The word apocalypse contains a paradox. In common usage, it means, “a disaster resulting in drastic, irreversible damage to human society or the environment, esp. on a global scale; a cataclysm” (OED); but the word’s roots come from the ancient Greek for “unveiling."
Apocalypse contains both end and beginning, annihilation and exaltation. The apocalyptic promises death and destruction, yes, but also, knowledge and transformation. The apocalypse is above all a threshold. Thus, as an object of inquiry, apocalypse calls for the examination of perspective and perception, as much as of semiotics and the historical.
Many readers’ associations with the word apocalypse will be to the New Testament Book of Revelation. Others might think first of more recent (post-1945) literary and cinematic imaginings of the dystopian. For others still, plagues, the fall of empires, and climate emergencies will come to the fore. The character of these apocalyptic cataclysms and revelations varies not only according to the specificities of history, religion and culture; epoch or technology; genre or medium; but also in the nature of the destruction and revelations promised.
It is clear that we are living through yet another historical moment in which the concept of apocalypse has become both pressing and omnipresent. How can we take the word apocalypse itself as an invitation to transcend the obvious, and access new knowledge and new ways of knowing? Do human beings need some kind of absolute limit, an absolute that makes contingent structures possible? Nearly every religion’s imagining of time's shape contains some form of projected ending. Meanwhile, contemporary astrophysics delivers its own version of the ends and beginnings of the cosmos, on equally grand scale. One question that animates this proposal is whether or how the polyvalent and multifaceted notion of apocalypse operates as a formal, necessary thought structure; that is, as a framework necessary to the human ability to think about time, knowledge, or historicity.
This multi-day conference/workshop will bring together scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines in order to examine the notion of “apocalypse,” with a view to the publication of their papers in a dedicated forthcoming issue of the journal Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques. Thematic strands might include:
Ecology, climate, and the Anthropocene in historical perspective
Mysticism and eschatology in world religions, including Messianic movements
Scale and temporalities, both nano- and cosmic-, in dialogue with the natural sciences
Human bodies as sites of historical inscription, both in archaeological and speculative contexts
Representations of apocalypse in the visual arts and in music
Narrative perspectives: fictions, genres, prophetic voices, survivor tales
Medicine, technology, and other sometimes-secular renderings of human sin
Hopes and disappointments, planned-for endings that did not arrive
Historical frames: cataclysm and cultural extinction as both fact and recurring trope
Please submit proposals of 350-500 words by May 31, 2025, using this Google form: https://forms.gle/8LrkePDVcmCUJFro6; responses by June 15, 2025.
Workshop to be held in-person in Boston, USA, 26-28 February 2026, pending budgetary and other considerations. “Plan B” is a hybrid option.
Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques is a peer-reviewed, bilingual English/French journal. Authors may write in either language. Texts suitable for peer-review will be due during the Spring of 2026, in view of publication in early 2027.
For more information contact Irit Kleiman, kleiman@bu.edu
