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Comics and Conflict : Patriotism and Propaganda from WWII through Operation Iraqi Freedom
The comic book, which emerged in its modern form in the 1930s, was a form of visual entertainment that gave readers, especially children, a form of escape. As World War II began, however, comic books became a part of propaganda as well, providing information and education for both children and adults. This book looks at how specific comic books of the war genre have been used to display patriotism, adventure through war stories, and eventually to tell of the horrors of combat -- from World War II through the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. This book also examines how war- and patriotically-themed comics evolved from soldier-drawn reflections of society, eventually developing along with the broader comic book medium into a mirror of American society during times of conflict. These comic books generally reflected patriotic fervor, but sometimes they advanced a specific cause. As war comic books evolved along with American society, many also served as a form of protest against United States foreign and military policy. In the post 9/11 era, however, comic books have returned to their propagandistic/patriotic roots.
Also available in print: D744.7.U6 S46 2014
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Epic Revisionism : Russian History and Literature As Stalinist Propaganda
Focusing on a number of historical and literary personalities who were regarded with disdain in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution--figures such as Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, and Mikhail Lermontov--Epic Revisionism tells the fascinating story of these individuals' return to canonical status during the darkest days of the Stalin era. An inherently interdisciplinary project, Epic Revisionism features pieces on literary and cultural history, film, opera, and theater. This volume pairs scholarly essays with selections drawn from Stalin-era primary sources--newspaper articles, unpublished archival documents, short stories--to provide students and specialists with the richest possible understanding of this understudied phenomenon in modern Russian history. "These scholars shed a great deal of light not only on Stalinist culture but on the politics of cultural production under the Soviet system."--David L. Hoffmann, Slavic Review
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For Home and Country : World War I Propaganda on the Home Front
World War I prompted the first massive organized propaganda campaign of the twentieth century. Posters, pamphlets, and other media spread fear about the "Hun," who was often depicted threatening American families in their homes, while additional campaigns encouraged Americans and their allies to support the war effort. With most men actively involved in warfare, women and children became a special focus--and a tool--of social manipulation during the war. For Home and Country examines the propaganda that targeted noncombatants on the home front in the United States and Europe during World War I. Cookbooks, popular magazines, romance novels, and government food agencies targeted women in their homes, especially their kitchens, pressuring them to change their domestic habits. Children were also taught to fear the enemy and support the war through propaganda in the form of toys, games, and books. When women and children were not the recipients of propaganda, they were often used in propaganda to target men. By examining a diverse collection of literary texts, songs, posters, and toys, Celia Malone Kingsbury reveals how these pervasive materials were used to fight the war's cultural battle.
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Hearst Over Hollywood : Power, Passion, and Propaganda in the Movies
Hollywood--crossroads of filmmaking, mythmaking, and politics--was dominated by one man more than any other for most of its history. It was William Randolph Hearst who understood how to use cinema to exploit the public's desire for entertainment and to create film propaganda to further his own desire for power. From the start, Hearst saw his future and the future of Hollywood as one and the same. He pioneered and capitalized on the synergistic relationship between yellow journalism and advertising and motion pictures. He sent movie cameramen to the inauguration of William McKinley and the front lines of the Spanish-American War. He played a prominent role in organizing film propaganda for both sides fighting World War I. By the 1910s, Hearst was producing his own pictures--he ran one of the first animation studios and made many popular and controversial movie serials, including The Perils of Pauline (creating both the scenario and the catchphrase title) and Patria. As a feature film producer, Hearst was responsible for some of the most talked-about movies of the 1920s and 1930s. Behind the scenes in Hollywood, Hearst had few equals--he was a much-feared power broker from the Silent Era to the Blacklisting Era. Hearst Over Hollywood draws on hundreds of previously unpublished letters and memos, FBI Freedom of Information files, and personal interviews to document the scope of Hearst's power in Hollywood. Louis Pizzitola tells the hidden story of Hearst's shaping influence on both film publicity and film censorship--getting the word out and keeping it in check--as well as the growth of the "talkies," and the studio system. He details Hearst's anti-Semitism and anti-Communism, used to retaliate for Citizen Kane and to maintain dominance in the film industry, and exposes his secret film deal with Germany on the eve of World War II. The author also presents new insights into Hearst's relationships with Marion Davies, Will Hays, Louis B. Mayer, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mussolini, Hitler, and the Kennedys. Hearst Over Hollywood is a tour de force of biography, cultural study, and film history that reveals as never before the brilliance and darkness of Hearst's prophetic connection with Hollywood.
