I will be the head editor of this set, assisted by Eddie Kim, Ike Jose, Andrew Wang, and
In keeping with the spirit of, but ultimately departing from, Adolf Loos's shocking discourse, this tournament will experiment in some ways with the established distribution. Answerability and variety are the primary rationales behind some of these decisions. The following is the distribution that we will be using:
4/4 Literature
1.25/1.25 Long Fiction
1/1 Poetry
0.75/0.75 Drama
0.5/0.5 Short Fiction
0.5/0.5 "Miscellaneous" (non-fiction, literary criticism, literary history, other things that transcend or combine these genres)
For those worried about the possibility that non-western literature will be erased from the set: fear not! I am a judicious editor and will represent a variety of time periods, languages, and regions in these questions.
4/4 History
1.25/1.25 American
1.25/1.25 World
1.25/1.25 European
0.25/0.25 "Other"
"Other" questions encompass historiography, the academic study of history, and transnational aspects of history that do not neatly fall into the geographical categories.
4/4 Science
1/1 Biology
1/1 Chemistry
1/1 Physics
0.5/0.5 Math
0.5/0.5 Other Science
Distribution-wise, probably the most standard set of categories. We will focus on important topics in science, rather than on minor named phenomena.
3/3 RLT
1/1 Religion
1/1 Legends
1/1 Thought
"Thought" is the same as it was defined in the George Oppen set -- major works, theories, and thinkers -- across both the traditional "philosophy" and "social science" domains.
The "Religion" category will encompass beliefs, practices, denominations, exegesis etc. with a large emphasis placed on major world religions.
The "Legends" category will cover both traditional mythology, and the "stories" present in major religious texts and lore. There will be a prudent mixture of the two.
3/3 Arts
1/1 Painting and Sculpture
1/1 Classical Music and Opera
0.5/0.5 Other Visual Arts
0.5/0.5 Other Auditory Arts
I have folded sculpture and opera into painting and classical music, respectively, because there is substantial overlap between those artforms with respect to who created them and how they are talked about. As with the literature distribution above, there is no explicitly enumerated subdistribution within these categories, but the editors will judiciously ensure a fair amount of painting, sculpture, classical music, and opera gets asked about. This also leaves some more room in the "other" arts categories to continue my exploration, as in NASAT, of non-western art forms, and to devote more space to underasked categories such as dance and film.
1/1 Social Science
This is a mixture of various disciplines as they are practiced-- psychology, law, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, etc. Because of the aforementioned "Thought" category, the focus is not so much on great theorists and their works, but instead on these fields in an applied sense.
0.33/0.33 Geography
The intent here is to continue in the great recent writing trend of cultural and human geography, rather than a narrow focus on topological features and landmarks.
0.33/0.33 Current Events
The second-most standard part of the distribution. Emphasis will be placed on major trends in our changing world.
0.33/0.33 Academic Other
Content from academic topics that either blend disciplines or are outside the distributional framework altogether.
Mirror fees: $40 per non-house team will be charged to play this set. Email me at auronigupta AT gmail DOT com if you want to host!
Sites:
University of Michigan - 2/25/17
Harvard University - 3/4/17
University of Maryland - 3/4/17
University of Toronto - 3/12/17
Oxford University - 2/25/17
University of California, Berkeley - 2/26/17
Rice University - 2/25/17
University of South Carolina - 3/25/17
University of California, San Diego - 3/12/17
New College - 4/1/17