and used a wire cutter to extract another version of The Scream from the wall along with Munch's Madonna painting.Munch was a remarkably prolific painter; when he died in 1944, he left a legacy of over a thousand paintings, several thousand drawings, and more than 15,000 prints.  Ironically, however, it is the "single" provocative image of The Scream that, as both masterpiece and pop icon, has eclipsed all this artist's other works. -Suppose that the majority of artists prefer to create several versions of a work.  How would this correspond to the ideas about art presented in the passage?

Passage Since the 1950s, scholars have been engaged in reconstructing a multifarious collection of ancient sacred texts, now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, from a welter of as many as 100,000 fragments of disparate size and shape.  With some fragments no larger than a postage stamp and covered with barely decipherable writing, the formidable paleographic project presents a jigsaw puzzle of epic proportions and frustrating intricacy.  Yet, despite the fragmentary condition of the scrolls, their discovery has turned out to be the most important religious archaeological windfall of the 20th century.The scrolls were found in large pottery jars hidden inside the caves that dot the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, at a site called Khirbet Qumran, 13 miles east of the city of Jerusalem, by Bedouin goatherds in late 1946.  In the desert near Qumran, members of a Jewish sect known as the Essenes had established a small community during the latter half of the Second Temple period that began in the 6th century BCE and lasted into the first century CE.  The Essenes are noted in the works of the Roman statesman and historian Pliny the Elder, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, and the Jewish historian Josephus.  In the first century, Pliny described the Qumran community as a monastic brotherhood that followed an ascetic lifestyle of work, prayer, and the study of sacred law and esoteric doctrine.  The Essenes differed from the mainstream Jewish community in objecting to animal sacrifices and subscribing to the heretical dictum that fate is "the mistress of all."  The group had migrated to the desert, eschewing urban areas, as Philo reports, "because of the ungodliness customary among the city-dwellers."The scrolls date from approximately 250 BCE to 68 CE.  Scholars speculate that they represent either the library of the Essene community or the collected works of various local Jewish groups.  It is likely that the Essenes stashed the scrolls in jars and placed these inside the caves when they fled the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple (Herod's Temple) by the Romans in 70 CE.  The more than 900 identified manuscripts include parts of every book in the Old Testament canon except the Book of Esther, some with as many as 39 copies.  Only one scroll, the Great Isaiah Scroll, offers a virtually intact book: its 24 feet of parchment features all 66 chapters of the Book of Isaiah.  Other scrolls contain noncanonical texts, including apocrypha and pseudepigrapha-late pseudonymous writings ascribed to various biblical prophets and patriarchs.  Before the scrolls' fortuitous discovery, some of these works were known only through translations, or even translations of translations.  A few scrolls contain extra-biblical texts, chiefly sectarian manuals cataloguing the rules of the Essene community.Over 75% of the parchment and papyrus scrolls are written in Hebrew; most of the others are in Aramaic (a related language that had become the standard linguistic currency in the Near East) , while a smaller number are inscribed in ancient Greek.  The writing on the scrolls moves from right to left with only the occasional paragraph break for punctuation, which makes deciphering the manuscripts almost as daunting a task as piecing together their fragments.The manuscripts demonstrate remarkable consistency with the Masoretic or medieval Hebrew text used for many English translations of the Bible, notably the King James Version. Thus, the scrolls, which predate the Masoretic text by about 1,000 years, largely substantiate its reliability and authoritative status.  They also offer a window onto a critical period in Judeo-Christian culture; in particular, they confirm the religious diversity of the time and the similarity of an eschatological, messianic Jewish sect of the first century to early Christian communities. -The passage's analogy between the scroll reconstruction project and a jigsaw puzzle is most likely meant to illustrate that:

Passage Since the 1950s, scholars have been engaged in reconstructing a multifarious collection of ancient sacred texts, now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, from a welter of as many as 100,000 fragments of disparate size and shape.  With some fragments no larger than a postage stamp and covered with barely decipherable writing, the formidable paleographic project presents a jigsaw puzzle of epic proportions and frustrating intricacy.  Yet, despite the fragmentary condition of the scrolls, their discovery has turned out to be the most important religious archaeological windfall of the 20th century.The scrolls were found in large pottery jars hidden inside the caves that dot the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, at a site called Khirbet Qumran, 13 miles east of the city of Jerusalem, by Bedouin goatherds in late 1946.  In the desert near Qumran, members of a Jewish sect known as the Essenes had established a small community during the latter half of the Second Temple period that began in the 6th century BCE and lasted into the first century CE.  The Essenes are noted in the works of the Roman statesman and historian Pliny the Elder, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, and the Jewish historian Josephus.  In the first century, Pliny described the Qumran community as a monastic brotherhood that followed an ascetic lifestyle of work, prayer, and the study of sacred law and esoteric doctrine.  The Essenes differed from the mainstream Jewish community in objecting to animal sacrifices and subscribing to the heretical dictum that fate is "the mistress of all."  The group had migrated to the desert, eschewing urban areas, as Philo reports, "because of the ungodliness customary among the city-dwellers."The scrolls date from approximately 250 BCE to 68 CE.  