Thesis (M.A.)--Youngstown State University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-88). Also available via the World Wide Web in PDF format.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Aristophanes to Fo is a study of the principal comedic conventions of Aristophanes' political satire and their relationship to contemporary political satire. A template of these principal conventions is tabulated. This is then compared to, and contrasted with, conventions used in subsequent plays in the genre of political satire, including one written as the practice component of this exegesis. This process determines the influence of Aristophanic conventions on political satire from 4th century BCE Greece to the modern era. There is an analytical emphasis on three 20th century plays as case studies and on my play, Soft Murder, which is case study number four. At the core of the research is the hypothesis that Aristophanic comedic conventions are still relevant to the genre of political satire in contemporary theatre. To retain relevance the genre should be a discourse on a situation or event that has social as well as political meaning to its audience and its presentation should have entertainment value for the culture of the time. Soft Murder is a fundamental part of this process and is written concurrently with the research component.

In my thesis, Performing a Political Shift: Avant-Garde Music in Cold War Spain, I argue that towards the end of the 1950s the Spanish ultra-conservative regime of Francisco Franco started to promote avant-garde music. This music contrasted with the aesthetically conservative one that had been promoted since the end of the Civil War (1936-1939). I examine the causes of this shift and reveal for the first time that they are connected to specific trends in Spanish politics and policies. In terms of national politics, the second phase of the Spanish dictatorship, from the late 1950s until Franco’s death in 1975, was dominated by young ministers who wanted to distance themselves from previous cabinets, mostly controlled by ultra-nationalist fascist politicians. These younger politicians styled themselves as part of a ‘technocratic’ regime. Thanks to its supposed ‘objectivity’ and ‘purely musical’ ideology-free concerns, avant-garde music sat well with these technocrats’ views of modern Spain, that is, a country benefitting from ‘objective’, ideology-free progress. On an international level, the defeat in the 1940s of Mussolini and Hitler, Franco’s main allies, had resulted in isolation for Spain. In order to break this isolation, the Spanish regime started to make a sustained effort at the end of the 1950s to establish diplomatic relations with other Western countries. These relations resulted in cultural, economic and military agreements with European democracies and the US. I also consider why recent Spanish musicology has failed to confront the political implications of the promotion of avant-garde music under Franco. I connect this void with the Spanish transition to democracy (1975-1978), which recent historians have called an exercise in amnesia, a discourse of forgiveness meant to promote reconciliation between Spaniards. As a result of this transition, the political implications of the activities of the composers and musicologists during the Franco years have been ignored or forgotten. The results of my thesis challenge the widely accepted view of the European avant-garde as a left-leaning movement. The main contribution of my thesis is precisely its substantial consideration of the cultural and political meanings of the avant garde and its context, using Franco’s Spain as a case in point.

This dissertation examines the image of the child as it appeared in the propaganda and public rhetoric of the Cold War from approximately 1950 to 1968. It focuses on how American and Soviet politicians, propagandists, and critics depicted children in film, television, radio, and print. It argues that these groups constructed a new lexicon of childhood images to meet the unique challenges of the Cold War. They portrayed the young as facing new threats both inside and outside their borders, while simultaneously envisioning their children as mobilized in novel ways to defend themselves and their countries from infiltration and attack. These new images of the next generation performed a number of important functions in conceptualizing what was at stake in the Cold War and what needed to be done to win it. Politicians, propagandists, and individuals in the Soviet Union and the United States used images of endangered and mobilized children in order to construct a particular vision of the Cold War that could support their political and ideological agendas, including the enforcement of order in the private sphere, the construction of domestic and international legitimacy, and the mobilization of populations at home and abroad. At the same time, these images were open to contestation by dissenting groups on both sides of the Iron Curtain who refashioned the child's image in order to contest their governments’ policies and the Cold War consensus. What these images looked like in Soviet and American domestic and international discourse, why propagandists and dissent movements used these images to promote their policies at home and abroad, and what visions of the Cold War they created are the subjects of this dissertation. This project argues that the domestic demands of the Cold War altered American and Soviet visions of childhood. It is common wisdom that the 1950s and 60s was a period when child rearing practices and ideas about children were changing. This dissertation supports current arguments that American and Soviet parents sought more permissive approaches in raising children who they perceived as innocent and in need of protection. Yet it also finds substantial documentation showing that American and Soviet citizens embraced a new vision of idealized youth that was not innocent, but instead was mobilized for a war that had no foreseeable end. In the United States, children became participants in defending the home and the country from communist infiltration. In the Soviet Union, the state created a new vision of idealized youth that could be seen actively working towards a Soviet-led peace around the world. By using the child’s image as a category for analysis, this project also provides a window into how the Cold War was conceptualized by politicians, propagandists, and private citizens in the Soviet Union and the United States. In contrast to current scholarship, this dissertation argues that the Soviet state worked hard to create a popular vision of the Cold War that was significantly different from the “Great Fear” that dominated American culture in the 1950s and 60s. While in the United States, the conflict was portrayed as a defensive struggle against outside invasion, in official Soviet rhetoric it was presented as an active, international crusade for peace. As the 1960s progressed, and as the official rhetoric of the state came under increasing criticism, the rigid sets of categories surrounding the figuration of the Cold War child that had been established in the 1950s began to break down. While Soviet filmmakers during the Thaw created images of youth that appeared abandoned and traumatized by the world around them, anti-nuclear activists took to the streets with their children in tow in order to contest the state’s professed ability to protect their young. In the late 1960s, both the Soviet Union and the United States struggled to contain rising domestic unrest, and took the first steps in moving towards détente. As a consequence, the struggle between East and West moved to the post-colonial world, where again, the image of the child played a vital role in articulating and justifying policy. Visual and rhetorical images like that of the child served as cultural currency for creating and undermining conceptual boundaries in the Cold War. The current prevalence of childhood images in the daily construction and contestation of public opinion are the legacies of this era. / text

