Communication and Dramaturgy:
20th-Century Visual Politics

Some Resources for Poster Propaganda

Book Length Works

Alexandre, Arsene, et al. The Modern Poster. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895.

Cirker, Haywood, comp. The Golden Age of the Poster. New York: Dover, 1971.

Hardie, Martin. War Posters Issued by Belligerent and Neutral Countries 1914-1919. London: A. & C. Black, 1920.

Hawkins, George H. E. Poster Advertising: Being a Talk on the Subject of Posting as an Advertising Medium. Chicago: N.p., 1910.

Hillier, Bevis. 100 Years of Posters. London: Pall Mall Press, 1972.

Hutchison, Harold F. The Poster: An Illustrated History from 1860. New York: Viking Press, 1968.

Rickards, Maurice. Posters from the Nineteen-Twenties. New York: Walker, 1968.

-----. Posters from the Turn of the Century. New York: Walker, 1968.

-----. The Rise and Fall of the Poster. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971.

Rossi, Attilio. Posters. New York: Hamlyn, 1969.

Treib, Marc. Fables of Content: Some Posters from the Recent Decade. Berkeley, CA: Poltroon Press, 1980.

Wrede, Stuart. The Modern Poster. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1988.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Rare Book Collection. Battlelines: World War I Posters from the Bowman Gray Collection. Chapel Hill, NC: Wilson Library, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1988.

Article-Length Works

Lenica, Jan. "Poster Art in Post-War Poland." Graphis 4 (1948): 358ff.

"Poster Art in Wartime Britain." Design 45 (March 1944): 11ff.

"Poster Art: When Art Goes to Work in the Cause of Communism." Far Eastern Economic Review 122 (17 November 1983): 106ff.

"Posters from the People"s Republic of China" and "Posters from Australia." Heresies 1 (January 1977): 63ff., 94ff.

Ramsey, E. Michele. "Inventing Citizens During World War I: Suffrage Cartoons in the Woman Citizen." Western Journal of Communication 64 (Spring 2000): 113ff.

Rigby, Ida Katherin. "German Expressionist Political Posters 1918-1919: Art and Politics, A Failed Alliance." Art Journal 44 (Spring 1984): 33ff.

Stein, Andre. "The Rhetoric of Liberation Movement Posters." Semiotica 28 (1979): 195-223.

A wonderful collection of World War I era posters can be found at the Iowa Historical Society library on Iowa Avenue. You may wish to move the class to that facility for part of the class.

Online Exhibits

Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art from World War II
This online exhibit features 33 posters and 1 sound file from a more extensive exhibit that was presented in the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, from May 1994 to February 1995. Like the original, this exhibit is divided into two parts, which represent two psychological approaches used in rallying public support for the war.

Cuban Poster Art

Transnational Poster Art: Former East Germany (GDR) and Latin America 1970-1989

Some Like it Red: Polish Political Posters 1944 - 1989

The Chairman Smiles: Posters from the former Soviet Union, Cuba and China

Support! Vote! Strike! 150 Dutch social and political posters from the collections of the IISH, 1870 - 1998.

The Red Vision : A century of Dutch Social-Democracy

Art to the People: Prints, cartoons and posters by Walter Crane, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Albert Hahn, Frans Masereel and Gerd Arntz.

Mandela for President: original april 1994 election posters

World War II Poster Collection, Northwestern University Library

Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age: Smithsonian Cooper-Wewitt, National Design Museum: Selections from the Merrill C. Berman Collection

Examples of Stalinist Posters & Political Art (1930-1953) - Stanford University Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures

"Take Up the Sword of Justice": British Posters of World War One from the Roger N. Mohovich Collection