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…
Tag: Hoaxes
Lying About the Past — The Syllabus
As promised earlier, here is the syllabus for my course Lying About the Past, the second iteration of the course. This year, of course, there will be no historical hoaxes having anything to do with pirates, that one having already been done. The prior version of the course continues to generate comment, a fact (not…
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…
Edward Owens and Wikipedia
If you’ve spent any time on the Internet in the past 10 years or so — and who hasn’t — you’ll know that one of the most popular memes is the Top 10 list. I don’t think I’ve ever perpetuated on before, but when Edward Owens, the fictional pirate created by the students in my…