The year 2012 provides an appropriate occasion to consider the way the intertwined ideas of crisis, catastrophe, and apocalypse function within and inform our collective historical imagination. While each of these three concepts can be traced back to antiquity, what they have meant and how their dominant images and lexicons have been used has shifted across various times and places. Therefore, if crisis, catastrophe, and apocalypse are events—-moments we can examine—-they also imply a certain vocabulary, a way of critically viewing and interpreting these events. Furthermore, how and why these interpretations take place remains tied to the specific historical frameworks in which they occur. Modern prose fiction, and particularly the narrative novel, works much the same way, both reflecting and challenging the social and cultural conflicts of its historical moment.

This course will examine a wide variety of modern fiction in English which deploys representations of catastrophe and apocalypse as a way of mediating specific moments of social and historical crisis. While we will develop an understanding of what catastrophe fiction is and what it does, we will nonetheless pay strictest attention to how different writers manipulate its conventions for specific purposes. We will investigate how writers have used catastrophe narrative not only as a method of criticizing their taken-for-granted social, historical, and economic norms, but also as a way of intervening in, understanding, and transforming them.

We will likely read a number of short stories by authors such as Harlan Ellison, Joanna Russ, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and E.M. Forster, as well as the following novels:
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham
July’s People, by Nadine Gordimer
The Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

This class will focus on the practice of close reading, and the subsequent translation of our analytical success into well-crafted essays that make clear arguments based on evidence found in the text and other sources. Class time will be dedicated to comprehension, examination, close reading, and application of the texts we have read. Daily attendance, active participation, and a clear engagement with class materials are vital for your success in this course.

This course fulfills the University of Washington’s W-requirement. It will include 10-15 pages of graded, out-of-class writing, most likely in the form of two, 5-7 page term papers or two shorter papers and one longer course paper. The course may also include a presentation component, with the additional possibility of in-class quizzes, short writing assignments, etc.