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Quiz about The  Above Rubies Awards for 2005
Quiz about The  Above Rubies Awards for 2005

The Above Rubies Awards for 2005 Quiz


If the award doesn't sound familiar, that's because I have just created it to honor women in ten different fields who should be more famous than they are. How many do you know? (Be advised that this quiz can be regarded as Americacentric.)

A multiple-choice quiz by LilahDeDah. Estimated time: 7 mins.
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Author
LilahDeDah
Time
7 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
201,632
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Tough
Avg Score
6 / 10
Plays
1122
Awards
Top 20% Quiz
Last 3 plays: Hayes1953 (4/10), Guest 175 (4/10), Guest 73 (10/10).
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Question 1 of 10
1. "Who can find a virtuous woman?
for her price is far above rubies." (Proverbs 31:10)

Welcome to the Above Rubies Awards, created by me to increase awareness of amazing women in herstory. The first award is for Art.

Europe in the seventeeth century didn't really know what to do with a female artist of genius. Artemisia Gentilischi was accused of causing her own rape, taking work away from men (who got the credit for most of her paintings anyway) and being both adulteress and nymphomanic. Which of these stunning paintings, all painted by Ms. Gentilischi, is thought to have been a reaction to her rape and its well-publicized, humiliating trial?
Hint


Question 2 of 10
2. Although the court of the tsars in St. Petersburg, Russia, was famous for its excesses, the last tsar's sister-in-law, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, is revered as a Russian Orthodox saint.


Question 3 of 10
3. I was unable to decide which of the following five women should receive my Above Rubies Crusader award, so since they all pursued the same cause, it's a five-way tie. All five lived in the United States in the nineteenth century (1792-1890) and worked tirelessly for social reform. To what important issue were Maria Weston Chapman, Lydia Child, Prudence Crandall, and sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké devoted?
Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. Maria Mitchell was born in 1818. She studied astronomy with her father on Nantucket, eventually rising to such promimence that she became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among other honors. She was a professor at Vassar Female College (later Vassar). What is this Above Rubies Science Award winner most famous for? Hint


Question 5 of 10
5. It's fitting that the fame of this notable American poet should grow slowly, for she wrote deliberately and methodically and published only four volumes during her lifetime. She was a colleague of both Robert Lowell and Marianne Moore, and her poems whisper rather than scream of her life as "a woman, a lesbian, an orphan, a geographically rootless traveler, a frequently hospitalized asthmatic, and a sufferer of depression and alcoholism." Who is this Poetry winner? Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. Dorothea Lange, born in 1895, studied at Columbia University at a time when a college education was unusual for women. Her artistic talent was apparent at a young age, and many of her works are owned by the Library of Congress. She belonged to a creative group that included Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. In what category does Ms. Lange receive the Above Rubies award? Hint


Question 7 of 10
7. Above Rubies Awards are never given to women who are famous because they married someone famous and then sat around looking nice. Although the winner in the Politics category married a movie star, she had already established herself as an accomplished stage actress and opera singer. Helen Gahagan Douglas then went on to interest herself in activist causes, particularly that of migrant farm workers. She counted John Steinbeck and Eleanor Roosevelt among her friends, and Californians elected her to Congress for two terms. In 1950, she ran for the Senate against a Republican opponent. This man conducted a vicious smear campaign, accusing Ms. Douglas of Communist sympathies. Had she won that election, the face of American politics might have been much different, since political scholars theorize that Helen Gahagan Douglas had everything it takes to be elected president. Who was Ms. Douglas's opponent in the 1950 California Senate race? Hint


Question 8 of 10
8. Although her half-brother Pete is more famous, this folk singer is my choice for the Above Rubies Award in Music. She combines traditional folk songs with her own compositions in her nearly two dozen solo albums. Her feminist "Gonna Be an Engineer" should be required listening for little girls (and little boys, too!). Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. This year's winner in the Adventurer category is Tania Aebi. In 1988, Ms. Aebi (unflatteringly described as "a 17 year old dropout barfly") became both the youngest woman and the first American woman to do which of the following? Hint


Question 10 of 10
10. In her forties and recovering from a painful divorce, emergency-room physician Dr. Jerri Nielsen decided in 1999 to have an adventure far away from home. Unfortunately, while literally stranded because of the remoteness of her posting, she discovered she had breast cancer. This intrepid Above Rubies Award winner for Bravery performed her own breast biopsy and, with the help of a heavy equipment specialist, administered her own chemotherapy before being rescued months later. Where was Dr. Neilsen's do-it-yourself cancer clinic located? Hint



