The End That Does: Art, Science and Millennial Accomplishment

by Gutierrez,Cathy

• ISBN13: 9781904768906
• ISBN10: 1904768903
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2014-08-14
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Millennial movements do not always go boom and bust. As innovative responses to worlds in crisis or projections of possibilities for a world in the doldrums, millennialism has been a prime mover for many an artistic and scientific vision of the world reconfigured. Flourishing well beyond the life of any prophet, bearing fruit well beyond the waning of any redemptive scheme, these visions merit a history of their own. The End that Does tracks the interplay of the arts, the sciences, and millennial imagination across 3000 years of surprising conclusions.

Author Biography

Cathy Gutierrez is an Assistant Professor in the Religion Department of Sweet Briar College in Virginia. Her area of research specially is nineteenth-century American religions, particularly Spiritualism and related phenomena. She is the editor of the forthcoming book The Occult in Nineteenth-Century America and has published on various aspects of millennialism in America. Hillel Schwartz is a cultural historian who has published widely on millenarian movements and centurial expectations. He is currently Visions Scholar at the University of California, San Diego. As Senior Fellow to the Millennium Institute, he worked internationally on issues of sustainability and with the Parliament of the World's Religions he helped create a working document for the engagement of spiritual and religious traditions with the central predicament of the 21st century.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword	ix
List of Contributors	xi
Epigraph: Will (poem)	xv
Thomas MacKay
In/tensions	1	(6)
Cathy Gutierrez
Part I At/tension
The Pharmakon of the Apocalypse	7	(10)
Kelli Fuery
Patrick Fuery
The Merit of Time: A Genealogy of the Countdown	17	(20)
Hai Ren
Postcard I (poem)	37	(6)
Thomas MacKay
Part II Re/tension
Collecting the Cosmos: The Apocalypse of the Ancient Library	43	(42)
Eric Casey
Giordano Bruno and the Rewriting of the Heavens	85	(12)
Geoffrey McVey
Francis Bacon's Scientific Apocalypse	97	(18)
Steven Matthews
Promise (poem)	115	(4)
Thomas MacKay
Part III De/tension
The Elusive Isis: Theosophy and the Mirror of Millennialism	119	(20)
Cathy Gutierrez
Promiseland: Utopian Technology and the American Millennial Dream	139	(16)
Fred Nadis
Postcard II (poem)	155	(4)
Thomas MacKay
Part IV Dis/tension
The End Is Still Near: The Eternal Apocalypse of the Tabloids	159	(36)
Amelia Carr
Christian Apocalyptic Fiction, Science Fiction, and Technology	195	(16)
Tom Doyle
Unto (Rose Window, Sainte-Chapelle, Paris)	211	(4)
Thomas MacKay
Part V Tense
Y2KO to Y2OK	215	(20)
Charles Cameron
Cloister (poem)	235	(1)
Thomas MacKay
Respite (poem)	236	(3)
Thomas MacKay
Part VI Ex/tension
The Space Needle Hits the Road: The Portability of Home, Landmark and Memorial	239	(32)
Michelle Dent
Ultima Thule -- The City at the End of the World: Jerusalem in Modern Christian Apocalyptic	271	(22)
Hillel Schwartz
International Radio	293	(2)
Thomas MacKay
Glossary	295	(4)
Index	299