Readers of this blog know the story of Edward Owens–the “Last American Pirate“–fairly well by now. Owens, a creation of my students in the course Lying About the Past, lives on, but in the way of all things in the academic world, I have managed to morph him from a fun classroom project into a…
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Serial Killers, Beer, and Lies About the Past
The semester being all but over, it is time to reveal the work of my students in the course Lying About the Past that I taught this semester here at George Mason University. Because my course was larger this time around, the class split into two hoax teams, each of which perpetrated their own historical…
Consider Yourself Warned
On August 25, 2008, I wrote a post here warning readers that students in my new class, Lying About the Past, would be creating a historical hoax and turning it loose online. Little did I know then that the hoax they would create — Edward Owens, the Last American Pirate — would turn into a…
Teaching Students to Commit Fraud
Regular readers of this blog will know that not long ago I taught a class called Lying About the Past in which my students created a fictitious historical figure — Edward Owens, the “last American pirate.” That class generated a fair amount of comment in the blogosphere and has resulted in some very interesting conversations…