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Most Recent Scores
Mar 22 2024 : Hayes1953: 4/10
Mar 16 2024 : Guest 175: 4/10
Feb 05 2024 : Guest 73: 10/10

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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies." (Proverbs 31:10) Welcome to the Above Rubies Awards, created by me to increase awareness of amazing women in herstory. The first award is for Art. Europe in the seventeeth century didn't really know what to do with a female artist of genius. Artemisia Gentilischi was accused of causing her own rape, taking work away from men (who got the credit for most of her paintings anyway) and being both adulteress and nymphomanic. Which of these stunning paintings, all painted by Ms. Gentilischi, is thought to have been a reaction to her rape and its well-publicized, humiliating trial?

Answer: Judith Beheading Holofernes

I don't advise a look at the violent "Judith Beheading Holofernes" while eating dinner, but I most assuredly encourage everyone to become more familiar with this stunning artist's work.

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/G/gentileschi.html#images
2. Although the court of the tsars in St. Petersburg, Russia, was famous for its excesses, the last tsar's sister-in-law, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, is revered as a Russian Orthodox saint.

Answer: True

My choice for the Above Rubies Award in Religion, St. Elizabeth Romanova was both Tsar Nicholas's sister-in-law (her sister, Alexandra, was Nicholas's wife) and his aunt by her marriage to his uncle, Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich. Elizabeth converted to Russian Orthodoxy and became known for her charity and compassion toward Russia's poor.

After her husband's assassination in 1905 she founded an abbey and devoted her life completely to God. She was brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and is regarded as both saint and martyr by her adopted faith.

Her remains are enshrined in Jerusalem.
3. I was unable to decide which of the following five women should receive my Above Rubies Crusader award, so since they all pursued the same cause, it's a five-way tie. All five lived in the United States in the nineteenth century (1792-1890) and worked tirelessly for social reform. To what important issue were Maria Weston Chapman, Lydia Child, Prudence Crandall, and sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké devoted?

Answer: The abolition of slavery

I am probably giving these five wonderful women short shrift by lumping them together, but their stories are each so fascinating that I couldn't leave any of them out. There are some interesting parallels in their lives...three of the five were Quakers, most published abolitionist literature, and all were uniformly reviled for their beliefs during their lives. In 1835, Maria Chapman spoke for all abolitionists when she said "If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere."

All five women lived to be at least 70 years old, and each of them witnessed the abolition of slavery in her lifetime. They are truly women to be celebrated. You are encouraged to learn more: a good starting place is http://search.eb.com/women/nineteenth01.html
4. Maria Mitchell was born in 1818. She studied astronomy with her father on Nantucket, eventually rising to such promimence that she became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among other honors. She was a professor at Vassar Female College (later Vassar). What is this Above Rubies Science Award winner most famous for?

Answer: She discovered a comet

Comets were huge in the nineteenth century. Maria's, which she discovered in 1847, was named "Miss Mitchell's Comet". She became famous for this accomplishment and continued to observe the sky all her life, studying sunspots, planetary moons, nebulae and many other astronomical phenomena.

Edwin Hubble, after studying Einstein's work, developed the theory that the universe is expanding, now referred to as the "Big Bang".

Charles Messier, a French astronomer in the late eighteenth century, compiled a catalogue of deep space objects while searching for those ever-popular comets.
5. It's fitting that the fame of this notable American poet should grow slowly, for she wrote deliberately and methodically and published only four volumes during her lifetime. She was a colleague of both Robert Lowell and Marianne Moore, and her poems whisper rather than scream of her life as "a woman, a lesbian, an orphan, a geographically rootless traveler, a frequently hospitalized asthmatic, and a sufferer of depression and alcoholism." Who is this Poetry winner?

Answer: Elizabeth Bishop

Although Elizabeth Bishop won both the Pulitzer Prize (for "Poems: North & South-A Cold Spring" in 1955) and the National Book Award in 1969 for "Collected Poems", I feel she deserves to be more famous than she is. You can read her poem "The Filling Station" at http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?45442B7C000C0F0201.

The quote in the question is from the Department of English website, University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign).
6. Dorothea Lange, born in 1895, studied at Columbia University at a time when a college education was unusual for women. Her artistic talent was apparent at a young age, and many of her works are owned by the Library of Congress. She belonged to a creative group that included Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. In what category does Ms. Lange receive the Above Rubies award?

