Due Mar 4
Midterm Exam
The Midterm will take place during Lecture 7 on Wednesday, Mar 4. It will consist of two sections:
- Short Essays: Questions will be drawn from HW prompts, with slight modifications. Answer five of six questions using as many specific examples as you can, drawing on incidents, characters and other vital details from the relevant works as evidence. As you introduce each text, orient the reader by identifying its geographic region. Each answer should run roughly one paragraph. I will be looking for a combination of correct factual information AND well-reasoned analysis. 12 points each.
- Long Essay: Write a well-developed essay of at least four paragraphs that addresses ONE of the two prompts below. Be sure to cite specific examples from the relevant texts. (40 points). Note: these are the ACTUAL long essay prompts, and both will appear on the exam. Come to class mentally prepared to write in response to one of them.
- Do the hierophanies we witness in Genesis and Exodus suggest a fundamental likeness between Hebrew monotheism and the polytheism of Chauvet cave, Newgrange, the Pyramids of Giza, etc.? Or did the experience of hierophany change as part of the conceptual shift from polytheism to monotheism? Explore evidence on both sides of this question before attempting to resolve it one way or the other.
- In Hesiod, Euripides, Ovid, and elsewhere, love’s suffering tears the social fabric asunder. But several of the speakers in Plato’s Symposium insist that love functions to bind us together. Explore both sides of this question, drawing evidence from at least three of our readings. You can, but you need not, attempt to resolve the question one way or the other. ALTERNATIVELY, explore both sides of this question before attempting to resolve it one way or the other, drawing evidence exclusively from Hedwig and the Angry Inch.