Apocalypse Now:
America’s Fascination with Doomsday and Why It Matters
Wednesday, September 12, 2012 | 6-8pm
Fordham University | Lincoln Center Campus
140 West 62nd Street | McNally Amphitheater
Free and Open to the Public |
RSVP: [email protected], 212.636.7347
NOTE: This event is sold out
Fascination with doomsday pervades the sacred and secular imagination in America.
Today’s politicians and Hollywood producers join religious prophets in speculating on catastrophic scenarios. Melting polar ice caps, economic decline, instability in the Middle East, the global surge of conflicts over scarce natural resources and biblical prophecy have all fueled a sense of impending cataclysm.
Why are Americans today so fixated on apocalyptic scenarios? How does this fascination shape our moral outlook and popular culture, as well as our civic life and engagements around the globe?
Featuring:
Elaine Pagels, Princeton University, author of Revelations: Visions, Prophecy and Politics in the Book of Revelation
J. Hoberman, film critic and author of An Army of Phantoms and Film after Film
Andrew Delbanco, Columbia University, author of The Puritan Ordeal and The Death of Satan
Kurt Andersen, NPR and WNYC, host of Studio 360 and King’s County; author of True Believers
