Chinese Propaganda Posters Why I Taught the Source Visual images
provide valuable material for the exploration of childhood,
youth and history. Propaganda posters from the People's Republic
of China (1949-present) are particularly rich, offering images
that are both bold and subtle, and which many students find as
nicely accessible sources to explore. The posters offer a sense
of the ways in which a Chinese state and the individual artists
it employed sought to use the image of the child to gain a
broader public investment in political movements and to define
new visions of the revolutionary cause, particularly during the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Exploration
of the imagery of children in these posters provides students
with useful sources through which to explore the ways in which
images of children would come to signify broader social and
political meanings and to potentially inspire both youths and
adults in their own definitions of self-identity. Easily
accessible online in the mu