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ENG 102: English Composition II

A Guide for NECC Comp. II students, featuring resources for literary criticism and research.

What is Propaganda?

Chinese propaganda poster showing Mao Tse - Tung (Mao Zedong), Chinese Communist leader, with peasants during the Cultural Revolution of 1966

The Oxford English Dictionary defines propaganda as "The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a political cause or point of view." A more basic description of propaganda would be a flood of information from all media channels that highlights a person, event, or point of view.

In the image to the left, Mao Tse - Tung is depicted as casually strolling through overflowing wheat fields while the Chinese citizens behind him stare longingly with blissful looks. All individuals are depicted as happy, healthy, adoring fans. In reality, China had just suffered through The Great Famine (an estimated 16-45 million Chinese citizens died from starvation or starvation-related reasons from 1958 -1962) which was brought about by Chairman Mao's Great Leap, a program that relied on surplus food stores for urban parts of the state. Knowing that, can you see how this image is being used to promote Chairman Mao? Is it painting him in a positive or negative light? 

Now, think about the artwork that was created during other times of unrest in countries across the globe. Do you see how this type of material could be used to further political agendas or to enhance the careers and ideas of dictators such as Rafael Trujillo? Can you think of any positive use of propaganda art? Do you think that these types of artwork are still being made today?

Works Cited

Gooch, Elizabeth. “Famine within Reach.” History Today, vol. 69, no. 11, Nov. 2019, pp. 18–20. Academic Search Complete, login.ezproxyness.helmlib.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=139028563&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Mao Tse - Tung (Mao Zedong), Chinese propaganda poster. Photograph. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica. quest.eb.com/search/300_348687/1/300_348687/cite. Accessed 17 Apr. 2020.

"propaganda, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2020, www.oed.com/view/Entry/152605.

 

Resources on Propaganda

A table full of food, including a basket with vegetables, a bowl full of fruit, and plates with tomatoes, fish, carrots, potatoes and more. Text below reads, "Eat more corn, oats and rye products - fish and poultry - fruits, vegetables and potatoes baked, boiled and broiled foods. Eat less wheat, meat, sugar and fats. To save for the army and our associates".NECC provides access to two databases that are artwork-specific, Artstor, and Britannica ImageQuest. Within each of these databases, you can create your own account, save, download, email, and organize images. They also have citation assistance built-in. As always, these citations are computer-generated, so please be sure to check them for accuracy. For help citing images and checking citations for accuracy, please check out the "Citing Images" tab in this box, the Finding & Using Images Online research guide, and the Citation research guide.

Artstor and Britannica ImageQuest are not the only databases that contain this type of imagery, but they do have two of the largest collections available through our databases. 

 

 

Britton, L.N. Eat More [...]; Eat Less [...], To Save For the Army and Our Associates. 1917. Color lithograph. Artstor, library-artstor-org.ezproxyness.helmlib.org/public/SS35559_35559_27037552.

Suggested Art Databases:

Try searching through some of the databases listed below for information related to the different forms and uses of propaganda throughout history. Remember that to access databases from off-campus you will need to have your library card number and password.

 

Below is a selection of eBook titles that are available from NECC. This list is not comprehensive, so be sure to search using the library catalog, or search directly through the eBook databases themselves. 

Any titles that have the words "Read Online" in the call number field are available online using your library card number and password. To access these, click on the words "Read Online" and then follow the link into the correct eBook database. 

 

Images follow a different citation style than other kinds of text-based works (like books and articles) but do still need to be cited. Just giving a hyperlink to where you found an image online is NOT enough. In your Works Cited, you'll want to include as much of the information below as you can:

  • Artist or creator’s name or username,  last name first
  • Title of the work, in italics
  • Date of creation
  • Medium of the work
  • Institution or city in which the work is located
  • Website or database, in italics
  • Medium of publication
  • Date of access

An MLA citation for a work of art will typically look like this:

Artist or username. Title. Date the image was created. Medium. Museum, City. Database name or title of site,  URL. Date of access.

Chagall, Marc. Village Street. 1930s. Oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Museum of Fine Arts, www.mfa.org/collections/object/village-street-34267. Accessed 1 Oct. 2014.
 

An example from a database:

Chagall, Marc.The Yellow Room. 1911. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Artstor, library-artstor-org.ezproxyness.helmlib.org/#/asset/LESSING_ART_10310483270. Accessed 21 Sept. 2016.

To cite this LibGuide use the following templates:

APA: Northern Essex Community College Library. (Date updated). Title of page. Title of LibGuide. URL

MLA: Northern Essex Community College Library. "Title of Page." Title of LibGuide, Date updated, URL.