Course Title: The History of "Fake News" from the Flood to the Apocalypse
Instructor: Earle Havens, PhD
Brought to you by Odyssey
February 11, 2025 - February 27, 2025 (6 Sessions)
Tuesday and Thursday, 6:00PM ET - 8:00PM ET
Virtual via Zoom
Offered as part of the Fall 2024 Odyssey Alumni Academy - courses exclusively for alumni and taught by esteemed members of our alumni community and faculty.
Course Description: In our digital age of hacking, on-line bots, and trolls stealing, faking, and confounding information across the Internet, it is often forgotten that “fake news” has, in fact, always been with us. The history of fakes, lies, and forgeries transcends human history and encompasses nearly every discipline within the Liberal Arts, from literature, art, and philosophy, to history, religion, and archaeology. Human civilization has been filling gaps in the historical record and inventing alternative narratives for all sorts of reasons: political, commercial, evangelical, and personal.
This course will explore this dark cultural undercurrent across time, exploring specific examples of historical and literary forgeries that date from the biblical Flood to the future Apocalypse. At the heart of the this course will be JHU's Bibliotheca Fictiva, the world's largest collection of rare books and manuscripts on the subject of forgery. You can read more about the collection here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Fictiva_Collection
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