To commemorate the centennial of the United States entering World War I on April 6, 1917, Emporia State University’s Special Collections and Archives presents the film “War on the Wall: Allied Poster Propaganda of World War I.”
This program explores war posters as both art and propaganda, and showcases World War I posters held by Special Collections and Archives, the Lyon County History Center, and The National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. “War on the Wall” was created for ESU’s Channel 8 television station in 1985. It was written by former ESU professors Dr. Donald Johnson and Dr. Loren Pennington and narrated by Dr. Karen Ray and produced under a grant from The Kansas Committee for the Humanities.
“War on the Wall: Allied Poster Propaganda of World War I” will be shown three times on Thursday, April 6: 2 p.m., 4 p.m., and 7:30 p.m. in the Special Collections and Archives exhibit hall on the first floor of ESU’s William Allen White Library. Each showing is limited to 25 seats and will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Pennington, ESU professor emeritus and filmmaker; Shari Scribner, ESU assistant archivist; and Lisa Soller, Lyon County History Center curator, lead exhibit technician and education coordinator.
This event is co-sponsored by the Lyon County History Center, the Veterans Roundtable, the ESU Department of Art and ESU student organizations Society for Public Historians, Phi Alpha Theta and the ESU Student Chapter of Society of American Archivists.
To further commemorate this anniversary, the public is encouraged to explore related exhibits at ESU Special Collections and Archives (“World War I and the Memorial Union: Honoring Veterans, Serving Students”) and the Lyon County History Center (“The Art of War: Propaganda Posters of WWI”).