Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictive Art: Hoaxes in Contemporary Literature and Visual Art

3 credits · Graduate

This graduate seminar will explore the intersections of visual art, fiction, museum studies, art history, creative non-fiction, forgeries, and hoaxes. With a focus on contemporary and twentieth-century fictive art and literature, this course will examine the relationships between publisher, author, reader, and text to determine how expectations around the authenticity and authority of cultural institutions affects our relationships to truth, history, and story. We will consider the often overlooked place and purpose of hoax, forgery, heteronymity, and trickery in studies of visual art and literature. We will carefully read, experience, and discuss contemporary works of painting, sculpture, photography, fiction, and poetry that question and explore ideas of authenticity, authorship, and the boundaries and borderlands of fact and fiction. FORMATS: Seminar