Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Framing The President: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Participatory Quests, And The Rhetoric Of Possibility In World War Ii Propaganda, James Kimble Ph.D.

Speaker & Gavel

This essay examines The Life of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a comic book distributed internationally by the Office of War Information (OWI) in late 1942, as a creative form of international propaganda. Drawing from existing research in comic scholarship, narrative theory, and visual inquiry, this case study suggests that OWI’s booklet represented a fusion of verbal and visual appeals, which together worked to produce a potent depiction of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s character traits and exceptionality. The analysis concludes that this depiction ultimately presented the president as the protagonist of a romantic quest narrative, one that actively invited foreign readers to …