"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."
"Introduction - Thirteen Propositions about Propaganda - Jonathan Auerbach and Russ Castronovo Part I - Histories and Nationalities Chapter 1 - The Invention of Propaganda: a Critical Commentary on and Translation of Inscrutabili Divinae Providentiae Arcano - Maria Teresa Prendergast and Thomas A. Prendergast Chapter 2 - Brazilian and North American Slavery Propagandas: Some Thoughts on Difference - Marcus Wood Chapter 3 - A World to Win: Propaganda and African American Expressive Culture - Bill V. Mullen Chapter 4 - Literacy or Legibility: The Trace of Subjectivity in Soviet Socialist Realism - Elizabeth A. Papazian Chapter 5 - Narrative and Mendacity: Anti-Semitic Propaganda in Nazi Germany - Jeffrey Herf Chapter 6 - The ""Hidden Tyrant"": Propaganda, Brainwashing, and Psycho-Politics in the Cold War Period - Priscilla Wald Chapter 7 - Roof for a House Divided: How U.S. Propaganda Evolved into Public Diplomacy - Nicholas J. Cull Chapter 8 - 'Thought-Work' and Propaganda: Chinese Public Diplomacy and Public Relations after Tiananmen Square - Gary D. Rawnsley Part II - Institutions and Practices Chapter 9 - Instruction, Indoctrination, Imposition: Conceptions of Propaganda in the Field of Education - Craig Kridel Chapter 10 - Books in the Cold War: Beyond ""Culture"" and ""Information"" - Trysh Travis Chapter 11 - ""The New Vehicle of Nationalism"": Radio Goes to War - Michele Hilmes Chapter 12 - Built on a Lie: Propaganda, Pedagogy, and the Origins of the Kuleshov Effect - John MacKay Chapter 13 - Propagating Modernity: German Documentaries from the 1930s between Information, Instruction and Indoctrination - Thomas Elsaesser Chapter 14 - ""Order Out of Chaos"": Freud, Fascism and the Golden Age of American Advertising - Lawrence R. Samuel Chapter 15 - Propaganda and Pleasure: from Kracauer to Joyce - Mark Wollaeger Chapter 16 - 'The World's Greatest Adventure in Advertising': Walter Lippmann's Critique of Censorship and Propaganda - Sue Curry Jansen Part III - Theories and Methodologies Chapter 17 - Propaganda among the Ruins - Debra Hawhee Chapter 18 - Jacques Ellul's Contribution to Propaganda Studies - Randal Marlin Chapter 19 - The Ends of Misreading: Propaganda, Democracy, Literature - Sara Guyer Chapter 20 - Propaganda vs. Education: A Case Study of Hate Radio in Rwanda - David Yanagizawa-Drott Chapter 21 - Dissent, Truthiness, and Skepticism in the Global Media Landscape: 21st Century Propaganda in Times of War - Megan Boler, Selena Nemorin Chapter 22 - Propaganda in Egypt and Syria's ""Cyberwars"": Contexts, Actors, Tools and Tactics - Sahar Khamis, Paul B. Gold, and Katherine Vaughn"
Jonathan Auerbach is Professor of English at the University of Maryland. He is the author of numerous articles and books on American culture, including The Romance of Failure: First-Person Fictions of Poe, Hawthorne, and James (Oxford University Press, 1989), Male Call: Becoming Jack London (Duke University Press, 1996), and Body Shots: Early Cinema's Incarnations, (University of California Press, 2007). He has recently completed a study entitled Dark Borders: Film Noir and American Citizenship. Russ Castronovo is Jean Wall Bennett Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He is author of three books: Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom (University of California Press, 1995); Necro Citizenship: Death, Eroticism, and the Public Sphere in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Duke University Press, 2001); Be autiful Democracy: Aesthetics and Anarchy in a Global Era (University of Chicago Press, 2007). Among the books he's co-edited is Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics (Duke University Press, 2002) co-edited with Dana Nelson
