Stories of the End of the World

GenEd 1001
Syllabus draft

Fantasizing about the end of the world is something that many people in the US and almost everywhere else in the
world do on a daily basis either by watching their favorite shows on TV, by playing videogames, or by listening to
political speeches. This course will start from this observation to ask why imagining the end is so pervasive in our
culture and to analyze critically where these images are coming from and how they are used in contemporary
conversations.
Imaginations of the end have their historical roots in a literary genre that is often called “apocalyptic” and has
been alive and productive since antiquity. The course will look at this historical trajectory, but most of the work will
be focused on contemporary cultural products, such as movies, short stories, songs, art, comic books, videogames,
and so on. Students will be asked to observe how thinking about a catastrophic future is actually a means to reflect
about the present, by identifying whether humans are doing something wrong and whether they have any chance
to correct their mistakes. In this perspective, God, aliens, or meteorites are metaphors representing our
powerlessness, while sins, zombies, or climate change are wake up calls for humankind. “Prophets of doom” can
be channels of liberating and progressive energy, but can also become instruments to set up for destruction
people who look and act differently.
Ultimately, the course will ask you to reflect about your own fantasy of the end and write (or photograph, or sing)
it.

Assignments
- Reading (or viewing films/art) for each class as assigned below; please note that all readings/films will be
provided on the course Canvas site
- 4 quizzes on definitions of words and concepts repeatedly used in class lectures and section meetings (in
weeks 2-5)
- 4 posts or reasonably extensive comments on posts on the class Yellowdig pins
- One 500-words commentary on the presence and functioning of apocalyptic themes and concepts in a
cultural artifact (book, artwork, song, videogame, poem, film, and so on) chosen by you in consultation
with the section instructor (due by the end of week 6)
- Create your own apocalypse choosing your preferred medium (short story, series episode script, podcast,
short video, video essay, and so on) in consultation with the section instructor. Drafts of these
“apocalypses” will be presented to and discussed with fellow section members over weeks 11 and 12.
The final version will be due at the end of the reading period (on December 9th).
The final grade will be calculated according to the following structure: each quiz 5%; each post 5%; 500-words
commentary 30%; “apocalypse” 30%.

Calendar of classes with assigned materials

Week 1
September 3rd
Introduction to the course

September 5th
What is an apocalypse?
John J. Collins, “What is Apocalyptic Literature?”, OHApoc
Gospel of Mark 13
The Simpsons, season 16, episode 19, “Thanks God, It’s Doomsday”

Optional materials
Good Omens, season 1, episode 1
American Horror Story: Apocalypse, episode 1
Week 2 – Apocalypse: destruction
September 10th
Eugene Gallagher, “Catastrophic Millennialism”, OHMill
Apocalypse of John
David Cook, Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature, 2005, chapters 1 and 3
Final judgment image from the Persian Falnama Book of Omens and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment
The messages of Timothy McVeigh and Mohamed Atta
● Atta:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090708002529/http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/atta/resources/documents/wi
ll1.htm
● McVeigh: http://www.truthinourtime.com/2010/02/19/timothy-mcveighs-manifesto/

Optional materials
Richard Bauckham, “Reading the Book of Revelation” in Theology of the Book of Revelation
David Cook, “Early Islamic and Classical Sunni and Shi’ite Apocalyptic Movements”, OHMill

September 12th
Robert Wise, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Arthur C. Clarke, “The Star”
W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming” (1921)
Sandro Botticelli, Mystic Crucifixion (1500)
Timothy Corrigan & Patricia White, The Film Experience, 3rd Edition, “The Foundations of Narrative Film” (pp.
214-218), “Narrative Characters” (pp. 224-231), “Narrative Times and Places: Shapes and Strategies in
Film Narrative” (pp. 232-246), “Points of View: Values and Traditions of Film Narrative” (pp.246-251) in
“Chapter 6. Telling Stories about Time: Narrative Films.”

