Propaganda

Undergraduate

Communication pushes people around. Sentences, stories, pictures, graphs, and maps can all convey information. But they can also convince, enthrall, enrage, (dis)empower, and (de)humanize. This course focuses on how communicative acts and ideologies have this power. It considers some linguistic, political, epistemological, psychological, and aesthetic aspects of such acts. And it considers examples of the phenomenon as diverse as political ads, literature, film, painting, pornography, slurs, compliments and even course syllabi.