Date of Award

Spring 5-4-2017

Document Type

Honors Project

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

History and American Studies

First Advisor

Fernsebner, Susan

Major or Concentration

History

Abstract

This thesis is an analysis of the visual and verbal rhetoric of China's Great Leap Forward. Comparing propaganda posters alongside with Mao Zedong's speeches an analysis is made into the ways that technology, progress, and the rural and urban sectors are depicted in propaganda. Starting with the analysis of the early period and the trope of mass mobilization the thesis then moves into a discussion of the trope of positivity in the later period, and concludes with an overview of the artist Zhang Yuqing's work. Through the analysis of the trends of mass mobilization and positivity applied to this period there is a clearer sense of urban-rural division, and a deeper understanding of the propaganda of the Great Leap Forward's larger message.

Included in

History Commons

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