The Country and the City Final Exam Review Sheet 2009

Your final exam assesses the extent to which you have achieved the course goals as well as the goals for the social science requirement for general education. Questions on the exam will ask you to address one or more of the course goals. Use the following course goals as your study guide.

By the end of the course students will be able to….

• Identify important economic, cultural, political, environmental social, and technological interconnections between the country and the city.
• Identify important factors that characterize the country and differentiate it from the city.
• Assess local economic, social, environmental, and cultural changes in rural places in the context of regional, national, and global change.
• Critique popular myths about rural identity (in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality).
• Appreciate valuable features of contemporary rural identities and at the same time imagine more progressive ways of "being rural."
• Imagine ways that rural places can preserve valuable traditional practices, cultures, and landscapes while incorporating modern practices, cultures, and landscape features.
• Understand the opportunities and challenges that people living in rural areas face.
• Value the contribution of country music to American and other national cultures and possibly even appreciate country music a little bit more than when they started the class.

Looking at these goals, you might imagine there will be three or four broad essay questions on the exam focused on

• How rural areas are interconnected with but also different than urban areas as well as how these differences and interconnections are changing due to economic restructuring.
• A question about rural identities including issues of age, gender, sexuality, "race," and especially class. You might need to talk about how different people are affected differently by rural restructuring. This question might task you to imagine a "progressive" rural identity.
• A question about how rural places can develop a viable economy and way of life while maintaining and preserving valuable traditional practices, cultures, and landscapes. This question might ask you questions about tourism, the environment, recreation, housing, and health.
• A question about the insight country music provides on changing rural ways of life and about your own level of appreciation of country music. You might need to address the question of authenticity. To what degree is country music from the country? How is country music both an authentic tradition and a commodity?

Because this course counts for the social science requirement in general education, you will have a final question in which you will be asked to analyze what is geographical about the issues discussed in an article.

We might address these in several broad questions, or there's a possibly that there will be a choice of several more specific questions. To prepare, outline your own answer to a question on each of the broad areas above. Then review one or more case studies that you can refer to in your answer. That ought to cover it. Because someone will ask, there will not be any line dancing on the final as stated in the syllabus.

The final check of your Reading Journal will take place while you take your exam. Please bring your reading journal with you to the exam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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