The Age of Apocalypse

Is the world about to end? Dread, anxiety, and fear of the unknown. If you recognize these feelings, you may be awaiting the apocalypse. From God-like AIs to the Rapture, zombies, and environmental calamities, predictions of the world's demise are all around us. Yet apocalyptic thinking has been a prevalent feature of human societies for millennia. This course uses the apocalypse as a theme to unpack the most pressing issues of our time, from artificial intelligence to contemporary politics. We examine the apocalypse's origins in the Bible, the endtime visions of American presidents, fears of environmental collapse, and new imaginaries of AI doom in order to make sense of the changing world around us. How are we to live with the apocalypse? This course will provide practical conceptual interdisciplinary tools from the study of religion, and the humanistic social sciences more broadly, in order to analyze intertwined social, religious, historical, and political phenomena. We bring particular attention to the vectors of power and difference that have shaped the history and contemporary resonance of the apocalypse. Indeed, fears and visions of the endtimes have the power to gather, transform, and shape our societies and our collective meaning - no matter whether or not the apocalypse ultimately comes to pass. No previous knowledge is required for this course.