HRUK0002FU ØST, Propaganda in Eastern Europe: theory and practices (F19)

Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of authoritarianism across Eastern Europe and Russia. As during the Cold War, propaganda has been identified as a key political technology and brought firmly into political, media and academic focus. This shared concern for the issue of propaganda is part of wider efforts to understand the apparent durability of authoritarian political forms as well as to explain right-wing populism and/or popular discontent with ‘Western-style’ secular democracy.

This course introduces different theories and practices of propaganda and illuminates them in various, often overlapping, thematic contexts: 1. Historical and culture-specific (e.g. Russia, Balkans, Poland), 2. Linguistic, dealing with official and vernacular languages, language games, humour, music and visual languages, 3. Political and patriotic, including entertainment, leisure activities, old and new forms of branding and ‘political commodities’, 4. Familial and gendered, focusing on state- and market- driven ideologies of the person/hood.

The course will include extended case studies from Russia, Ukraine, Balkans and Poland.

The course will be offered in English; Danish exam option is available.