Contemporary Wartime Propaganda

The next discussion of the Consortium on Human Rights and Expressive
Culture will be from Monday, 21 September through the following
Monday, 28 September 2009, with the theme of "Contemporary Wartime
Propaganda." We will be studying propaganda as a form of expressive
culture while paying special attention to its political and
nationalistic aims, and to its production in contemporary areas of
conflict. Some issues we will examine include:

1) ruralism vs. urbanism (especially urban design and its
juxtaposition against romantic peasant "roots")
2) international expositions and the World's Fair
3) state art prizes and commissions
4) realism, public art, and national/global processes

We will look at excerpts from the following readings:

1) Garoian, Charles R. and Yvonne M. Gaudelius. 2008.
Spectacle Pedagogy: Art, Politics, and Visual Culture. Albany: State
University of New York Press.

2) Hyvärinen, Matti and Lisa Muszynski, eds. 2008.
Terror and the Arts: Artistic, Literary, and Political Interpretations
of Violence from Dostoyevsky to Abu Ghraib. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.

3) Portal, Jane. 2005.
Art Under Control in North Korea. London: Reaktion Books.

4) Maasri, Zeina. 2009.
Off the Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese Civil War. London: Tauris.