• textbook --> pp. 828 - 838;  859 - 862 [esp. doc. on pg. 861].

1. Analyze the structure of European society between 1870 and 1914.  Why do historians focus so much attention on the middle class during this period?
2. Why is the late 19c - early 20c called "La Belle Epoch?"
3. What was the position of women during the second half of the 19c?  How did women's positions change since the previous century?  How were they still the same?
4. Compare and contrast middle class with working class families at the end of the 19c.
5. How were the promises and problems of the new mass society reflected in education and leisure at the end of the 19c?
6. What did women hope to achieve in the feminist movement of the late 19c?  To what extent were they successful by 1914?
7. List some of the major characteristics of the "Victorian Age."

                          ASSIGNMENT 2:

• textbook --> pp. 800 - 807;  847 - 853.
• reading --> Rerum Novarum.

1. Why was faith in science so widespread in the last half of the 19c and early 20c?
2. Explain Charles Darwin's conclusions and analyze the impact of Darwinian evolution upon the general thought of the age.
3. What was meant by Social Darwinism?  How was it a distortion of Darwin's theories?
4. How did new discoveries in physics upset older views of nature and energy and even basic scientific concepts?
5. What was Einstein's special scientific contributions?
6. What were the main points of Nietzsche's philosophy?  Why was he critical of Christianity?
7. What are the basic principles of Freudian psychoanalysis?  What were his views on sexuality?  on the unconscious?   on aggression?  on repression?  on the id?
8. Why was Freud so controversial?  Which groups were most upset with his theories?
9. What were the main points made by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical, De Rerum Novarum?  How did the Pope's arguments about class relations differ from those of Karl Marx?

                         ASSIGNMENT 3:

• textbook --> pp. 807 - 810;  853 - 859.
• film --> "The Impressionists."
• slides --> on early abstract and modern art.
• CD --> excerpts from the works of realist, impressionist, and early modernist composers.

1. How did Realism differ from Romanticism?  How did it reflect the economic and social realities of Europe in the mid-19c?
2. How did Impressionism/Post-Impressionism represent an artistic revolution?  a foreshadowing of Modernism?
3. Define Modernism.  How did this movement affect literature?   art?   music?
4. How did Cubism represent in art the intellectual climate of the late 19c - early 20c in Europe?
5. Evaluate the following statement:   In the late 19c, never had artist and society been so far apart.