Belief in the imminent destruction of the world and time itself emerged in the ancient world. Despite the fact that "the Apocalypse" has not arrived for over two millennia, the belief continues to ferment fear and fascination and has become more widespread than ever. In this course, we will investigate how Apocalypse became a Western paradigm and trace the ways it has been altered over time, with greatest emphasis on the shifts within American culture from the 20th to 21st centuries. We will consider how apocalypse stories breed anxiety and paranoia yet also entertain us.
By learning to recognize its narrative logic as manifest variously in religious, literary, and cinematic texts, we will gain an understanding of the ways in which doomsday belief shapes everyday perceptions in our own time, including impulses toward moral certitude and violence but also ways to imagine surviving a Zombie Apocalypse.

Books for Purchase (additional readings will be on course website):
Jonathan Kirsch, A History of the End of the World, Harper One, ISBN-978-0-06-134987-4 
Alan Moore, Watchmen, DC Comics, ISBN-978-0613919647
Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Glorious Appearing, Tyndale, ISBN-978-1414335018
Colson Whitehead, Zone One, Doubleday, ISBN-13: 978-0385528078

In addition to the readings, we will analyze such films as Dr. Strangelove, Dawn of the Dead, The Rapture, 28 Days Later, True Shelter, and Melancholia.

Lee Quinby is a Distinguished Lecturer at Macaulay Honors College. An interdisciplinary scholar and author or editor of seven books and numerous articles on subjects ranging from issues of sexuality, technology, and power to doomsday scenarios in history and popular culture, she has been the Distinguished Chair on the Millennium at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Harter Chair at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and the Zicklin Chair in the Honors Academy at Brooklyn College.
Lee.Quinby@mhc.cuny.edu

MHC 356.01 | Classroom 3 North | Offered by Lehman College

Note: Students who wish to take this course for English credit must register for the course as ENG 355 not MHC 356

This two-semester course provides an opportunity for in-depth research and analysis of a topic that stirs your curiosity and motivates your desire to share what you learn about it with others. The weekly assignments are geared toward fostering intellectual community as well as cultivating skills in writing and techniques of inquiry.
Over the course of both semesters, you will meet in consultation with a faculty advisor in your research field on a regular basis. Much of your work will be done individually as you gather sources and data about your topic. As a class, we will meet to brainstorm about topics, focus and refine ideas, and offer advice on research, revision, and reorganization. During designated class periods, each of you will meet with me individually to discuss your progress.

A 25-page draft will be due at the end of the first semester. During the second semester, additional research, revision, and new writing will complete the full thesis. At the end of the spring term, students will present their findings in formal presentation at the Macaulay Research Symposium.

Required Text:
Required Text: 3rd edition of Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, The Craft of Research (University of Chicago Press, 2008). ISBN 10:0-226-06566-9, $17.00

Lee Quinby is a Distinguished Lecturer at Macaulay Honors College. An interdisciplinary scholar and author or editor of seven books and numerous articles on subjects ranging from issues of sexuality, technology, and power to doomsday scenarios in history and popular culture, she has been the Distinguished Chair on the Millennium at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Harter Chair at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and the Zicklin Chair in the Honors Academy at Brooklyn College.
Lee.Quinby@mhc.cuny.edu

MHC 355.01 | Classroom 3 North | Offered by Lehman College

In the decade after World War II, Americans confronted a nation undergoing profound social changes: increasing racial integration in workplaces and private lives, reconfigured gender roles, and the emergence of public identities for gays and lesbians.  This seminar explores varied artistic and political responses to these social changes, focusing on varied aesthetic responses (including social protest, gothic, film noir, feminist poetics and Beat poetry) to Cold War politics in the United States between 1945 and 1960.  This overview of “queer” cultural production during the Cold War will challenge some of the conventional narratives about the period as being one wholly defined by cultural consensus, gender conformity, and sexual repression.  Students will examine through class discussions, formal and informal writing, and presentations some of the ways that Cold War concerns—containment, surveillance, conformity, paranoia, and consensus, among others—get represented, revised, and reputed in a variety of cultural texts focused on queer sexualities and/or created by gay and lesbian artists. Students will independently read and research other relevant writers, filmmakers, critics, or intellectuals from the period.

Tyler T. Schmidt is an assistant professor of English and co-coordinator of the Writing Across the Curriculum program at Lehman College. He has published essays in Obsidian III, African American Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Radical Teacher. His research interests include 20th century American poetics, interracial cultural studies, critical pedagogy, and African American writers of the 1940s and 50s. His forthcoming book, Desegregating Desire, investigates cross-race writing, interracial intimacy, and queer identity in American literature in the decade after World War II.

MHC 357.01 | Classroom 3 North | Offered by Lehman College