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The Literature of Propaganda
Throughout history, literary works of all kinds have been used to spread propaganda and influence public opinion for or against one cause or another. The Literature of Propaganda examines these literary works and explores ways in which propaganda shapes public opinion, persuades its audience, and impacts society. In addition, it seeks to answer the following questions: How is propaganda described in literature? How is it used to influence our views? How do we recognize a work as propaganda? Propaganda has been used in one form another to influence the public opinion for or against one cause or another. From early theater, to public speeches, to magazines, books, film and more, propaganda pervades our society. Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary defines propaganda as 2: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person 3: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further ones cause or to damage an opposing cause, also: a public action having such an effect. The Literature of Propaganda showcases propaganda portrayed in literature:, such as Aldous Huxleys Brave New World, Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451, and George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four. It also features literature that was specifically created as propaganda or used in that way:, such as The Moon is Is Down by John Steinbeck, and The Leopards Spots, The Clan 01
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The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies
Derived from the word "to propagate," the idea and practice of propaganda concerns nothing less than the ways in which human beings communicate, particularly with respect to the creation and widespread dissemination of attitudes, images, and beliefs. Much larger than its pejorative connotations suggest, propaganda can more neutrally be understood as a central means of organizing and shaping thought and perception, a practice that has been a pervasive feature of the twentieth century and that touches on many fields. It has been seen as both a positive and negative force, although abuses under the Third Reich and during the Cold War have caused the term to stand in, most recently, as a synonym for untruth and brazen manipulation. Propaganda analysis of the 1950s to 1989 too often took the form of empirical studies about the efficacy of specific methods, with larger questions about the purposes and patterns of mass persuasion remaining unanswered. In the present moment where globalization and transnationality are arguably as important as older nation forms, when media enjoy near ubiquity throughout the globe, when various fundamentalisms are ascendant, and when debates rage about neoliberalism, it is urgent that we have an up-to-date resource that considers propaganda as a force of culture writ large. The handbook will include twenty-two essays by leading scholars from a variety of disciplines, divided into three sections. In addition to dealing with the thorny question of definition, the handbook will take up an expansive set of assumptions and a full range of approaches that move propaganda beyond political campaigns and warfare to examine a wide array of cultural contexts and practices.
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Propaganda, Power and Persuasion: From World War I to Wikileaks
Propaganda came of age in the Twentieth Century. The development of mass and multi-media offered a fertile ground for propaganda while global conflict provided the impetus needed for its growth. Propaganda has however become a portmanteau word, which can be interpreted in a number of different ways. What are the characteristic features of propaganda, and how can it be defined? The distinguished contributors to this book trace the development of techniques of 'opinion management' from the First World War to the current conflict in Afghanistan. They reveal how state leaders and spin-doctors operating at the behest of the state, sought to shape popular attitudes - at home and overseas - endeavoring to harness new media with the objective of winning hearts and minds. The book provides compelling evidence of how the study and practice of propaganda today is shaped by its history. As Philip Taylor has written, 'The challenge (of the modern information age) is to ensure that no single propaganda source gains monopoly over the information and images that shape our thoughts. If this happens, the war propagandists will be back in business again.'
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Propaganda and Mass Persuasion : A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present
A truly international, authoritative A-Z guide to five centuries of propaganda, in both wartime and peacetime, which covers key moments, techniques, concepts, and some of the most influential propagandists in history. 60+ biographical profiles of the masters of mass persuasion, from Joseph Stalin, Joseph Goebbels, and Saddam Hussein to Mohandas Gandhi, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Malcolm X. Information on dozens of historical and present-day propaganda institutions, including the KGB and the Voice of America. 20+ of the best-known documents and artifacts of propaganda, such as the film Casablanca and the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Covers five centuries of mass persuasion across the world from the 1500s to current times.
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Reference Shelf: Propaganda and Misinformation
This edition of Reference Shelf looks at propaganda and misinformation. Social media posts inciting sectarian violence, government-manipulated misinformation campaigns, for-profit fake news headlines, and well-meaning but gullible individuals promoting conspiracies point up the problems with our current media environment. Looking at such issues as Russian election interference, the increasing polarization of media consumption, hacktivism, and the future role AI could play in making fake news more difficult to detect, this volume explores the pollution of our information environment and what we can do about it.
