For the past twenty years, most interpretations of Native American literature have focused on either theories, texts, or territories. Theories of reading, such as postcolonialism,postmodernism, the oral tradition, and cultural recovery, have served as major modes of inquiry for both Native American and non-Native American critics who try to make sense of Native American literary texts. Other scholars put the texts themselves in the foreground. In the case of Native American literature, text-based approaches accentuate the work of writers such as Silko, Momaday, and Ortiz over a particular theory or idea. A third group of scholars root their analysis of texts, whether they be myths, songs, poems, or prose, in the land that is fundamental to the works under consideration. Rather than focusing on a theory or a writer, a critic engaged in a territory-based reading focuses on the healing or recuperative or symbolic properties of culturally specific geographical locations. None of these strategies is any more important than another, and it is impossible to conceive of Native American literary criticism without each, as all three contribute to understanding the complexity of Native Amencan discourses.
The primary purpose of the passage is to
- propose a new way of understanding a particular literary tradition
- advocate a synthesis of various approaches to the study of a particular literary tradition
- identify leading strategies used to interpret a particular literary tradition
- discuss important methodological similarities among various interpretive approaches to a particular literary tradition
- distinguish between opposing critical approaches to a particular literary tradition
When applied to written records, the word “preservation” is fraught with multiple meanings and connotations. For some archivists , preservation involves the attempt to save artifacts from physical deterioration and is synonymous with the conservation of original documents. For archivists with a contrary view, the overriding obligation is to save intellectual content through the use of surrogates. Thus the original carriers of information are seen as superfluous and consequently disposable. The practice of microfilming old newspapers and discarding the originals is one example of such preservation. On yet another level, preservation considers whether limited storage space should be allotted indefinitely to materials that are rarely consulted or whether certain items are so peripheral to current interests that they should be discarded altogether to ensure a home for more-pertinent materials.
For the following question, consider each of the choices separately and select all that apply.
It can be inferred that which of the following approaches to preservation would be unacceptable to “some archivists” but acceptable to the “archivists with a contrary view” as the two groups’ positions are described in the passage?
- Displaying a historical document in a glass case in order to allow the public to view the document without damaging it
- Scanning a governor’s handwritten commentary on political correspondence into a computer file and disposing of the originals in order to save physical space
- Destroying videotapes containing eyewitness accounts of news events if the files have not been viewed by anyone in the previous five years
Some members of the plant family Araceae produce as much heat in proportion to their weight as do birds and insects in flight, which are the greatest heat producers among animals. Researchers have argued that these plants evolved their heat-producing ability because the heat vaporizes scents that attract pollen-bearing insects, thereby enhancing the chances for reproduction. One member of the family Araceae. Philodendron selloum , also has the unusual ability to thermoregulate: it can vary its heat production to compensate for fluctuations in the temperature of the surrounding air, thereby maintaining a nearly constant temperature in its inflorescence, or flowering part. Since constant temperatures are not required to vaporize attractants, some scientists contend that P. selloum ’ s ability to thermoregulate evolved because it protects the inflorescence during critical stages of development. Seymour, however, notes that the periods during which P. selloum thermorequlates coincide with the periods during which the inflorescence’s opening widens to admit pollen-bearing beetles. Seymour explains P. selloum ’s ability to maintain a constant temperature as a further attraction for pollinators, which require a high body temperature for flight and locomotion and often expend substantial energy to keep warm. Pollinators that visit thermoregulating plants would be provided with a fairly steady level of heat directly from the plant.
According to the passage, Seymour observes that which of the following is true during the periods when P. selloum varies its heat production?
- The inflorescence becomes fully developed.
- The plant is not receptive to pollinators.
- The plant increases its output of vaporized attractants.
- The temperature of the surrounding air decreases.
- The opening of the inflorescence changes size.
It’s hard to envision jazz flourishing without Thomas Edison’ s roughly contemporaneous invention of sound recording technology, which enabled the preservation and dissemination of the genre’s hallmark musical improvisations for the first time in history. But the same technology also significantly altered jazz’s evolution. Before the rise of jazz, African American composers worked extensively with more complex forms. Most of Scott Joplin’s ragtime pieces included four sections, each with a distinctive melody and chords, and many early jazz musicians continued in this vein. But early recordings, which limited songs to three minutes, could rarely accommodate such structures and still leave time for improvised solos. With a few exceptions, such as Duke Ellington, most jazz musicians embraced simpler tunes once they began recording their work.
The function of the highlighted sentence is primarily to
- identify a common criticism of early recording technology
- suggest a way in which early recording technology influenced the development of jazz
- explain why early jazz recordings were not especially popular with the public
- point to a difficulty in early recording technology that Edison struggled to overcome
- explain why musicians such as Ellington were slow to embrace recording technology
Many herbivorous insects utilize plant resources during small windows of development or during short periods when plants are of suitable quality. Such temporal associations have been documented in numerous systems, where temporal constraints limit insect abundance and affect insect feeding strategy. Classic studies of winter months, for example, suggest that the synchrony of larvae with leaf emergence is a primary determinant of larval success. Because many insect-plant associations have a temporal component, they may be negatively affected by environmental changes; some scientists fear, for example, that global warming may decouple insect-plant synchrony Hellman, however, notes that the timing of insect-plant synchrony is affected by many factors, including insects behavioral and physiological ability to adapt to changing host plant quality and the availability of alternative host resources.
