Class slides for CHN 375W - Chinese Political Thought and Propaganda at Emory University - Introduction (part 1)

1. CHN 375W:
Chinese Political Thought & Propaganda
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm in Woodruff Library 875
Admiralty protest site" Admiralty, Hong Kong . Digital photography by Keren Wang, Nov. 15, 2014.

2. Hello!
I was born and
raised,
literally,
in a cave
(look up yaodong )

3. My childhood
cave...
Digital photography, by Keren Wang, at Pianguan, summer 2018

4. Digital photography by Keren Wang, Lanzhou 2018

5. Digital photography by Keren Wang, Lanzhou 2018

6. Diverse materiality of collective memory

7. Key
Questions
What IS and ISN’T propaganda?
Why study it?
Why comparative perspectives?
Keren Wang 2023 all rights reserved

8. What IS (ISN’T)
Propaganda?
The Mussolini Facade, 1934 (Wikimedia Commons).

9. Propaganda Fide
Left: Propaganda Fide HQ (Sacra Congregatio
de Propaganda Fide, “Sacred Congregation for
the Evangelization of Peoples”) in Rome
Established by the Catholic Church in 1622
To promote the spread of Catholic faith
non-Catholic countries
By Keren Wang 2023 all rights
reserved

10. What is Propaganda?
Agent: propagandist
Scene: Public / communal
Act: “attempt to influence
perception and affect behavior”
Agency: “deliberate and
systematic”
Purpose: “further the desired
objectives of the propagandist”
By Keren Wang 2023 all rights
reserved

11. What is NOT Propaganda?

13. FRACTURED
POLITICAL
CARTOGRAPHY
OF THE SOUTH
CHINA SEA:
By Keren Wang, all rights reserved 2023

14. By Keren Wang 2023 all rights reserved

15. Symbolic Expressions
Before Propaganda:
Primitive Animism &
Fetishism
Left: Cave painting from the Altamira cave, Cantabria,
Spain, painted c. 20,000 BCE (Solutrean).
Middle: “Venus of Dolní Věstonice,” the earliest
discovered use of ceramics, c. 25,000 BCE
Right: “Venus of Willendorf,” female figurine estimated
from c. 25,000 BCE
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
By Keren Wang 2023 all rights reserved

16. Birth of
Monuments and
Public Rites
Left: Urfa Man, c. 9000 BC, Upper
Mesopotamia
Right: Stonehenge, c. 3000 BC, an
example of Neolithic megalith
Image: Wikimedia Commons
By Keren Wang 2023 all rights reserved

17. Left: Luxor Obelisk (Ramesses II, c. 1250
BC)
Middle: One of the two obelisks for the
Mausoleum of Augustus
(28 BC)
Right: Washington Monument, Washington
DC (1884)
By Keren Wang 2023 all rights reserved

18. Monument to the People's
Heroes, on Tiananmen
Square, Beijing

19. Civil Religion / State Cult
Unifying values of a nation, as expressed
through public rituals, symbols (e.g. national
flag), and ceremonies on sacred days and at
sacred ground (e.g. monuments, battlefields,
or national cemeteries).
By Keren Wang 2023 all rights reserved

20. Taxation as
offering to the
God-King
Warka Vase, c. 3200
BC, Uruk site
Image: Wikimedia Commons

21. By Keren Wang 2023 all rights reserved

22. Left: Temple of Hadrian, Rome, completed in 145 AD
Right: Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC, completed in 1922
By Keren Wang 2023 all rights reserved

23. Fidel Castro
laying a wreath at
the Lincoln
Memorial during
his visit to the
United States,
1959.
By Keren Wang 2023 all rights reserved

26. Top: The Great
Hall of the
People,
Tiananmen
Square, Beijing
Bottom:
Xinhuamen, the
main entrance to
the Zhongnanhai
compound,
Beijing