Internationale Akademie: Illusion, Fake, and Fraud in American History

Annual Meeting of the Historians in the German Association for American Studies

In Zusammenarbeit mit der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien e.V.

Leitung: Michael Mayer / Philipp Gassert / Nadine Klopfer

Sekretariat: Maria Theresia Seebauer, Tel.: 08158 / 256-17

American history abounds with stories of deceit. Tricks and hoaxes, humbug, scams, fraudulent schemes, and fake news have shaped Americans’ experiences – in the economic and political field, but also culturally and socially. Faking it can be disastrous, yet it can also have an empowering effect, opening up fields for self-fashioning, disrupting norms, and diluting arbitrary social or racial boundaries. Along with these historical practices of deception, narratives about fraud have unfolded. These narratives at times praise scammers as astute entrepreneurs, fulfilling the dream of self-making. Other narratives, however, express the fear of being duped and urge for the exposure of deceit; at times, these narratives are used for (fake) allegations of fraud. What is described as fake and fraud at a given time reveals the normative power of defining deceit; both fraudulent practices and their narra- tives are deeply entangled with power relations in American history.