Surprisingly enough, modern historians have rarely interested themselves in the history of the American South in the period before the South began to become self-consciously and distinctively "Southern" —the decades after 1815. Consequently, the cultural history of Britain’s North American empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been written almost as if the Southern colonies had never existed. The American culture that emerged during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras has been depicted as having been simply an extension Of New England Puritan culture. However, Professor Davis has recently argued that the South stood apart from the rest of American society during this early period, following its own unique pattern of cultural development. The case for Southern distinctiveness rests upon two related premises: first, that the cultural similarities among the five Southern colonies were far more impressive than the differences, and second, that what made those colonies alike also made them different from the other colonies. The first, for which Davis offers an enormous amount of evidence, can be accepted without major reservations; the second is far more problematic. What makes the second premise problematic is the use of the Puritan colonies as a basis for comparison. Quite properly, Davis decries the excessive influence ascribed by historians to the Puritans in the formation of American culture. Yet Davis inadvertently adds weight to such ascription by using the Puritans as the standard against which to assess the achievements and contributions of Southern colonials. Throughout, Davis focuses on the important, and undeniable, differences between the Southern and Puritan colonies in motives for and patterns of early settlement, in attitudes toward nature and Native Americans, and in the degree of receptivity to metropolitan cultural influences. However, recent scholarship has strongly suggested that those aspects of early New England culture that seem to have been most distinctly Puritan, such as the strong religious orientation and the communal impulse, were not even typical of New England as a whole, but were largely confined to the two colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Thus, what in contrast to the Puritan colonies appears to Davis to be peculiarly Southern—acquisitiveness, a strong interest in politics and the law, and a tendency to cultivate metropolitan cultural models—was not only more typically English than the cultural patterns exhibited by Puritan Massachusetts and Connecticut, but also almost certainly characteristic of most other early modern British colonies from Barbados north to Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Within the larger framework of American colonial life, then, not the Southern—but the Puritan ’colonies appear to have been distinctive, and even they seem to have been rapidly assimilating to the dominant cultural patterns by the late Colonial period. The author is primarily concerned with ______.
A. refuting a claim about the influence of Puritan culture on the early American South
B. refuting a thesis about the distinctiveness of the culture of the early American South
C. refuting the two premises that underlie Davis’ discussion of the culture of the American
D. challenging the hypothesis that early American culture was homogeneous in nature
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W: I just came back yesterday. Anything new while I was awayM: Congratulations, Susan. It’s said you’ll be promoted to manager and become my immediate boss. What is most probably the relationship between the two speakers at the moment()
A. Customer and salesman.
B. Colleagues.
C. Employee and boss.
Ever since news of widespread food recalls caused by a carcinogenic dye broke, there has been confusion over possible links to the country of the same name, but Sudan officials say there is no connection whatever.Sudan 1 is a red industrial dye that has been found in some chilli powder, but was banned in food products across the European Union (EU) in July 2003.Since the ban was put in place, EU officials have been striving to remove some food products from the shelves. So far 580 products have been recalled. Last week Sudan’s Embassy in the United Kingdom asked the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for clarification of the origin of the dye’s name.Omaima Mahmoud A1 Sharief, a press official at Sudan’s Embassy in China, explained the purpose of the inquiry was to clear up any misunderstanding over links between the country and the poisonous dye."We want to keep an eye on every detail and avoid any misunderstanding there," she said. "Our embassy to Britain asked them how the dye got that name and whether the dye had something to do with our country. But they told us there was no relationship."The FSA, an independent food-security watchdog in Britain, received a letter from the Sudan’s Embassy last week."They asked us why the dye is named Sudan, however, we also do not know how it got the name," she said. "People found the dye in 1883 and gave it the name. Nobody knows the reason, and we cannot give any explanation before we find out."Sudan dyes, which include Sudan 1 to 4, are red dyes used for coloring solvents, oils, waxes, petrol, and shoe and floor polishes. They are classified as carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. We can infer from the passage that().
A. the Sudan government is paying much attention to the food safety
B. Sudan 1 was often used to be added to the food
C. people didn’t realize the danger of Sudan 1 until 2003
D. many food shops will be closed down
在西方许多国家,行人都是靠左边走的,这与中国明显不同。这种现象的原因是( )。
A. 西方各国有自己的习惯
B. 西方敌视中国
C. 这是发达国家的标志
D. 东方与西方受的地球引力不同
As one works with color in a practical or experimental way, one is impressed by two apparently unrelated facts. Color as seen is a mobile changeable thing depending to a large extent on the relationship of the color to other colors seen simultaneously. It is not fixed in its relation to the direct stimulus which creates it. On the other hand, the properties of surfaces that give rise to color do not seem to change greatly under a wide variety of illumination colors, usually (but not always) looking much the same in artificial light as in daylight. Both of these effects seem to be due in large part to the mechanism of color adaptation mentioned earlier. When the eye is fixed on a colored area, there is an immediate readjustment of the sensitivity of the eye to color in and around the area viewed. This readjustment does not immediately affect the color seen but usually does affect the next area to which the gaze is shifted. The longer the time of viewing, the higher the intensity, and the larger the area, the greater the effect will be in terms of its persistence in the succeeding viewing situation. As indicated by the work of Wright and Shouted, it appears that, at least for a first approximation, full adaptation takes place over a very brief time if the adapting source is moderately bright and the eye has been in relative darkness just previously. As the stimulus is allowed to act, however, the effect becomes more persistent in the sense that it takes the eye longer to regain its sensitivity to lower intensities. The net result is that, if the eye is so exposed and then the gaze is transferred to an area of lower intensity, the loss of sensitivity produced by the first area will still be present and appear as an "afterimage" superimposed on the second. The effect not only is present over the actual area causing the "local adaptation" but also spreads with decreasing strength to adjoining areas of the eye to produce "lateral adaptation." Also, because of the persistence of the effect if the eye is shifted around from one object to another, all of which are at similar brightness or have similar colors, the adaptation will tend to become uniform over the whole eye. This selection is primarily concerned with ______.
A. the eye’s adaptation to color
B. the properties of colored surfaces
C. the color of colors
D. the effect of changes in color intensity