Answer: Photography

Although Dorothea began her career as a portrait photographer, she had a well-developed social conscience and soon turned to photojournalism, eventually becoming known as "Bourke-White West" (after the more well-known photojournalist, Margaret Bourke-White). Ms. Lange's work centered on the down-and-out of the Great Depression, particularly migrant workers, with whom she actually lived for a time. She also documented the unfair treatment of Japanese-Americans in the United States during WWII. She was the subject of a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC after her death.

Ms. Lange's most famous photograph, "Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California" (1936) is displayed by the US Library of Congress. You may see this picture at www.artlex.com/ArtLex/f/images/feminis_lang.migr.mothr.lg.jpg
7. Above Rubies Awards are never given to women who are famous because they married someone famous and then sat around looking nice. Although the winner in the Politics category married a movie star, she had already established herself as an accomplished stage actress and opera singer. Helen Gahagan Douglas then went on to interest herself in activist causes, particularly that of migrant farm workers. She counted John Steinbeck and Eleanor Roosevelt among her friends, and Californians elected her to Congress for two terms. In 1950, she ran for the Senate against a Republican opponent. This man conducted a vicious smear campaign, accusing Ms. Douglas of Communist sympathies. Had she won that election, the face of American politics might have been much different, since political scholars theorize that Helen Gahagan Douglas had everything it takes to be elected president. Who was Ms. Douglas's opponent in the 1950 California Senate race?

Answer: Richard Nixon

Tricky Dick (and she called him that) was relatively unknown whereas Helen was famous, beautiful, rich and beloved. The only way for Mr. Nixon to win the election was to play to McCarthy-era Communist paranoia, and it worked. He was quoted as saying that his opponent was "Pink down to her underwear", a comment doubly (perhaps even triply) offensive. That 1950 Senate contest remains one of the great "What If?" moments in American politics.

More information about this infamous campaign can be found in "Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady : Richard Nixon vs Helen Gahagan Douglas-Sexual Politics and the Red Scare, 1950" by Greg Mitchell.

(It's difficult to award an award for a category one knows nothing about, so many thanks must be extended to FunTrivia member Uglybird for his excellent suggestion.)
8. Although her half-brother Pete is more famous, this folk singer is my choice for the Above Rubies Award in Music. She combines traditional folk songs with her own compositions in her nearly two dozen solo albums. Her feminist "Gonna Be an Engineer" should be required listening for little girls (and little boys, too!).

Answer: Peggy Seeger

The Seeger family is musically inclined indeed. Both of Peggy's parents were musicians, and half-brother Pete and brother Mike are folk singers as well. In addition to "folk singer" and "composer", Peggy's titles also include "activist", primarily about feminist and anti-nuclear issues. Her website is http://www.pegseeger.com

(I made up the incorrect answers using the surnames of popular folk singers combined with botanicals. Shame on me.)
9. This year's winner in the Adventurer category is Tania Aebi. In 1988, Ms. Aebi (unflatteringly described as "a 17 year old dropout barfly") became both the youngest woman and the first American woman to do which of the following?

Answer: Sail around the world alone

Tania details her 27,000 mile, two-plus year journey in her book "Maiden Voyage", first published in 1989.

(For the sake of accuracy, it must be included here that because Ms. Aebi had another person on her boat for 80 miles of the trip, she doesn't officially possess the record which in spirit she certainly does.)
10. In her forties and recovering from a painful divorce, emergency-room physician Dr. Jerri Nielsen decided in 1999 to have an adventure far away from home. Unfortunately, while literally stranded because of the remoteness of her posting, she discovered she had breast cancer. This intrepid Above Rubies Award winner for Bravery performed her own breast biopsy and, with the help of a heavy equipment specialist, administered her own chemotherapy before being rescued months later. Where was Dr. Neilsen's do-it-yourself cancer clinic located?

Answer: The South Pole

Dr. Neilsen had signed on to be the physician for the small (about 40) group of people "wintering over" at the Amundsen-Scott research station at the South Pole. So severe is the weather there that the station is completely isolated during the darkness of the winter months, and no rescue was possible. (Dr. Neilsen mentions in an interview that it's tougher to rescue someone from Antarctica in the winter than it would be to rescue them from outer space.) Chemotherapy was dropped via parachute after the breast biopsy she performed on herself revealed an aggressive form of cancer. Dr. Neilsen's fascinating book about her experiences, titled "Ice Bound", was published in 2001.

I hope you have enjoyed this quizzical awards ceremony. If you would like to nominate a favorite accomplished but under-famous candidate for next year's Above Rubies Awards, please send me a note.

"Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates." (Proverbs 31:31)
Source: Author LilahDeDah

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
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