For the following question, consider each of the choices separately and select all that apply.
The “classic studies of winter months” provide direct support for which of the following propositions
- Most herbivorous insects utilize plant resources only during limited time periods.
- Insect feeding strategies and survival are affected by seasonal growth patterns of plants.
- Insect-plant synchrony may be preserved in many instances by insects’ ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions.
While Tlingit and other Native American place names have shown remarkable endurance, they are in fact fragile linguistic artifacts, surviving primarily among elders and within localized areas. Unlike other widely shared domains of knowledge, such as plant and animal terms, place name knowledge tends to be highly Localized. To learn the Tlingit geography of Glacier Bay we cannot ask just any Tlingit speaker, rather, we must consult those whose familial origins are in Glacier Bay and who have experienced the landscape firsthand and through the stories told by their ancestors. These place names are worth preserving: because concepts of place and being are intimately linked, place names are not simply linguistic artifacts; they are cultural resources.
Which of the following best describes the function of the
- It calls into question information presented in the preceding sentence.
- It provides an example that supports an assertion made in the preceding sentence.
- It expresses a view that is illustrated later in the passage.
- It states a hypothesis that is challenged later in the
- It presents information that is difficult to reconcile with
Livestock-grazing programs in arid zones that are based on the equilibrium view of rangelands-that grazing-induced land degradation will occur if livestock numbers exceed the availability of food-have failed. Contrary to the equilibrium view, traditional pastoral systems of land use are more appropriate. Such systems involve a high degree of opportunism to cope with unpredictable rainfall and fluctuating food distribution. Livestock mobility relieves areas of concentration and allows herds to exploit unevenly distributed resources. A strategy of managing multiple livestock species allows optimal use of these variable grazing resources. These approaches to land use are similar to those recommended by nonequilibrium models , which assume that plant dynamics in arid zones are influenced more by rainfall than by grazing.
According to the passage, the equilibrium view of rangelands is defined in terms of the relationship between
- distribution of rainfall and patterns of grazing
- predictability of rainfall and fluctuations in food distribution
- mobility of livestock and extent of land degradation
- livestock numbers and availability of food
- number of livestock species and variability of grazing resources
The meteorite Monahans 1998 is an ordinary chondrite, a class of meteorites that astronomers have believed contain little or no water. But Monahans 1998 contains water locked inside salt crystals that date from the solar system’s formation. The water is presumed to be of the same vintage-the first time that water of primordial origin has been detected. The water could have come from a water- rich comet that plowed into the meteorite’s parent asteroid after its formation . But if the water was incorporated into the asteroid as it first coalesced, scientists may have to revise their thinking about conditions at the solar system’s formation under which chondrites formed. To carry a concentrated salt solution today, Monahans 1998 must have once been in contact with several times more water than what now remains.
The passage mentions the concentration of the salt solution in Monahans 1998 primarily in order to
- introduce a fact that suggests that water was not incorporated into the parent asteroid of Monahans 1998 as it coalesced
- present evidence that suggests that more water of primordial origin may soon be detected by astronomers
- raise the possibility that a significant amount of water may have been present at the solar system’s formation
- cast doubt on the theory that the water contained in Monahans 1998 was carried there by a comet or other water-rich projectile
- provide a rationale for astronomers’ beliefs about conditions in the early solar system under which chondrites formed
Researchers once widely concurred that the typical participant in the Great Migration (approximately 1910-1970), which brought vast numbers of African Americans from the southeastern United States to northern cities, was an illiterate sharecropper fleeing the rural South’s distressed agricultural economy. However,researchers are increasingly recognizing that the stream of Black migrants was probably more diverse than previously supposed. Marks argues that many migrants headed north from southern towns and cities rather than from rural areas and had more extensive experience with nonagricultural employment than was typically assumed. Additional research shows that Black migrants had significantly higher levels of education than the nonmigrating southern Black population, although the migrants generally had lower levels of educational attainment than did Black populations already living in the North.
For the following question, consider each of the choices separately and select all that apply.
The passage suggests which of the following about African Americans who migrated north during the Great Migration?
- Many of them may have had employment experience that differed from what researchers once supposed was typical of Black migrants.
- Many of them attained higher levels of education once they settled in northern cities.
- Black migrants from southern towns and cities were less motivated by economic conditions than were Black migrants from rural areas of the South.
In the United States, studying the territoriality of nonnative ants such as the red fire ant, a species native to South America, may seem unlikely to yield generalizable results-but it does have distinct advantages. Most importantly, whereas the fire ant shares habitat with many ant competitors in South America, its communities in the United States are much simpler. Colonizable landscape is blanketed almost continuously with fire ant territories, so all territorial boundaries are with other fire ant colonies. We can study the complexities of territoriality in almost pure, continuous populations of a single species, without the complicating influences of other competitors. Furthermore, the high densities of many fire ant populations ensure that interactions among competing colonies will be intense and obvious.
For the following question, consider each of the choices separately and select all that apply.
The author implies that red fire ants in the United States differ from red fire ants in South America in the extent to which ants in the two environments
- dominate their habitat
- interact with other red fire ant colonies
- have had their territorial behavior studied by researchers