The Edinburgh Companion to the Spanish Civil War and Visual Culture

FAIN: RZ-292793-23

Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI 53233-2225)
Eugenia V. Afinoguenova (Project Director: November 2022 to present)

Research and writing leading to a book of essays on the visual culture of the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939) and its visual legacy. (15 months) 

Manuscript Preparation. The images of the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939)—from propaganda posters to Picasso’s Guernica—reemerge wherever fratricidal conflicts and crimes against humanity occur across the globe. Given that the War lasted less than three years, such a long afterlife is surprising. Our project finds an explanation for this phenomenon through Visual Culture analysis that regards images as tools of meaning that shape and expand the perception of political events. As a decisive moment in the chain of civil wars in 20th-century Europe, the Spanish Civil War led to a collapse of the Popular Front’s attempts at building a broad interclass coalition against Fascism and Nazism and to a triumph of war over diplomacy. The proposed coedited, multi-author volume argues that on both sides of the conflict the disintegration of political solutions triggered a crisis in the language of ideology that images were called upon to replace. The volume has been accepted for publication.