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This course taught by Writing Seminars professor Wayne Biddle and Media Studies professor Bernadette Wegenstein covers the 20th-century history of propaganda with special focus on its visual techniques, on censorship, and how media serve as sites of both control and resistance to power. We will pay particular attention to the influence of misinformation abetted by the new media revolution, and both the rise of the political rhetoric of “fake news” and the massive dissemination of actual fake news since the 2016 election. Students will write papers pegged to current issues and events using the critical framework developed in class. Cap 30 students. Reader: Jason Stanley: How Propaganda Works, Princeton University Press, 2015.