This seminar will explore narratives of narratives of counterfeiting and fraud in early American print culture. We will read a variety of criminal narratives from the late eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century that were published separately as broadsides, chapbooks and, later, books, including the sensational narratives of Stephen Burroughs, Henry Tufts, and Ann Carson. We will not only read and discuss these texts, but we will discuss their appearance in early republican print culture as a contextual reflection on sociopolitical issues in the early republic. These texts were not only sensational but also political. At a time when the US was struggling to establish its national sovereignty, criminal narratives—particularly those of rogues and counterfeiters—explored the meaning of individual sovereignty in a nation that celebrated liberty.