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Selling the American Way : U. S. Propaganda and the Cold War
In 1955, the United States Information Agency published a lavishly illustrated booklet called My America. Assembled ostensibly to document "the basic elements of a free dynamic society," the booklet emphasized cultural diversity, political freedom, and social mobility and made no mention of McCarthyism or the Cold War. Though hyperbolic, My America was, as Laura A. Belmonte shows, merely one of hundreds of pamphlets from this era written and distributed in an organized attempt to forge a collective defense of the "American way of life." Selling the American Way examines the context, content, and reception of U.S. propaganda during the early Cold War. Determined to protect democratic capitalism and undercut communism, U.S. information experts defined the national interest not only in geopolitical, economic, and military terms. Through radio shows, films, and publications, they also propagated a carefully constructed cultural narrative of freedom, progress, and abundance as a means of protecting national security. Not simply a one-way look at propaganda as it is produced, the book is a subtle investigation of how U.S. propaganda was received abroad and at home and how criticism of it by Congress and successive presidential administrations contributed to its modification.
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Weapons of Democracy : Propaganda, Progressivism, and American Public Opinion
Following World War I, political commentator Walter Lippmann worried that citizens increasingly held inaccurate and misinformed beliefs because of the way information was produced, circulated, and received in a mass-mediated society. Lippmann dubbed this manipulative opinion-making process "the manufacture of consent." A more familiar term for such large-scale persuasion would be propaganda. In Weapons of Democracy, Jonathan Auerbach explores how Lippmann's stark critique gave voice to a set of misgivings that had troubled American social reformers since the late nineteenth century. Progressives, social scientists, and muckrakers initially drew on mass persuasion as part of the effort to mobilize sentiment for their own cherished reforms, including regulating monopolies, protecting consumers, and promoting disinterested, efficient government. "Propaganda" was associated with public education and consciousness raising for the good of the whole. By the second decade of the twentieth century, the need to muster support for American involvement in the Great War produced the Committee on Public Information, which zealously spread the gospel of American democracy abroad and worked to stifle dissent at home. After the war, public relations firms--which treated publicity as an end in itself--proliferated. Weapons of Democracy traces the fate of American public opinion in theory and practice from 1884 to 1934 and explains how propaganda continues to shape today's public sphere. The book closely analyzes the work of prominent political leaders, journalists, intellectuals, novelists, and corporate publicists, including Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, George Creel, John Dewey, Julia Lathrop, Ivy Lee, and Edward Bernays. Truly interdisciplinary in both scope and method, this book will appeal to students and scholars in American studies, history, political theory, media and communications, and rhetoric and literary studies.
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Why America Fights : Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq
On the evening of September 11, 2002, with the Statue of Liberty shimmering in the background, television cameras captured President George W. Bush as he advocated war against Iraq. This carefully stage-managed performance, writes Susan A. Brewer, was the culmination of a long tradition of sophisticated wartime propaganda in America. In Why America Fights, Brewer offers a fascinating history of how successive presidents have conducted what Donald Rumsfeld calls "perception management," from McKinley's war in the Philippines to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Brewer's intriguing account ranges from analyses of wartime messages to descriptions of the actual operations, from the dissemination of patriotic ads and posters to the management of newspaper, radio, and TV media. When Woodrow Wilson took the nation into World War I, he created the Committee on Public Information, led by George Creel, who called his job "the world's greatest adventure in advertising." In World War II, Roosevelt's Office of War Information avowed a "strategy of truth," though government propaganda still depicted Japanese soldiers as buck-toothed savages. In the Korean War, the Truman administration delineated differences between "good" and "evil" Asians, while portraying the conflict as a global battle between the Free World and Communism. After examining the ultimately failed struggle to cast the Vietnam War in a favorable light, Brewer shows how the Bush White House drew explicit lessons from that history as it engaged in an unprecedented effort to sell a preemptive war in Iraq. Yet the thrust of its message was not much different from McKinley's pronouncements about America's civilizing mission. Impressively researched and argued, filled with surprising details, Why America Fights shows how presidents consistently have drummed up support for foreign wars by appealing to what Americans want to believe about themselves.
Also available in print: E744 .B6977 2009
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World War II Propaganda : Analyzing the Art of Persuasion During World War II
Shows in illuminating detail how the Allied and Axis forces used visual images and other propaganda material to sway public opinion during World War II. Gives the reader primary source examples of World War II propaganda, answering the need for the study of images that is necessary in today's history study. Includes a comprehensive bibliography.