Examination Review
These are the major terms and concepts
I want you to master for the upcoming examinations. This list is subject to change as
we progress throughout the course. This review is designed
to highlight ideas and concepts that will be found on the test. Even so, the review does not
include every word that will appear on the exam; it merely serves to guide your
study of the texts, notes, web resources, and other materials employed throughout
this course.
Midterm
- Rhetoric (definition and extent)
- Artifacts as semiotic ghosts
(aka phantoms)
- Public life as a constellation
of signs
- William Gibson's "Gernsback Continuum" (plot overview)
- "Gernsback Continuum" and political
movements
- Streamlined Moderne
- Utopias of Permanence (goals)
- Utopias of Change
- Dystopias
- Women in Plato's Republic
- Historical setting of Plato's Republic
- Balance of traits in Plato's Republic
- "Classes" in Plato's Republic
- Waves of Plato's Republic
- Historical setting of More's Utopia
- Four principles of More's Utopia
- Religion in More's Utopia
- Communism in More's Utopia
- American vs. European Jeremiad
- Three paradoxes in "Model of Christian Charity"
- Historical setting for Bellamy's Looking Backward
- Primary themes of Bellamy's Looking Backward
- Nationalism in Bellamy's Looking Backward
- Voting in Bellamy's Looking Backward
- Critiques of Bellamy's Looking Backward
Final
- Course theme shift: Reformers
to planners
- Metaphors: Leo Marx's machine and garden
- World's fairs and expositions (1851, 1889, 1893)
- Heterotopia (definition, purpose, and examples)
- Application: Placing race and "the ladies" at the 1893 WCE (from margin
to center)
- Twentieth-century city planning (tabula rasa, city beautiful movement,
garden cities)
- Background and overview: Age of Authority and 1939 NYWF
- Democracity and Futurama (suburbs, unity, and highways)
- The Middleton Family (capitalist versus socialist planning - also, Mrs.
Modern vs. Mrs. Drudge)
- African-Americans at the Fair (forging an American Common)
- Comparing the 1939 and 1940 seasons (planners vs. the people)
- Impact of the 1939-40 Fair (WWII usage of materials, Unisphere in 64-65,
EPCOT Center)
- Nostalgia, enclavic rhetoric, and New Urbanism
- Disney's Celebration
- Putnam's social capital thesis
- Three benefits of social capital
- Four causes of diminishing social capital
- Counter-trends to Putnam's thesis
- Kenneth Gergen's Saturated Self (centrifugal technology, simultaneity)
- Locale vs. omnitopia
- Fear (declining faith in permanence, safe sociability)
- Edmundson's ideal classroom
Sample Questions
True/False If the statement
is mostly true, place a 'T' in the space provided. If the statement is mostly
false, place a 'F' in the space provided.
1. __ Plato argued that women could
serve at the highest levels of public life.
2. __ The primary nineteenth century
metaphor for the Machine is the locomotive.
Multiple Choice Select the response
that is most correct.
3. According to William Gibson, which
city is most similar to the 1980s-that-wasn't in the "Gernsback Continuum"?
4. Which of the following is an
example of heterotopia?
a. Motel
b. Amusement park
c. Church
d. All of the above
5. At the 1939 World's Fair, which
exhibit featured Democracity?
a. Trylon
b. Perisphere
c. General Motors Building
d. Unisphere
