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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Boorstin writes that we are left with the "invention of experience" rather than its what?
(a) Discovery.
(b) Reality.
(c) Depiction.
(d) Creation.

2. When did P.T. Barnum purchase Scudder's American Museum?
(a) 1905.
(b) 1841.
(c) 1859.
(d) 1867.

3. What major movie studio did Carl Laemmle originate?
(a) MGM.
(b) General Film Company.
(c) Paramount Pictures.
(d) Universal Studios.

4. What refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s?
(a) Pulp fiction.
(b) Dime store fiction.
(c) Dirt fiction.
(d) Romance fiction.

5. Boorstin suggests that the graphic revolution and what else are mostly responsible for the abridgment and the mass production of art?
(a) Media.
(b) Commercialism.
(c) Capitalism.
(d) Democracy.

6. In Chapter 6 - Section I, Boorstin asserts that America has experienced a move from what to images?
(a) Thoughts.
(b) Morals.
(c) Ideals.
(d) Concepts.

7. What type of book binding begins with the signatures of the book as loose pages which are then clamped together?
(a) Cross stitch.
(b) Undersew.
(c) Bind-sew.
(d) Oversew.

8. Boorstin writes that the amount of dissociation has become so absolute that what no longer feels real?
(a) The media.
(b) The pseudo-reality.
(c) The pseudo-event.
(d) The natural.

9. The first aspect of successful advertising discussed by Boorstin in Chapter 5 - Section IV is what?
(a) Ambiguity.
(b) Appeal of the half-intelligible.
(c) Appeal of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
(d) Appeal of the contrived.

10. What refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located in the Theater District, New York?
(a) Broadway.
(b) Main Stage.
(c) SoHo.
(d) West End.

11. Boorstin claims that in the effort to make art and literature accessible to all, these forms of expression were what?
(a) Diminished.
(b) Disembodied.
(c) Destroyed.
(d) Embellished.

12. Boorstin states, regarding foreign affairs, "I suspect we suffer abroad simply because people know America through" what?
(a) Television.
(b) Images.
(c) Nonreality.
(d) Pseudo-events.

13. What production company, recognizing that actors and actresses would demand higher pay if they became well known, refused to give their names?
(a) General Film Company.
(b) Universal Studios.
(c) Paramount Pictures.
(d) MGM.

14. What word does Boorstin suggest we created out of the need to express the specialness of that which is real, in Chapter 6 - Section III?
(a) Arbitration.
(b) Fiction.
(c) Non-fiction.
(d) Capitalization.

15. When was Reader's Digest founded?
(a) 1900.
(b) 1949.
(c) 1922.
(d) 1911.

Short Answer Questions

1. What French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, and photographer is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism?

2. What does Boorstin describe as a kind of pseudo-event, especially in the sense that they were "more vivid and more impressive than the spontaneous original"?

3. What refers to the process or fact of personally observing, encountering, or undergoing something?

4. What is the fifth characteristic of the image, according to Boorstin?

5. What refers to a single complete page, front and back, in a finished book?

(see the answer keys)

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