Optional materials
Anton Kolzovic, “Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still”, Kinema 40 (2013), pp. 5-30 and 41 (2014), pp. 37-
63
Ed Ballard, “Terror, Brexit, and the US Elections Have Made 2016 the Year of Yeats”, WSJ 08/23/2016
(https://www.wsj.com/articles/terror-brexit-and-u-s-election-have-made-2016-the-year-of-yeats-1471970174)

Week 3 – Apocalypse: transformation

September 17th
Philip Charles Lucas, “New Age Millennialism”, OHMill
Newman, “Eschatology in the Wheel of Time Tantra”
Joachim of Fiore, Liber Figurarum

Optional materials
Jan Nattier, “Buddhist Eschatology”, OHEsch
Matthias Riedl, “Longing for the Third Age: Revolutionary Joachimism, Communism, and National Socialism”, in
A Companion to Joachim of Fiore 2017

September 19th
Neon Genesis Evangelion(1996) - episodes 1-2 and 24-26
Liu Cixin, “The Poetry Cloud”
Susan J. Napier, “When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality, and Terminal Identity in Neon Genesis Evangelion
and Serial Experiments Lain”

Optional materials
Mingwei Song, “After 1989: The New Wave of Chinese Science Fiction”, China Perspectives 1 [2015], pp. 7-13
Liu Cixin, “The Wandering Earth”
Liu Cixin, Remembrance of Earth’s Past

Week 4 – Apocalypse: liberation

September 24th
Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Eschatology in Christian Feminist Theologies”, OHEsch
Coptic Apocalypse of Peter (http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/apopet.html)
Promethea (1999/2005), Issues 1-2 and 27 and 30-31
Scott McCloud, “Chapter 2. The Vocabulary of Comics,” in Understanding Comics (The Invisible Art),pp. 24-59

Optional materials
Diana Green, “The End of the World as We Know It”, in Dan W. Clanton, The End Will Be Graphic, 2012
Dylan M. Burns, “Apocalypses among Gnostics and Manichaeans”, OHApoc

September 26th
Alex Garland, Annihilation(2018) -->Add a reading (TBD)
James Tiptree (Alice Sheldon), “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?”
Mary Karr, “Disappointments of the Apocalypse”

Optional materials
S. Paul-Choudhury, “How the Apocalypse Could Be a Good Thing”, BBC Culture, 03/19/2019
(http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190318-how-the-apocalypse-could-be-a-good-thing)
Susan Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster”

Week 5 – Post-Apocalypse
October 1st
The Book of Daniel
Michelene Pesantubbee, “Native American Geopolitical, Georestorative Movements”, OHMill
Rebecca Roanhorse, “Postcards from the Apocalypse”
W.E.B. DuBois, “The Comet”
Jessica Hurley, “An Apocalypse Is a Relative Thing: An Interview with N.K. Jemisin”, ASAP/Journal 3 (2018), pp.
467-477
David Alfaro Siqueiros, El fin del mundo (1936) (image)

Optional materials
Christopher B. Hays, “The First Apocalypse (Daniel 7-12): A Story Told Backwards”, in Murphy-Schedtler

October 3rd
Wanuri Kahiu, Pumzi (2009)
Ronald McDougall, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1957)
Christopher Columbus, Book of Prophecies: introduction and pp.55-77
Michelene E. Pesantubbee, “From Vision to Violence: The Wounded Knee Massacre”, in Millennialism,
Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, ed. C. Wessinger, 2000

Optional materials
Stéphanie Larrieux (2010) “The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Power in Post-
Apocalyptic Hollywood Cinema”, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 27:2, 133-143
Kirk Bryan Sides, “Seed Bags and Storytelling: Modes of Living and Writing after the End in Wanuri Kahiu’s
Pumzi, Critical Philosophy of Race 7 (2019), 107-123

Week 6 – Anatomy of the End: divine intervention

October 8th
The Apocalypse of the Pseudo-Methodius
Jonathan Edwards, “Notes on the Apocalypse”, in The Jonathan Edwards Reader
Robert von Thaden, Jr., “Apocalyptic America: Buying the End Time”, Schedtler-Murphy

