Reading (重复NA 2010.08.21)
Passage 1
【主旨】Egyptian Hieroglyphs
【内容】先说是Arabic的一个分支，然后开始讲这个语言的兴衰!兴是因为当时宗教界都用这门语言，衰是因为后来人们发现这个语言太麻烦，太晦涩难懂，再加上另一个文明的兴起(Rome; Greece; Macedonia等)，这门语言被彻底边缘化。然后讲现在人们来研究它，讲了一个人的研究成果，还讲到它为何到现在都很mysterious的原因。
参考文章：Hieroglyphs emerged from the preliterate artistic traditions of Egypt.
As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic (priestly) and demotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. The Rosetta Stone contains three parallel scripts - hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek.
Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE), and after Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Macedonian and Roman periods. It appears that the misleading quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part, as a response to the changed political situation. Some believe that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish 'true Egyptians' from some of the foreign conquerors. Another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally. Having learned that hieroglyphs were sacred writing, Greco-Roman authors imagined the complex but rational system as an allegorical, even magical, system transmitting secret, mystical knowledge.
By the 4th century, few Egyptians were capable of reading hieroglyphs, and the myth of allegorical hieroglyphs was ascendant. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing of all non-Christian temples in 391 CE by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I.[1]
Passage 2
【主旨】十九世纪女性艺术家
【内容】主要讲了十九世纪的女人在艺术界被排斥，学校不收，更谈不上展出艺术作品;英国率先开始兴办女人艺术学校并培养女艺术家;法国接过英国的接力棒，成为世界第一艺术殿堂，女人们可以和男人一样上学，展出自己的作品 ;然后举了几个例子说那些人是这个时期培养出来的著名女艺术家
参考文章：In the late Renaissance the training of artists began to move from the master's workshop to the Academy, and women began a long struggle, not resolved until the late 19th century, to gain full access to this training. Study of the human body required working from male nudes and corpses. This was considered essential background for creating realistic group scenes. Women were generally barred from training from male nudes, and therefore they were precluded from creating such scenes, required for the large-scale religious compositions that received the most prestigious commissions.
During the century, access to academies and formal art training expanded more for women in Europe and North America. The British Government School of Design, which later became the Royal College of Art, admitted women from its founding in 1837, but only into a "Female School" which was treated somewhat differently, with "life"- classes consisting for several years of drawing a man wearing a suit of armour. The Royal Academy Schools finally admitted women beginning in 1861, but students drew initially only draped models. However, other schools in London, including the Slade School of Art from the 1870s, were more liberal. By the end of the century women were able to study the naked, or very nearly naked, figure in many Western European and North American cities.
The Society of Female Artists (now called The Society of Women Artists) was established in 1855 in London and has staged annual exhibitions since 1857, when 358 works were shown by 149 women, some using a pseudonym.
Julia Margaret Cameron and Gertrude Kasebier became well known in the new medium of photography, where there were no traditional restrictions, and no established training, to hold them back.
Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler), perhaps inspired by her life-classes of armoured figures at the Government School, was one of the first women to become famous for large history paintings, specializing in scenes of military action, usually with many horses.
Berthe Morisot and the Americans, Mary Cassatt and Lucy Bacon, became involved in the French Impressionist movement of the 1860s and 1870s. American Impressionist Lilla Cabot Perry was influenced by her studies with Monet and by Japanese art in the late 19th century. Cecilia Beaux was an American portrait painter who also studied in France.
In the late 19th century, Edmonia Lewis, an African-Ojibwe-Haitian American artist from New York began her art studies at Oberlin College. Her sculpting career began in 1863. She established a studio in Rome, Italy and exhibited her marble sculptures through Europe and the United States.
In 1894, Suzanne Valadon was the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in France. Laura Muntz Lyall, a post-impressionist painter, exhibited at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, and then in 1894 as part of the Société des artistes fran?ais in Paris.
Passage 3
【主旨】Switching Jobs
【内容】(工作转换的问题：一般涉及影响这个问题的原因主要为换居住地的成本，在工业密集的地方住成本低)。美国换工作频率高，因为一个是换地点的成本小，而欧洲等其他发达国家的成本比较高，因为房子政策的问题;二是跟人们认识文化有关，(这里有考题：词汇题，较难，选unreasonable)。最后一段分析高跳槽率的优缺点。优点是市场更加灵活，人们易于找到最适合自己的工作。缺点是跳槽率高，公司都懒得深层次地培训员工，因为培训了也是为他人做嫁衣，所以劳动力水平比较低!(这里有except题)
2012.05.20阅读词汇题：
Unreasonable