Scholars speculate that they represent either the library of the Essene community or the collected works of various local Jewish groups.  It is likely that the Essenes stashed the scrolls in jars and placed these inside the caves when they fled the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple (Herod's Temple) by the Romans in 70 CE.  The more than 900 identified manuscripts include parts of every book in the Old Testament canon except the Book of Esther, some with as many as 39 copies.  Only one scroll, the Great Isaiah Scroll, offers a virtually intact book: its 24 feet of parchment features all 66 chapters of the Book of Isaiah.  Other scrolls contain noncanonical texts, including apocrypha and pseudepigrapha-late pseudonymous writings ascribed to various biblical prophets and patriarchs.  Before the scrolls' fortuitous discovery, some of these works were known only through translations, or even translations of translations.  A few scrolls contain extra-biblical texts, chiefly sectarian manuals cataloguing the rules of the Essene community.Over 75% of the parchment and papyrus scrolls are written in Hebrew; most of the others are in Aramaic (a related language that had become the standard linguistic currency in the Near East) , while a smaller number are inscribed in ancient Greek.  The writing on the scrolls moves from right to left with only the occasional paragraph break for punctuation, which makes deciphering the manuscripts almost as daunting a task as piecing together their fragments.The manuscripts demonstrate remarkable consistency with the Masoretic or medieval Hebrew text used for many English translations of the Bible, notably the King James Version. Thus, the scrolls, which predate the Masoretic text by about 1,000 years, largely substantiate its reliability and authoritative status.  They also offer a window onto a critical period in Judeo-Christian culture; in particular, they confirm the religious diversity of the time and the similarity of an eschatological, messianic Jewish sect of the first century to early Christian communities. -Based on the passage, the most probable reason why the Book of Esther is not included among the Dead Sea Scrolls would be that:

Passage Rhetorical questions with an end purpose can be propositioned with the intention of challenging curricular stratagem, particularly in the name of educational progress.  "Should we teach literature in our college classrooms?" or "Do we have an ethical obligation to teach humanities to the next generation of scholars?" are the sorts of enquiries that can set precedence in academic circles, providing fodder for discussion on implementing the best instructional tactics in the imminent restructuring of scholastic environments.  One particular issue in academia that is currently under deliberation is the justification for literary study in the classroom.So why study literature?  First, research has shown that studying the likes of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Dickens can generate feelings of human connectedness, an essential component for fulfilled living, social stimulation, and a long and healthy existence.  Immersive or "deep" reading of a literary piece serves as a meditation on, an excavation of, and a careful examination of the ubiquitous sociocultural ideas connecting the worlds in which both the author and reader reside.  One study on connectedness also found that emotionally compaginated individuals live longer than those who do not exhibit similar closeness with other humans.  Taken together, it can be surmised that "deep readers" may have a superior ability to understand and empathize socially by viewing the world through the differing perspectives of others, enhancing the potential for human connectivity.Second, it may be beneficial to recall our literary past in its truest form, the written word, over the superfluity of technological representations of ancient texts.  For instance, Shakespeare's body of work has been reduced to two-minute self-produced video clips found on the Internet, a valuable teaching tool for younger students with ever-shortening attention spans but one that lamentably excludes the essential beauty of the original prose.  The writings hold the intended "environmental literary print" up to the light, allowing readers to gain a valuable snapshot of history that cannot be substituted.  As our society continues to advance technologically, we can nevertheless find existential value in remembering our past.Third, if we could measure the unbridled joy felt upon discovering a forgotten text lying on the shelf, we might shift our focus from an extrinsic value of literature to an intrinsic one; that is, the written text is prized due to its ability to incite felicitousness, laughter, woefulness, and a myriad of emotions that make us inherently human.  As George Eliot writes in the canonical The Mill on the Floss, "We can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive.  There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them."  This exemplifies the human condition that strives toward fulfillment at our core psyche, a sentiment perhaps best expressed in the written language itself.Lastly, there is much to be gained from pedagogical models of studying literature:  women's studies teaches the value of gender equality, cultural studies intrinsically teaches less ethnocentrism and more tolerance, and the reader-response theory teaches that each individual response has value based on unique and subjective human experiences, to name a few.In certain higher education communities, there has been a grassroots movement gaining some traction in favor of removing humanities requirements from the core teaching curriculum, yet the lifelong consequences of doing so may not be quantifiable.  The humanities professors who protest silently, hoping that their colleagues will see the merit in studying literature as requisite, must remain reticent no more.  Without literary study to instill in us the value of the human experience, we may willingly sacrifice more than just coursework:  we may be on the verge of surrendering our human spirit. -Why does the author quote the following from George Eliot's novel:  "We can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive.  There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them" (Paragraph 4) ?

