Cultures of Forgery: Making Nations, Making Selves

This collection of eleven essays by leading literary studies and cultural studies scholars examines the double meaning of the word forge -to create or to form, on the one hand, and to make falsely, on the other. These notable scholars take on a broad range of topics, including the falsified Hitler diaries, the creation of national identity in Bohemia, and Jean-Etienne Liotard’s fraudulent Turkish identity. Each essay asks how forgery-at once the work of a criminal and a master -has shaped modern culture and challenged our understandings of authorship and value. Julie Buckler, Derek Pearsall, Sarolta Takacs, Alfred Thomas, Brad Epps, Reinhold Brinkmann, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, John Malmstad, Judith Ryan, Susan Suleiman, Eric Rentschler