AMES1913: End Times: Narrating Extinction & Apocalypse

Stories of the end of the world are nothing new; in classical times they ranged from the various versions of the judgment day in monotheistic religions to the periodic dissolution and regeneration of the universe conceived in Hinduism. While these narratives are still with us, many new visions of the end times have emerged in the context of the specific dangers and anxieties of modernity: nuclear war, famine from overpopulation, pandemics, take-over by robots or artificial intelligence, or just generalized existential despair caused by the loss of meaning and community grounded in tradition. In the 21st century, such fears and narratives have increasingly focused on various scenarios of how climate chaos already is speeding the world's sixth mass extinction of living species - meaning there are countless mini-apocalypses happening all around us from the perspective of the Earth's biosphere as a whole - while also threatening the possible extinction of our own species. This course will explore narratives of extinction and apocalypse from a global, comparative perspective. Each week we will watch a film, often a challenging, experimental one - including films from both East and West - and we will accompany them with diverse types of readings from dystopic sci-fi stories to nonfiction bestsellers to academic studies of how the threat of extinction plays out in other primate species besides humans. We will ask how such narratives articulate specific fears and anxieties and discuss whether and how they make a cultural intervention that could actually change human behavior to make extinction less (or more) likely. What exactly does it mean to envision the extinction of our species or the collapse of human society, and why do people seek out such narratives and presumably derive some useful ideas from them?

View on University Catalog