Passage A crucial part of Pinker's argument against the theory of the blank slate is to address people's motivations for wanting that theory to be true.  As he sees it: "To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed….  Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought that it is immoral to think."  People thus want to believe there is no such thing as human nature, in order to avoid the negative consequences they think would follow from its existence.  Pinker argues that this position not only must ignore the compelling scientific evidence that the mind does have an innate organization, but also depends upon a fundamental mistake about the implications of that idea.For example, suppose that the relative incidence of some desirable trait was higher in certain populations than in others.  If genetics plays no part in this phenomenon, then such a difference can be attributed solely to social conditions.  Not only would that analysis uphold our commitment to the fundamental equality of persons, but it would also mean that the difference is correctable-we have only to organize society in the proper way, and the disparities between groups would disappear.  On the other hand, if any part of the difference is attributed to genetics, then it would seem to open the door to stereotyping, mistreatment of individuals based on ethnicity, and other ills.  Thus the impulse to reject the prospect of a genetic component is strong, even if the evidence were to suggest such a correlation.However, this worry is based on two misconceptions.  Pinker notes that variance of traits by population would not justify treating members of some populations differently, because it is still wrong-logically as well as morally-to judge a particular person based on the average traits of a group.  Aside from recognizing that people should be evaluated as individuals, it is simply a fact that members of a group will display a variety of characteristics that may be closer to or farther away from a statistical average.  I would add that a supposed justification of differential treatment based on inborn traits does not reflect our normal moral intuitions.  For instance, if Person A is brighter than Person B, we do not therefore conclude that Person B deserves fewer rights or less human dignity.  In the same way, differences between groups also would not justify such a view.Similarly, Pinker argues that putative differences between the sexes are dismissed out of fear that such differences would promote an evaluative hierarchy between men and women.  However, the assumption that men and women cannot be equal unless they are the same ought to strike us as deeply troubling.  That claim would seem to imply that any difference must entail a difference of value, a position which is neither plausible nor morally legitimate…Such considerations also relate to the concerns about human perfectibility alluded to earlier.  Improving people through social institutions does not require that humans be blank slates; in fact, the opposite may be true.  If we ignore the realities of human nature, then the best-intentioned social programs may be ineffective or even harmful.  Moreover, the idea that human beings are completely malleable and can be "molded" as desired ought arguably to inspire more horror than optimism….  On the other hand, acknowledging the existence of human nature enables us to organize society in ways that work with humans as they really are.  Human traits and tendencies are not the straitjackets some imagine, and recognizing their influence allows nurture to work with nature instead of against it. -The author's assertion that the prospect of completely malleable human beings "ought arguably to inspire more horror than optimism" (Paragraph 5) is most likely meant to indicate that:

Passage At the forefront of the modernist poetry movement were T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and others, such as Ezra Pound, whose injunction, "Make it new!" characterized their artistic approach.  Hindered by the same internal conflict plaguing many intellectuals within the cultural upheavals of the time, these poets felt, on one level, that old linguistic certainties had evaporated and new forms must be embraced.  Yet many of them, particularly the later modernist poets, maintained a sentimental attachment to all that had been lost from the cultural certitude of earlier eras, their despondency reflected in much of their work.  At the periphery of the movement were E. E. Cummings and Robert Frost, who were named among modernist poets largely for the chronological classification of their poetry and not necessarily for their style or means of artistic production.A self-titled "poet" and "painter," Cummings was beyond his time in his efforts to innovate.  He would become well known for his erratic applications of punctuation and syntax, and, later, for his visual configurations of words.  Much of Cummings' writing also used idiosyncratic similes and metaphors.  This style, which later evolved to include symbolism and allegory, caused even some of the most progressive modernists to dismiss his work as eccentric, self-indulgent, and lacking depth.  However, as a quintessential dissenter, Cummings remained unaffected by the reactions of his contemporaries and focused more on creating a graphic effect with words.To Cummings, the artist was not one who discerns or describes, but one who feels.  He often contrasted the "doing" of others-scientists in particular-to the "being" of the artist.  Compared to what he defined as the "nonartist," Cummings held that the artist must be original, self-reliant, and free to live according to his or her own truth.  For Cummings, this meant disentanglement from any shackles of societal standards, ranging from the man-made notions of reality and reason to traditional literary conventions.Contrarily, Frost believed that a true poet could-and should-achieve poetic excellence without resorting to what he described as the "new ways of being new."  