WRIT 8013 - Apocalypses

In the years since this course was first taught, fascination with the end of our world has exploded: we’ve heard about being Left Behind, zombies, pandemic, the Singularity, global climate change, the Yellowstone Caldera (aimed right at MN!), civilizational collapse, hostile machine intelligences, runaway robots, biological weapons, Earth changes, alien invasion, transhumanity, nuclear war, Peak Oil, space impact, and on and on. Apocalyptic scenarios play out in films, theater, and children’s books. Are you ready for it all to end?

Maybe not. But some folks are ready, or at least they’re getting ready, and they are telling stories, spreading the word, imagining the end – and what comes after. They call us to action: Recycle! Pray! Revolt! The end of all-of-it is a place to enact all of the competing claims of what it finally means to be human. Apocalypses tell us what our lives here-and-now mean in some greater scheme. In this class, we study contemporary versions of apocalypse, and the pleasures and comforts they provide. We will explore both literal and metaphoric catastrophe in texts from believers, theorists, and writers. We will read fictional and non-fictional apocalypses, browse a host of websites, watch some films, and explore catastrophic science, alarmist science writers, and anything else students might choose to bring to the table. The work of the course will be assembling these materials, looking critically at them, deciding what it all means, and imagining our own apocalypses.

Credits: 4

Note: MFA elective