This chapter examines how Austrian patriotic culture came to pervade the city’s streets. It demonstrates that an Austrian mobilization did take place in the Bohemian lands and addresses the larger question of the wartime relationship between state and civil society in the Habsburg Empire. The patriotic discourse was not just imposed from above, it was also abundantly relayed by private associations and among the public through denunciations and public collections. The wartime patriotic culture became part of the urban landscape through the display of flags, processions in the streets, and the ban on pan-Slavic colors. Prague’s inhabitants contributed to collections for soldiers or widows and orphans, and were constantly expected to join in the common sacrifice. Volunteers raising money as well as ubiquitous posters urging them to give more for war victims were constant reminders of a conflict that became inescapable in everyday life.

Molière’s extraordinary success between 1659 and 1673 was due not only to his virtuosity as a dramatist, his comic talent or his exploitation of current affairs; it was due also to his feeling for an ‘event’ and his ability to capture attention. This contribution studies his unprecedented investment in publicity, which mobilised a multitude of forms and mediums, as well as its reliance on a network of agents with varied motivations. Literary history has long tried to distinguish between Molière’s friends and enemies by relying on their praise or criticism of him. This contribution studies them rather as agents who, depending on the context, opportunity and their own interests, sometimes acted for and sometimes against Molière, without this indicating either personal enmity or ties of affection.

Chapter 6 focuses on the production of art in the form of poetry and sermons but also material and visual culture expressed through banners, posters, and graffiti as a form of resistance and reordering of the political system. In the context of Twelver Shi‘a Islam, writing elegies and performing them in mourning rituals has been a central element in lamenting the death of Imam Husayn. The lachrymal expressions and descriptions that characterize this lamentation poetry have the religious and ritualistic function of metaphorically identifying the participants with Imam Husayn and uniting believers in the fight for his cause. This chapter focuses mainly on lamentation poetry written by men but performed by women during women-only majalis in Kuwait and London. It discusses how poetry, as an artistic production, is politicized locally but its impact is transnationally transmitted. The chapter also examines women’s use of forms of resistance art to articulate their own definition of power and authority within both private and public spaces in Bahrain.

The period of American neutrality during the first three years of World War I (1914-1917) was marked by widespread disagreement. Widespread propaganda advocated neutrality as well as intervention on either side. Propaganda advocating different positions nevertheless tended to use some of the same—often gendered and sexualized—imagery to solicit and channel American emotions. Once the US declared war, the creation of a state-sanctioned propaganda agency, The Committee on Public Information (CPI), produced a flow of information that was both intense and univocal in its support for the war. Meanwhile, legislative acts legalized censorship, enabling the Post Office, government at all levels, and even non-state actors to police speech, jail and attack pacifists, and limit dissenting publications. The widespread use of media to secure public consent for and participation in the war effort is an element of modern, total war. The media landscape was permanently changed. Propaganda moved through social channels and frequently targeted and depended upon women to both relay and follow its messages; after the war, largely as a result, women gained the vote. Other legacies were more negative. Some modernist writers and artists would denounce martial (ab)uses of language and to adopt new strategies (including irony) to undermine notions of linguistic and political certainties.

Chapter 4 examines the evolution of three forms of economic propaganda—advertisements, posters, and films—to reveal the move toward greater state consumerism, and reveals the ways the CCP navigated the central contradiction between its socialist rhetoric and its capitalist policies. While the Soviet Union provided ideological cover for the CCP’s embrace of consumerism, the party also used public discourse surrounding consumerism to promote restraint. These forms of discourse all attempted to subordinate people’s material desires under a propaganda blitz of messages proclaiming the importance of hard work and frugal living. The CCP’s brand of consumerism thus attempted to castigate individual material desires as bourgeois and celebrate social consumption in its stead. The CCP’s social consumption celebrated collective achievements that benefited the entire nation, such as expanding production of goods and infrastructure like nuclear weapons, bridges, collective dining and childcare, and health care. The CCP used their growing propaganda apparatus to promote consumerism even as it attempted to shape—and at times even suppress—consumerism’s self-expanding, compulsory nature.

This chapter considers report writing, posters and oral presentation as means of communicating findings from experiments in science and engineering. Detailed advice is given on report writing supported by specific examples of, for example, how to write an abstract. A full report is included for the student to critique. Example posters are also included. Advice on how to approach oral presentations is included.