“What was the interminable law case in Dickens’ Bleak House (1852-53)? Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, a case stemming from a dispute about distribution of an estate.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“Ashcan School: (Also called The Eight and The New York Realists) A term applied, loosely and belatedly, to a group of American realist painters. Although they never actually formed a school, eight painters—Robert Henri (1865-1929), John Sloan (1871-1951), Maurice Prendergast (1859-1927), George Luks (1897-1933), Everett Shinn (1876-1953), William Glackens (1870-1938), Ernest Lawson (1873-1939), and Arthur B. Davies (1862-1928)—held an independent exhibition at The Macbeth Gallery in New York in February 1908. Their paintings, which featured prizefights, bars, and city street scenes, departed from the artistic conventions of the turn of the century and were greeted with a storm of critical disapproval. These depictions of the working-class milieu—romantic and vital, but also squalid and brutal—shocked viewers used to genteel and fashionable pictures. The exhibition and the work of the artists, however, exerted an enormous influence on the development of American realistic painting.
The original eight came to be associated with other painters, including Walt Kuhn (1880-1949), one of the organizers of the Armory Show, and George Bellows (1882-1925), whose work, of all of the painters of the school, has perhaps retained the most critical interest.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“Quarto: A book, measuring not larger than 9 ½ by 12 ½ inches, which is composed of sheets folded into four leaves.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“saliency: The relevance of an item or phenomenon to a task or activity. For example, the homework excitement that a teacher writes on the blackboard is highly salient to a student in the class, while the sounds of an activity out in the hallway are nonsalient. Problems with determining saliency (what is relevant or important to a particular task) are a significant issue in individuals with attention disorders.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
If you can use it, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Stanford-Binet Scale. As you probably know, this instrument purports to measure intelligence and rate it using an “Intelligence Quotient“–which gives us “IQ.” Over time, there have been questions (as well their should be) about the validity of this scale.
I can’t really comment on that. What I can tell you is that this is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and two comprehension questions. This is just the sparest of introductions to this high-stakes assessment, about which the late Steven Jay Gould (for which I thank him) had some things to say.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Derogatory, Derogative (adjective): Expressing unfavorable criticism or low opinion; detracting; belittling, Adverb: derogatorily; noun; derogation; verb: derogate.
‘The patient all this while continued slouching and hunching about the room, poking into corners and picking up and fingering objects for derogatory comment.’ Peter De Vries, Madder Music”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“dictatorship: In modern usage, absolute rule unrestricted by law, constitutions, or other political or social factors within the state. The original dictators, however, were magistrates in ancient Italian cities (including Rome) who were allocated absolute power during a period of emergency. Their power was neither arbitrary nor accountable, being subject to law and requiring retrospective justification. There were no such dictators after the beginning of the second century BC, however, and later dictators such as Sulla and the Roman emperors conformed more to our image of the dictator as an autocrat and near-despot.
In the twentieth century the existence of a dictator has been a necessary and (to some) definitive component of totalitarian regimes: thus Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, and Mussolini’s Italy were generally referred to as dictatorships. In the Soviet case the very word and idea of dictatorship were legitimized by Marx’s idea of the historical necessity of a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ which would follow the revolution and eradicated the bourgeoisie.”
Excerpted from: McLean, Iain, and Alistair McMillan, editors. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged professional development, readings/research, united states history
“totalitarianism: A dictatorial form of centralized government that regulates every aspect of state and private behavior. Although the term was originally intended to designate fascist and communist regimes, totalitarianism is mainly associated with characterizations of the Soviet Union. Its proponents do not agree on when, if ever, the Soviet Union ceased to be totalitarian, but they tend to converge on the view that at some point the political leadership was all powerful and totally illegitimate. For many commentators, the Soviet Union entered a new phase after the abandonment of mass terror on Stalin’s death. However, others operating within the totalitarian paradigm point to institutional continuity, KGB harassment of dissidents, and the ever present possibilities of arbitrary state power until 1989. The total and sudden collapse of the Soviet Union since then casts doubt not only on this school, but perhaps on the whole concept of totalitarianism. In the 1970s, a new school of Sovietology emerged which pointed to evidence both for popular support for the regime and for widespread dispersion of power, at least in implementation of policy, among sectoral and regional authorities. For some of the ‘pluralists,’ this was evidence of the ability of the regime to adapt to include new demands. However, totalitarian theorists claimed that the failure of the system to survive showed not only its inability to adapt but the formality of supposed popular participation. See also Arendt.”
Excerpted from: McLean, Iain, and Alistair McMillan, editors. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged professional development, readings/research, united states history
“Potboiler: A work written merely to gain a livelihood. The term is at least as old as the 18th c. A classic example of the potboiler that transcends its immediate end is Johnson’s philosophical ‘novel’ or didactic ‘romance’ (qq.v.) Rasselas (1759), which was written in the evenings of a week to defray the expenses of his mother’s funeral and to pay her debts. See KITSCH.
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1998.
“Pontiac’s Rebellion: (1763-66), Indian uprising against the British, named after one of its leaders, Ottawa chief Pontiac. After the French and Indian War, the tribes north of the Ohio River, finding the British victors less generous than the French and unprotective of Indian lands, resolved upon war. Detroit and Fort Pitt withstood sieges in 1763, but the Indians captured many other British posts and spread terror along the Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland frontiers. In 1764 the British subdued the Shawnees and the Delawares in Pennsylvania. Lacking allies, Pontiac submitted in 1766 and was pardoned.”
Excerpted from: Rosenbaum, Robert A. The Penguin Encyclopedia of American History. New York: Penguin, 2003.
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