ENG 224 - Apocalyptic Literature

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR (students beginning prior to Fall 2024): Meets general academic requirement HU.
In contrast to communities that imagine paradise as our eventual destination, we live in a culture obsessed with narratives of its own demise. From alien invasions to nuclear attack, pandemics to technological upheaval, authors have relentlessly imagined our current world disrupted and the current social orders ruptured beyond repair. Our apocalyptic imagination is full of visions of grand and cosmic reversals of fortune. What does this tell us about the society we live in? In this course, we will look closely at what specific imagined ends mean, as well as how apocalyptic narratives reveal the way we order the world and our anxieties and fantasies about reordering it, and point to who or what we think are responsible for everyday annihilations. We will examine how the apocalyptic imagination resonates culturally, and address questions of violence, imperialism, cultural identity, subjectivity, colonialism, technology, ecological and economic sustainability, and others. In this class, students will develop a familiarity with apocalyptic narratives in its scholarly, cultural, and social dimensions, as well as develop analytical tools for identifying and assessing contemporary instances of apocalyptic portrayals. Satisfies the Departmental Prose requirement and the Social Justice requirement.