“Fake News!”: Facts, Information, Disinformation, Misinformation (Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan, Nov. 2018)

Course Description

Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan, Nov. 2018

The “Fake News!”: Facts, Information, Disinformation, Misinformation course takes a creative fiction and nonfiction approach to understanding and recognizing information, disinformation, and misinformation. The course explores the elements of information, such as details, particulars, facts, figures, statistics, and data; the differences between primary and secondary sources including those found in traditional media, social media, and new media; the ways in which misinformation and disinformation are used; a history and overview of propaganda; and the roles of mythbusters, debunkers, fact-checkers, and individuals in countering disinformation. Course participants read fact and fiction, including creative nonfiction from writers such as John D’Agata and Angela Pelster-Wiebe, and fiction by George Saunders and Jennifer Egan, among others. Participants also write creative works during the course, including several new media projects involving both text and visualized information in order to understand how these elements work together in a multimedia world.

Happening Now

  • Jennifer Feeley’s translation of Tongueless, Lau Yee-wa’s thriller sketching Hong Kong’s slide toward linguistic totalitarianism, is forthcoming from Feminist Press.

  • In addition to becoming the Berlin LitFest’s first curator-in-residence, Helon Habila has also just received Kaduna Books and Art Festival’s KabaFest Lifetime Achievement Award, celebrating his "exceptional writing and significant contributions to the development of literature globally."

  • Congratulations to Enah Johnscott, whose film Half Heaven won three awards at the Cameroon International Film Festival—best film, best director, and best cinematographer.

  • We regret the passing, on April 11, 2024, of the distinguished Romanian author and critic Dan Cristea, who served as the editor in chief of the Luceafărul de Dimineață cultural monthly. In addition to being an alum of the 1985 Fall Residency, Cristea received his PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa.

  • Our congratulations to 1986 Fall Residency writer Kwame Dawes, who has been named the new poet laureate of Jamaica.

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