Consequently, his poetry was composed of ordinary sounds that derived from conventional language.  Although many contemporary critics dismissed his work as overly simplistic, or "too near the level of talk," Frost remained unperturbed by such views, holding that poetry sprang from the natural intonations of a person's voice and should remain true to traditional forms.Frost claimed that "a poem begins with delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down."  This conception of a poem led Frost to elucidate that, behind the scenes, the poet must always approach writing intimately and organically, allowing the words to originate seamlessly from "a lump in the throat, a homesickness, a loneliness."  Provoking both poet and reader to recollect an oft-distant truth lingering in some obscure region of the brain, this practice culminates in wisdom that may be profound or just a momentary reprieve from the world.Uncompromising and not always popular, Frost and Cummings nevertheless mingled with the literary elite and developed long-term acquaintances with Ezra Pound, who especially championed Frost's literary career.  Each shared with other modernist poets an opposition to the scientific rationalism and commercialist vulgarity that had infiltrated Western culture after the Industrial Revolution.  Yet both poets also continued to exhibit a commitment to the role of nonconformist and favored aspects of the Romantic poetry movement-namely, the significance of the individual's experience and the rejection of societal scrutiny-over the tormenting self-doubt that had beset their peers.  Thus, even in an age defined by its pure and absolute originality, Frost and Cummings occupied unique positions within the modernist poetry movement. -Based on the passage, there is an implicit assumption that:

Passage Throughout the twentieth century, the performer-spectator dynamic has been challenged both in artistic practice and from a theoretical perspective.  Contextual Futurists, nonsensical Dadaists, and the surreal avant-garde theatrical experiments upended the conventional notion of passive spectatorship, paving the way for performers to disrupt the invisible wall between the artist and audience altogether.  Most scholarly attention, however, has traditionally been directed toward one-way theatrical practices by which performers engage, transform, and heighten the bodily state of the audience through a framework of communal "felt-experience," and not vice versa.The actors on stage are ostensibly the central object of attention, yet their communication with those in attendance is not solely a one-way discourse.  After the curtain falls at the end of a performance, it is common to hear professional performers commentate on audience reaction:  sometimes the spectators were "attuned"; at other times they seemed "aloof."  Occasionally, performers feel as if they "captured" the audience; at other times, they perceive that they "lost touch" with the viewers entirely.  One could say that this jargon is merely an oversimplified and closed communication that reduces the true complexity and aesthetic dimensions of the theater experience.Nevertheless, performers are ultimately the vessels responsible for detecting and absorbing the moods, attitudes, and emotions of individuals, and these aspects are vital to the apparent success or failure of the performative process.  One day, actors might find the audience energetic, welcoming, and appreciative; the next day, they may find a stiff, critical, and disconnected crowd, even when performing in the same production with unchanged levels of enthusiasm.  In some instances, a single audience may be unmoved, regardless of how well a show is performed.  In concert with this insight, the language used by artists from across the globe to portray such audience encounters is notably similar.  Their predilection for tactile idiomatic expressions when describing the performer-audience connection is perfectly captured in these remarks from a well-known stage actor:"The level of attention the audience gives to what is happening on stage provides a certain quality of stillness that makes it possible for a performer to know whether the audience is attuned or not.  However, for the audience to be 'with' the performer, it must embrace a state of tension and immerse itself in the profundity of the performance…it's a very 'tangible' moment-it's all I can find as a word."Because the audience is the proclaimed foundation of a theatrical event, a staged play aims to affect the audience, usually by "capturing" the viewers in some poignant manner.  According to this paradigm, there can be no performance without an audience.  Despite this, the presence of spectators does not guarantee that a meaningful emotional, or affective, exchange will transpire.  Such collective encounters in a shared space and time present only the possibility-for connection or disconnection; and, accordingly, an audience member must be physically present and willing to be affectively influenced.The audience serves an integral function in the performance:  it activates, intensifies, and amplifies the circulation of emotional affect in a communal social space.  Individually and collectively, each spectator is able to participate in the intrinsically variable theatrical plot.  Affect is thereby experienced simultaneously through action, thought, and perception by both the artist and the audience.  This mutual "transmission of affect" induces a corporeal sentiment that ultimately resonates as a palpably emotional atmosphere.  Entertainers can only know if the audience is "present" to the degree that they also embrace the mutual tension of the experience.  In this way, the performer dutifully influences the audience, and the audience, in essence, "re-affects" the stage. Adapted from Pais, A, Affective Resonance as the Function of the Audience. Published 2016. -Which of the following scenarios best demonstrates the "transmission of affect" as described in the passage?