The diploma thesis Comparation of the coverage of war conflicts in Yemen and Syria by the Czech media examines to what extent and in what way two wars, which have been going on for several years and are among the biggest humanitarian crises of the present, are reflected in selected media. The conflicts under investigation are the war in Syria and the war in Yemen. The aim of the thesis was to prove that although the two wars are comparable in many aspects, there is a considerable difference between their media coverage. The theoretical part summarizes and defines important concepts accompanying news and news selection and their impact, the role of the media in war and other concepts such as ideology or propaganda. The research part examines the individual reports of three selected news sites, which are Aktuálně.cz, Novinky.cz and iDnes.cz. Based on four theoretical bases, the variables in media content of selected media were investigated. Based on the analysis it was found that the Syrian conflict in the media space gets much more attention than the Yemeni conflict. Furthermore, it was found that while the war in Syria is most often put into the context of the actions of state actors, the most common theme of the reports on the war in Yemen is the development of the conflict. The third hypothesis...

The diploma thesis deals with the circumstances of origin of the terrorist organization Islamic State in its theoretical part. It focuses on the religious context of the ideology of the Islamic state and the origins of the organization. The so-called Islamic State can currently be considered one of the most acute security threats of the 21st century. The war with the so- called Islamic State is also a media war, a war taking place in the media and global cyberspace. An important mean of this war is propaganda. The work is also focused mainly on the propaganda of the so-called Islamic State with a focus on video production. With the influx of brutal videos from IS production, the question arises which way media should handle this material. Obviously, the videos were designed for media, among others. To be distributed and viewed by as many recipients as possible. In the practical part selected videos from the IS production are analyzed and their example shows what topics are present in IS video production and how the Islamic State propaganda works with the video.

The character of Captain America is undoubtedly the most patriotic superhero in the comics world. Just the date of market launch in March 1941 sugests, that there was an intention to support the effort of U.S. Army during the World War II. He managed to highlight american national ideas and patriotismus, so it encouraged men to join the U.S. Army and for other people to buy war bonds to finance military operations. In the beginning of the new millennium the Marvel comics universe have been restored. The first Captain America movie was released in 2011, followed with another two sequels. The whole trilogy is quite in favor of the public. In the theoretical part of my theses, there is a description of different kinds of propaganda and its common use in public. I also ilustrate significance of pop culture and development of Marvel Studios to put it all in the wider perpective. After that follows depiction Captain America as an example of tradional hero displayed with a stereotypical charachteristics. As for the practical part of the theses, I am trying to demonstrate the american propaganda used in movies. In the next chapter I would like to determine if the viewers are able to percept it and respond to it. Part of the research was also to capture the diference in their perception due to their...

Starting around 1500 a period of state formation changed the European map. The scattered medieval principalities were replaced with more centralised and better organised states with permanent armies. Sweden was quite successful in competing with these states and experienced a period of expansion. The means for warfare were drawn, to a large extent, from the peasantry, which meant that a great number of Swedes were sent to the front line and were never to return. This thesis investigates the dissemination of information, war propaganda and mobilisation in Sweden, 1655–1680. This period is interesting since it includes both offensive wars (under the reign of Karl X Gustav), a period of peace (under the regency) and defensive warfare(under Karl XI). A basic assumption has been that information is an important power resource. In the study both the dissemination and the content of the propaganda are examined. The most important sources have been the minutes and correspondence of the kings, the regency and the council of the realm, along with the sources from the diet and the provincial meetings. In particular, the prayer days and thanksgiving days, in both manuscript and printed sources, have been studied. To investigate the actual dissemination of information, the sources in the regional archives of the counties of Uppsala and Kopparberg and the archives of several episcopates have been examined. There existed developed media for the dissemination of information, namely, “the system of information”. Information was disseminated from the pulpits, at the diet and provincial meetings, by county governors and bailiffs, and by printed texts. In this thesis it is shown that the rulers were anxious to explain and justify the wars to the people and that they deliberately used the dissemination of information as a power tool. To keep the people in a good mood was vital for the war effort. War propaganda was spread both in times of war and peace, and its main messages remained the same during Sweden’s Age of Greatness. The main message of the long-term propaganda was that the wars were a divine punishment: it was because of the sinful people that wars broke out. According to the propaganda, the world was populated with evil enemies that were striving to destroy Sweden. The best protection against the enemies (next to God) was a good regent. It was also stated that, in the event of war, it was the duty of the subjects to contribute. The direct propaganda was conducted in four different phases. The first phase was about explaining the outbreak of war, the second phase was about mobilisation, the third phase was about disseminating information in order to uphold the morals and the fourth and last phase was about explaining the peace. The messages of the long-term propaganda had their equivalents in the direct propaganda. These arguments, however, were not always sufficient. The state representatives also highlighted the great perils threatening the country and used a patriotic rhetoric. The war propaganda depoliticised the wars, and made it possible to mobilise great resources from the population in times of war. The frequently used picture of threatening wars contributed to the legitimacy not only of a permanent army and offensive warfare, but also of the power of the king and the social order at large.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Southern California, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-269).