After the End: Post-Apocalypse Novels in the 20th Century

Catalog description

Many authors have speculated about what would happen if (most) humans were destroyed. Authors have removed humans by natural disasters like floods, fires, earthquakes, and mysterious poisonous clouds or rays. They have imagined alien invasions, plagues, epidemics, agricultural collapses, and reproductive failure. More recently, humans themselves have become popular as causes of apocalypses because global thermonuclear war, lethal pollution, disastrous over-population, genetic engineering, and climate change have become realistic possible scenarios for the collapse of our species. This seminar will examine a variety of apocalypses from the 20th century with special attention to ones that have implications for the nature of humanity and human society. Most of the novels we will read treat an apocalypse as a kind of thought-experiment: what would happen if . . . ? Some focus more on the collapse of human institutions, culture, morality, and religion, others on the challenges the survivors face, and still others focus on the potential for the re-creation of human society or the creation of an alternative kind of society.