The Propaganda of Saints summary

Esther Cohen reports that this happened after the collapse of the Roman empire and the discovery of America. The author narrates how the fallen Christians became martyrs and held a high place in the Catholic hierarchy of faith as saints slowly replacing Gods holy place. The saints were believed to mediate between man and God. This period was specifically referred to as the ‘Age of Faith' or an era of medieval Christianity. The advocators of the Catholic faith at the time embarked on crusades and propaganda to spread the faith, although they were faced with animosity from the pagans. The literature entails an exploration of the nature of the audience, propaganda and the channels present at the time. The second evidence is found in the impact of the saints' tale on the sociopolitical, economic and the artwork of this era.

The article expounds on the effectiveness of propaganda in spreading faith which according to the author is believed to move mountains. Cohen argues that monasteries were a great pillar in support of this propaganda and ensured the protection of advocates of saints' cult. The church benefited from propaganda majorly in two ways. This propaganda was then documented and spread to a different audience. Other channels of spreading the propaganda were through sermons, prayers, and mouth to mouth dissemination. However, oral communications had a more positive impact on the audience than the written format. Shrines were also constructed using specific objects and pictures each of these bearing a certain meaning and message in relation to the attributes of the saint. A major challenge in the spreading of propaganda was experienced in the shrine centers since most of the worshippers were already converted.

As a result, in 1942 President Roosevelt announced that women had equal chance to work as men and therefore society had no choice but to change their mindset concerning women. Following this declaration, the number of women in the American labor force increased to nineteen million by 1944 from eleven million in 1940. Women influx into the job market was majorly dominated in the places initially held by men before the start of the war. However, after the end of second world war, in 1946, men got back to their initial workplaces and women went back home. According to a government survey conducted during the wartime, a majority of the women who worked in the war production plants expressed willingness to continue working in the same positions even after the war.

Journal articles that focused on women immediately before the start of the war only viewed them as average female consumers. However, after the onset of the war, more journals started to focus on women as a new group of women and also sought to explain what will happen to women after the war and how that would shift the advertising industry. This article advances two crucial concepts. First, the notion that gender is simply a social and cultural construction. Second, is the concept that advertising images are affected by gender meanings. Although President Roosevelt did not conform to propaganda initially, it dawned on him eventually that it could not be dismissed wholesale. He initiated a propaganda dissemination unit to review what reflected the exact state of affairs in America during the war period.