1. What was the condition of European society at the beginning of the twentieth century? What tensions and conflicts affected Europeans' relations with each other and with peoples elsewhere in the world?
2. How did each of the major European states develop during this period? What events significantly transformed each of those societies and with what results?
3. How did irrationality come to challenge the Enlightenment tradition in European thought? Who were the major theorists of irrationality in philosophy and science? What ideas did they develop, and what influence did those exert?
4. How does Modernist literature break with Realism? What themes does it typically explore, and what new techniques did it employ?
5. What did Proust, Joyce, and Woolf contribute to Modernist literary introspection?
6. For what works are Conrad and Kafka best known, and how do these exemplify the Modernist concern with the irrational and the dark recesses of human nature?
7. How did Chopin and Lawrence write against Victorian sexual mores? What alternative experience did they envision?
8. How did Strindberg and Shaw extend the Naturalist dramatic tradition of Ibsen? For what plays are they best known, and what thematic and formal concerns do those works exemplify?
9. What were the essential aesthetic aims of Modernist art? How did they break with the Renaissance tradition, and what did they put in its place?
10. Who were the Post-Impressionists? How did they break with Impressionism, and how do their works realize all or some of the goals of Modernism?
11. What avant-garde artistic movements grew from Post-Impressionism? Who were the leading painters of these movements, and what are the defining characteristics of their styles?
12. What were the major forms of Modernism in sculpture and architecture? Who were the leading figures in each, and what aesthetic values do their works display?
13. What are the characteristics of Expressionist music? Who were the major exponents of this movement, and what innovations did they develop?
14. How did Ives create a distinctly American music, and what innovations did he employ to do so? From what modern musical currents did Stravinsky draw; for what works is he best known, and what stylistic features do these display?
15. How did the Enlightenment tradition fall into disarray at the end of the nineteenth century, and how did this broad cultural change set the stage for world wars of the twentieth century?