Course Description
The belief that the world is nearing a violent end recurs throughout history, and often with immense historical consequence, even if the end doesn’t come. This course seeks to understand apocalyptic thought, from its ancient forms all the way through its modern and secular ones, with a focus on the broadly-defined West.
Athena Title
End of the World
Pre or Corequisite
One course in SOCI or HIST or INTL or RELI or ENGL or ANTH or GLOB or CLAS or ARHI or PHYS
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- By the end of this course, students will leave with a greater understanding of the power of cultural and religious ideas in history.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to interpret primary sources in writing and in class discussion, and consider and debate questions of primary importance to historians, including the question of long-term continuity versus change, and of the nature and relation of religious and secular ideologies.
Topical Outline
- “Axial Age” and the shape of time
- Ancient roots of apocalyptic faith
- Greek stoicism
- Jewish apocalyptic tradition
- New Testament and the Book of Revelations
- Apocalypse in early Christianity
- Apocalypse in early Islam
- Millenarian movements in medieval Europe
- Medieval origins of dissent
- Protestant Reformation
- Apocalyptic thought in early America
- Comparative (non-Western) apocalypse
- Secularization
- Marxism and religion
- Modern revolutions
- Radical politics in twentieth-century Europe
- New Age and modern religious apocalypse
- Modern American millenarianism
- Climate change and apocalyptic thought