Passage The traditional tea ceremony evolved from multiple strands of Japanese culture.  Variously referred to as "chanoyu," "sado," or "chado," meaning "the way of tea," the ceremony is a highly codified and choreographed performance in which tea-typically a ground green variety known as "matcha"-is prepared and presented to guests by a host.  The tea ceremony is practiced to promote the harmony of nature and humanity as well as to discipline the mind and calm the heart of those who seek enlightenment.During the ninth century, a Buddhist monk named Eichu brought green tea to Japan from China, where it had already been cultivated for more than 1,000 years and used by monks to facilitate meditation.  Earlier in the century, the Chinese master Lu Yu had composed a treatise on the cultivation and preparation of tea called Cha Jing, or The Classic of Tea.  This treatise was heavily influenced by Buddhist ideas, which then impacted the development of the Japanese tea ceremony.  Toward the end of the twelfth century, another Japanese monk, Myoan Eisai, traveled to China to study philosophy and religion, returning with the seeds of green tea plants.  Eisai went on to build the first Zen Buddhist temple in his native land and was the first of his nation to cultivate tea purely for religious purposes.A tea culture, or "teaism," in Japan was initially popular with the ruling class, and the samurai adopted it as a status symbol.  Indeed, the tea ceremony was in its origins closely entwined with the political elite of the country; by the fifteenth century, however, it had begun to spread to all classes.  Murata Shuko, known as "the father of the tea ceremony," had been largely responsible for moving the tea ceremony away from the political to become more "transformative" or spiritual in nature.  For instance, he greatly enhanced the simplicity of its presentation, making tea ceremonies less formal and more intimate.  Gatherings now took place in smaller tearooms or secluded teahouses rather than luxurious salons.It was the famous tea master Sen no Rikyu who later elevated the tea ceremony to a virtual art form and codified its performance.  This meant that every action and gesture on the part of the preparer-using the kettle, gazing at the teacup, measuring the tea powder into a cup-constituted a procedure to be performed in a prescribed manner.  Even the actions of the guests evolved to become scripted in a precise ritual.  Rikyu's teachings fostered the development of the way of tea based on four cardinal principles-harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility-which were meant to be incorporated into the daily life of the tea practitioner.Chiefly through the efforts of Shuko and Rikyu, the tea ceremony took on a distinctive artistic character and became known as wabi-cha.  The term "wabi," or often "wabi-sabi," refers to the quintessential Japanese aesthetic founded upon the three Buddhist marks of existence: impermanence, suffering, and emptiness.  Unlike the standard concept of beauty in the West that favors symmetry, proportion, and static perfection, wabi-sabi embraces the imperfect and celebrates the transient.  It exalts the rustic and the humble as exemplified by the pottery used in the tea ceremony, which is typically crude, ordinary looking, and even asymmetrical.  Moreover, it is thought that a chip or crack, and even the general wear and tear of repeated use, renders such objects more interesting and, hence, more aesthetically pleasing.  Outdoors, such beauty is found in the fleeting color of autumn leaves and the patina that forms on roof tiles after exposure to the elements.  The simplicity, humility, and naturalism epitomized by wabi-sabi thus became the hallmarks of the way of tea. -The passage implies which of the following ideas about superstition?