Democratic Persuasion: Arts, Culture and Communications of the New Deal

FAIN: FT-229973-15

Stephen Ross Duncombe, PhD
New York University (New York, NY 10012-1019)

Summer research and writing on Communications, History and Criticism, and Theory of the Arts.

I am currently working on a book that explores the ways in which arts, culture and communications were used by Roosevelt's New Deal Administration as forms of political persuasion. I am using the New Deal as a case study to address the larger question of whether or not the State might use tools of mass persuasion to facilitate democratic imagination and participation rather than exert coercion and control. In short, I am interested in the possibilities of "democratic persuasion."