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An examination of art and media from the rise of fascism in the 1920s and the outbreak of World War II in 1939 to postwar reconstruction and the entrenchment of the Cold War in the 1950s. We will study a range of visual material – including film, newsreels, photographs, paintings, illustrations, and comics – not simply as representations of war, but as the cultural fronts on which an unprecedented global conflict unfolded. Students will learn about the evolution of artistic practice and popular culture in Allied and Axis nations, and consider how visual media worked as propaganda, news, and entertainment.