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2013 Courses
American Studies

AMST 2500: American Apocalypses [3]

Matthew Hedstrom, Assistant Professor

Why are Americans seemingly obsessed with the end—with zombies, raptures, asteroids, environmental catastrophe, alien invasions, nuclear winters, and technological mayhem? This course will examine the religious and cultural dynamics at play in American apocalyptic culture.
End-time scenarios—whether of ultimate destruction or eternal bliss—help us make sense of unspoken hopes and unspeakable fears, express outrage, mobilize movements for change, and relate our individual lives to a larger order. In this course, we will study some of the many ways Americans have envisioned the end of the world, and what those visions have to teach us about them and the America they, and we, inhabit.

Our explorations will take us from slave revolts to UFO cults to the Left Behind phenomenon, but our major source material will be disaster films from the 1950s to the present. What can the imagined futures of yesterday teach us about the hopes and fears of previous generations? In what ways are social, political, and economic tensions reflected in visions of the apocalypse? How have ideologies of the end, whether religious or secular, shaped social movements, politics, and popular
culture? Take this course and find out!