For this assignment, you will review WWII propaganda posters and create a poster of your own.
Step 1: Review the WWII propaganda posters in the National Archives and the FDR Presidential Library and Museum. Be sure to focus on those from World War II. Look for dates or other cues as to the time period. Look at the materials in light of our definition of propaganda from the American Historical Society as a work using words, images, music, or other forms of expression to acheive a desired result within a particular audience.
Step 2: Revisit the sections of our reading on World War II and consider what ideas the government needed citizens to believe in or what actions it needed citizens to take in order to support the war effort.
Decide on a particular World War II-era audience to whom you will pitch an idea they should believe in or an action they should take to support the war effort.
Step 3: Create your own propaganda poster. Locate a suitable image online that you can paste into the thread accompanied by no more than two lines of text.
You can search .gov archives and open-access Flickr, among other sources. (As always, keep anything you share in class somewhere near a PG-13 rating!). Any images used should be openly licensed or in the public domain (for example, listed as CC0, CC-BY, or CC-BY-SA). You can search for openly licensed images within Flickr or other platforms, but google also offers search tools to help you find images that allow for reuse. You can click “tools”, then the dropdown menu will come down and allow you to select “Creative Commons,” as shown in the screenshot below.
The combination of image and text should be persuasive, especially given that propaganda is often trying to get its intended audience to do something difficult or unconventional. Your image can be very simple—just copy/pasted, or, if you want to show off your photoshopping or meme-building skills, that works too. You can use a program of your choosing, such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Photoshop, or programs such as Canva, Visme, Picktochart, Infogram, Easel.ly, Genially, Adobe Spark.
Step 4: In a separate statement (200-250 words) that accompanies your poster (but isn’t framed within the image), explain in direct terms what result you were aiming for and at whom. What makes it propaganda? Where did you find a wartime need described in our reading that you could feature in your poster? Why did you think it was important for this need to be met?
Rubric
| Criteria | Developing | Satisfactory | Excellent | Points |
| Knowledge of concept | Concept is named but not clearly contextualized and demonstrated. Minimal or no analysis performed. | Effort is made to demonstrate knowledge of concept but needs further elaboration and detail. Application of concept to image is attempted, but could be more tightly aligned. | Concept is clearly articulated and tightly aligns with chosen image. Explanation of concept is clear and to the point. Author has effectively applied concept and demonstrated an advanced level of understanding and appropriate detail. | __/12 |
| Presentation and scholarly ethos | Caption and/or separate explanation are absent or lack context. The reader is not being carefully considered. | Caption and separate explanation are present but underdeveloped. Author is aware of reader and expected scholarly conventions, but they are not fully realized. | Caption and separate explanation are tightly keyed to image and demonstrate a strong awareness of scholarly conventions. Reader is provided with a relevant, clearly expressed analysis. The writing is polished and effective. | __/8 |
| Total | __/20 |