ENGL 055. Apocalypse Then

Many of us feel like we are living on the edge of apocalypse. In this class we will address our imminent future by looking to the apocalyptic literature of the past. We will begin with N. K. Jemison’s 2015 novel The Fifth Season and then move back in time to consider earlier visions of the end of the world, focusing on the nineteenth-century US. Some of the texts we’ll read describe apocalypses as they were unfolding, like Sarah Winnemucca’s narrative of the annihilation of indigenous lives and lifeways by settler-colonialism, Life among the Paiutes. Others visualize apocalypses that had yet to take place, like the prophecies of earthly destruction that inspired Nat Turner’s and John Brown’s revolts against slavery. Our task will be to explore how these works confront the end of the world-and what new ideas and relations they forge by living with the end in sight.
18th/19th c.
Humanities.
1 credit.
Fall 2024. Cohen.
Catalog chapter: English Literature
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

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