Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Politics of Propaganda: The Spanish Civil War in Context

(3 Credits)

This course examines the prominent role of cultural production in relationship to both fascism and anti-fascism in early twentieth-century Europe. How did fascist regimes use culture to respond to modernity, or to create a modernism of their own? Was the avant-garde alien to fascist culture, or useful to it? To what extent was there a movement of international anti-fascist resistance? How do culture and propaganda work in tandem? Site-specific guest lectures and fieldwork excursions to monuments, museums, and other institutions will anchor our considerations of the culture’s significance for fascist rule and its popular resistance: The Reina Sofia’s Spanish Civil War collection and Picasso’s Guernica; the Valley of the Fallen and Franco-era architecture; the Virtual Museum of the Spanish Civil War. Along the way, students will develop a working grasp of larger political economies (communism, anarchism, fascism), avant-garde phenomena (Cubism and Surrealism, propaganda, Socialist Realism), and their interrelationship in art, architecture, literature, and other forms of expression. This course will be offered in January-Term 2026. This course will be taught at NYU Madrid and will count as an Away J-Term course.