Issues in the Arts and Humanities (Honors 401)
Study sheet for midterm
Midterm: October 9, 2013
Short Answer Section. The following terms cover most of the issues we have discussed in
class. Use these terms to help you go back through the readings and notes to study and
prepare. There will be 10 short answer questions, of which you are to answer 8.
Human vs. economic development
Three crises
Culture wars
Postmodernism
Closing of the American Mind
Affirmative action
Two types of meritocracy
Knowledge management
Problems with privatization
Culture wars post 9/11
education of nature, men, and things
purpose of education
role of the family
habit of no habit
problem with “book” learning
the place of women
linguistic corruption
estrangement
Humboldt’s “Iron Curtain”
tension towards the ground
Essay Question. Two of the following essay questions will be on the exam. You are to
write an essay on one of the two (60 points).
1. In his Unmaking the Public University, Christopher Newfield offers some reasons
for why there has been a persistent drain of resources away from public
universities to the point that they have increasingly become private universities. In
the context of this discussion he lists three crises and argues that how they were
responded to has in then end led to the “unmaking” of the public university.
Elaborate this argument, and along the way offer examples to clarify (preferably
personal examples from your own university experience).
2. In Émile, Rousseau sets forth a plan for educating a child such that they can
become a fully functioning adult who knows how to live. In this context,
Rousseau utilizes the distinction between the education of nature, men, and things
in order to justify and explain his suggestions. Trace this process through at least
two of the books of Émile (that is, through at least two distinct phases of life).
3. In his essay on the Germany University, and in particular the German University
has established under Humboldt’s reforms of the early 19th century, Eric Voegelin
argues that the stage was set for the public estrangement that made the rise of
National Socialism possible. Explain Voegelin’s arguments here and the process
that leads from the reforms to the estrangement and then to the rise of movements
such as National Socialism. In the context of this essay, discuss why Voegelin
thinks Heidegger’s “linguistic corruption” and Nazi “ideology” are both
symptomatic of the estrangement he is talking about.