Introductory description

This module examines the role played by propaganda in modern Europe (from 1930 to 1975). In particular, we will look at how propaganda has been created, disseminated and received in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1. Introduction to propaganda in modern Europe.
To include an overview of definitions of propaganda, theories of propaganda production, engagement with principal secondary material. *All seminars and lectures will engage with material in the target language AND in translation to ensure the material is accessible to students from across the School. Lectures and seminars will be delivered in English.

Week 2. Propaganda in Spain during the Civil War (1936-1939)
The lecture and seminar this week will focus on the primary types of images used by propagandists of both the Republican and Franco's fronts during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). We will mainly focus on visual culture, exploring issues such as culture and art, gender and atrocity propaganda.

Week 3. Propaganda during Franco's Regime (1939-1975)
This week we will look at the control and manipulation of public opinion during Franco's dictatorship (1939-1975), focusing on the use and manipulation of myths and history, as well as on the role of education, media and Fascist institutions.

Week 4. Propaganda in Germany, 1940-1944
The lecture and seminar this week will consider the ways in which propaganda was produced and received in Germany during the Nazi regime in World War II and in particular the imposition of Goëbbels’s maxims of propaganda.

Week 5. Propaganda in Germany
The lecture and seminar for this session will look at the Nazi government’s dissemination and use of “atrocity propaganda” to legitimate its invasion of Poland, in particular, and to boost the morale of the military and the civilian population as defeat looked increasingly likely. In this regard, the role of gender in atrocity propaganda will be a central theme.

Week 6. Reading Week.

Week 7. Propaganda in Italy: the cult of the Duce in Fascist Italy: 1922 - 1945
The lecture and seminar this week will offer an overview of the ways in which Fascism established itself through various forms of propaganda, aiming to create a powerful cult of the Italian dictator Mussolini. Examples will include visual art, speeches and other initiatives which targeted all sectors of society.

Week 8. Propaganda in Italy: the ‘cult of youth’ from Risorgimento to Fascism
The lecture and seminar this week will focus more specifically on the central role played by Italian youth during the period leading to the unification of Italy (1871). Discussion will centre around the ways in which youth became a very powerful political and symbolic category, and will show how the same themes would be later appropriated and revised by Fascist propaganda (1922 – 1945).

Week 9. Propaganda in France and the francophone world I: 1933-1954
The lecture and seminar this week will offer an overview of the ways in which propaganda was produced and received in various forms in the course of French history from the final years of the Third French Republic via the Occupation of France and Vichy regime in World War II to the outbreak of the Algerian War of Independence.

Week 10. Propaganda in France and the francophone world II: 1954-1974
The lecture and seminar this week will offer an overview of the ways in which propaganda was produced and received in France and the francophone world from the Algerian War of Independence to the end of the Gaullist period with the death of Georges Pompidou in 1974.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Greater insight into the ways in which propaganda has been produced and received in modern Europe.
• Refined knowledge and understanding of the definition of propaganda in a range of contexts.
• Intercultural awareness, understanding and competence.
• Ability, willingness and openness to engage with other cultures, appreciating their distinctive features
• Knowledge, awareness and understanding of one or more cultures and societies, other than their own.
• Ability to access, read and critically analyse primary and secondary source materials in target language
• Knowledge of aspects of the cultures, communities and societies where target language is used
• Familiarity with the methodologies and approaches appropriate to the discipline

Indicative reading list

Week 1. Introduction
Barnouw, Erik, Documentary: A History of the non-fiction film (Oxford: OUP, 1993)
Eagleton, Terry, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 2007)
Grierson, John, ‘Documentary: The Bright Example,’ in Forsyth Hardy (Ed.), Grierson on Documentary (London: Faber and Faber, 1966)
Griffin, Roger, (Ed.) Fascism: a Reader (Oxford: OUP, 1995)
Jowett, Garth and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion (London: Sage, 2011)
Taylor, Philip, Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda from the ancient world to the present day (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003)

Weeks 2 and 3. Spain
Basilio, Miriam, ‘Genealogies for a New State: Painting and Propaganda in Franco’s Spain, 1936-1940’, Discourse, 24 (2002), 67-94
Bloomfield, Imogen, 'Photographs of Child Victims in Propaganda Posters of the Spanish Civil War', Modern Languages Open, 1 (2018).
Folch-Serra, Mireya, ‘Propaganda in Franco’s Time’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 89 (2012), 227-240
Payne, Stanley G., The Spanish Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)
Sevillano, Francisco, ‘What was Public Opinion in the Francoist ‘New State’? Information, Publics and Rumour in the Spanish Postwar (1939-1945)’, in The Configuration of the Spanish Public Sphere: From the Enlightenment to the Indignados, ed. by David Jimenez Torres and Leticia Villamediana González (New York/London: Berghahn Books, 2019)

Weeks 4 and 5. Germany
Fox, Jo, Film Propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany. World War II Cinema (Oxford: Berg, 2007)
Garden, Ian, The Third Reich’s Celluloid War: Propaganda in Nazi Feature Films, Documentaries and Television (Stroud: The History Press, 2012)
Welch, David, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001)

Weeks 7 and 8. Italy
De Grazia, Victoria, The Culture of Consent: Mass organization of leisure in fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
Williams, Manuela A., Mussolini’s Propaganda Abroad: Subversion in the Mediterranean and the Middle-East, 1935-1940 (London: Routledge, 2006)
Gundle, Duggan and Pieri, The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians (Manchester University Press, 2013)

Weeks 9 and 10. France

Bowles, Brett, ‘The Attempted Nazification of French cinema, 1934-1944,’ in Roel Vande Winkel and David Welch (Eds.), Cinema and the Swastika: The International Expansion of Third Reich Cinema (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) pp.130-145
Lees, David, ‘Waging the War of Words: Propaganda and Persuasion in Modern France,’ in Aurelien Mondon, Nina Parish, David Lees and Marion Demossier (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of French Politics and Culture (London: Routledge, 2017)
Rossignol, Dominique, Histoire de la propagande en France de 1940 à 1944: l’utopie Pétain (Paris: PUF, 1991)
Wharton, Steve, Screening Reality : Documentary Film under the German Occupation, 1940-1944 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of European culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of propaganda and persuasion in Modern Europe will be enhanced through lectures and seminars which engage in scholarship in the field.

Transferable skills

All SMLC culture modules demand critical and analytical engagement with artefacts from target-language cultures. In the course of independent study, class work and assessment students will develop the following skills: written and oral communication, creative and critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, time management and organisation, independent research in both English and their target language(s), intercultural understanding and the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, ICT literacy in both English and the target language(s), personal responsibility and the exercise of initiative.