After a month away from the blog recuperating from pneumonia that just wouldn’t quit, I’m back…
While I was gone, Brendan Fitzgerald published a very interesting piece on my course Lying About the Past in The Morning News titled “Here There Be Monsters.” Similar to Yoni Applebaum’s piece for TheAtlantic.com back in May, Fitzgerald grapples with what the course means for our understanding of the validity of information online, but unlike Applebaum’s article, Fitzgerald’s also looks more critically at how the work my students have done in the course fits into the larger history of historical hoaxes.
One of my tasks before going home today is to submit the paperwork to turn Lying About the Past into a regular, numbered course in our curriculum. Until now it has been a special topics course. So, as I have written before, you have been warned. I’m planning to teach the course again in the 2013-14 academic year. And I promise to remind you that you’ll need to think twice before you believe what you read online.