October 10th
Michael Tolkin, The Rapture (1991)
Tim LaHaye – Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days, 1995 (chapters 1, 12, and 13)
Rapture Ready Index (https://www.raptureready.com/rapture-ready-index/)
Documents about the incidence of apocalyptic beliefs on US politics
● See: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-christian-
policy.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Week 7 – Anatomy of the End: human responsibility (nuclear holocaust)

October 15th
The Fifteen Signs of the End
Wunderzeichenbuch
Spencer R. Weart, The Rise of Nuclear Fear, 2012 (chapters 1-2)
Doomsday Clock Timeline (https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/past-announcements/)
John Kessel, “A Clean Escape” (1985)

October 17th
Stanley Kubrik, Doctor Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Gregory Corso, The Bomb (1958)
Chris Marker, La Jetée(1962) -->Add a reading (TBD)?
Yuki Tanaka, “Godzilla and the Bravo Shot: Who Created and Killed the Monster?”, in R.A. Jacobs (ed.), Filling
the Hole in the Nuclear Future, 2010
Tanaka, Apocalypse in Contemporary Japanese Science Fiction; e.g., pp. 40-44 (“Apocalypse in the Postwar
Period”), pp. 63-79 (“Apocalyptic Science Fiction from 1945 to the 1970s”); link:
http://id.lib.harvard.edu/alma/990139579360203941/catalog

Week 8 – Anatomy of the End: human responsibility (robots)

October 22nd
Michael J. Thate, “The Last Metamorphosis of Labor: Work, Technology, and the End of the World”, Schedtler-
Murphy
EM Foster, “When the Machine Stops” (1909)
Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1927)-->Add a reading (TBD)?

October 24th
Isaac Asimov, “The Last Question” (1956)
Luke Muehlhauser – Nick Bostrom, “Why We Need Friendly AI”, Think 13 (2014), pp. 41-47
Robert M. Geraci, “The Popular Appeal of Apocalyptic AI”, Zygon 45 (2010), pp. 1003-1020

Week 9 – Anatomy of the End: human responsibility (virus/zombie)?

October 29th
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, book 2 (description of the Athenian plague)
Danse Macabre
Kelly J. Murphy, “The End Is (Still) All Around: The Zombie and Contemporary Apocalyptic Thought”, Schedtler-
Murphy
CDC’s Zombie Preparedness (https://www.cdc.gov/cpr/zombie/index.htm)
Richard Matheson, “I Am Legend” (first part)

October 31st
12 Monkeys(1995)
Alice Sheldon, “The Screwfly Solution” (1977)

Week 10 – Anatomy of the End: others’ responsibility (aliens)

November 5th
Adso of Montier-en-Der, De Antichristo
Robert Pearson Flaherty, “UFOs, ETs, and the Millennial Imagination”, OHMill
“Comet Hale-Bopp, Planet Nibiru, the Mass Landing, and Heaven’s Gate”, in A Doomsday Reader

November 7th
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Richard Matheson, “I Am Legend” (second part)

Week 11 – Climate Apocalypse I

November 12th
1 Enoch
Noah (2014)
George Byron, “Darkness” (1816)
John Martin, The Last Man (1849)

November 14th
Joseph P. Laycock, “Space brothers and Mayan Calendars: Making Sense of Doomsday Cults”, Schedtler – Murphy
Arthur C. Clarke, “The Nine Billion Names of God”(1953)

Week 12 – Climate Apocalypse II

November 19th
Ingrid E. Lily, “The Planet’s Apocalypse: The Rhetoric of Climate Change”, Schedtler – Murphy
Naomi Oreskes – Eric Conway, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future, 2014
The Extinctuary (https://extinctuary.wordpress.com)

November 21st
2012 (2009)
David Biello, The Unnatural World (excerpts)
Roy Scranton, We Are Doomed. Now What? Essays on War and Climate Change (excerpts)

No classes on November 26th and 28th for Thanksgiving break

Week 13: Individual Apocalypse[?]

December 3rd: Last day of class
Lars von Trier, Melancholia (2011)