history assignment world war i posters
Before you begin this assignment, please be sure to view course lectures on: The Spanish-American War; The Progressive Era; and World War I.
Please answer the questions listed below. You may structure your response however you choose, as long as all of the following questions are answered within it.
There is no page length for this assignment. Our expectation is that these assignments should be approximately 1.5-2 pages long. However, there is no penalty if the response does not correspond to this length.
Your responses should include specific examples from the posters and should address *at minimum four* of the posters provided. In your responses, when you are writing a particular poster, please refer to the number (which can be found in the lower right hand side of the frame) of which poster you are describing.
Questions to be answered:
- All these posters seek to persuade Americans to support the war effort, either through enlisting in the military or purchasing war bonds. How do they do this? What arguments do they use to persuade viewers to support the war?
- How are women presented in these posters? How do the posters imagine the role of women in the war effort, either as a symbol and/or as a participant?
- What similarities and differences do you see between these posters and the political cartoons that circulated before and after the Spanish-American War?
- How do these posters address or reflect Progressive issues or Progressive ideas?
- Why do you think the Creel committee relied so much on posters/visual imagery? How do posters communicate differently than print media (articles, editorials, pamphlets)?
This assignment will be graded according to the following criteria:
- Does the assignment address all the questions posed?
- Does the assignment demonstrate a close, careful, and thoughtful reading of the primary sources?
- Does the assignment demonstrate a strong familiarity with course topics and themes?
- Are all the claims made in the assignment accurate?
- Does the assignment make sense? Are the ideas within it communicated clearly?
