Vox, Lisa Roy (Author)
Americans have long been enthralled by visions of the apocalypse. Will the world end through nuclear war, environmental degradation, and declining biodiversity? Or, perhaps, through the second coming of Christ, rapture of the faithful, and arrival of the Antichrist—a set of beliefs known as dispensationalist premillennialism? These seemingly competing apocalyptic fantasies are not as dissimilar as we might think. In fact, Lisa Vox argues, although these secular and religious visions of the end of the world developed independently, they have converged to create the landscape of our current apocalyptic imagination.In Existential Threats, Vox assembles a wide range of media—science fiction movies, biblical tractates, rapture fiction—to develop a critical history of the apocalyptic imagination from the late 1800s to the present. Apocalypticism was once solely a religious ideology, Vox contends, which has secularized in response to increasing technological and political threats to American safety. Vox reads texts ranging from Christianity Today articles on ecology and the atomic bomb to Dr. Strangelove, and from Mary Shelley's The Last Man to the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, demonstrating along the way that conservative evangelicals have not been as resistant to science as popularly believed and that scientists and science writers have unwittingly reproduced evangelical eschatological themes and scenarios in their own works. Existential Threats argues that American apocalypticism reflects and propagates our ongoing debates over the authority of science, the place of religion, uses of technology, and America's evolving role in global politics.
...MoreReview Stephen P. Weldon (January 2021) Review of "Existential Threats: American Apocalyptic Beliefs in the Technological Era". Technology and Culture (pp. 313-314).
Review Lynda Walsh (2020) Review of "Willy Ley: Prophet of the Space Age". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 204-206).
Review Lisa H Sideris (April 2019) Review of "Existential Threats: American Apocalyptic Beliefs in the Technological Era". Environmental History (pp. 428-430).
Review Gemma Curto (2018) Review of "Existential Threats: American Apocalyptic Beliefs in the Technological Era". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 319-321).
Thesis
Vox, Lisa Roy;
(2010)
The Death Wish of Humanity: Religious and Scientific Apocalypticism in the United States, 1859--2001
(/isis/citation/CBB001567184/)
Book
Emanuela Piga Bruni;
(2023)
La macchina fragile. L'inconscio artificiale fra letteratura, cinema e televisione
(/isis/citation/CBB294063311/)
Book
Aspray, William F.;
Hayes, Barbara M.;
(2011)
Everyday information: The evolution of information seeking in America
(/isis/citation/CBB001180680/)
Book
Sherryl Vint;
(2021)
Science Fiction
(/isis/citation/CBB502690791/)
Thesis
Lim, Samson W.;
(2012)
The Aesthetics of Evidence Crime and Conspiracy in Thailand's Popular Press
(/isis/citation/CBB001567346/)
Article
Shapiro, Adam R.;
(2014)
Darwin's Foil: The Evolving Uses of William Paley's Natural Theology 1802--2005
(/isis/citation/CBB001420094/)
Book
Bould, Mark;
(2009)
The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction
(/isis/citation/CBB001033218/)
Book
Armond R. Towns;
(2022)
On Black Media Philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB608692628/)
Book
Numbers, Ronald L.;
(2007)
Science and Christianity in Pulpit and Pew
(/isis/citation/CBB000931076/)
Article
Porter, Jennifer E.;
(2005)
The Spirit(s) of Science: Paradoxical Positivism as Religious Discourse among Spiritualists
(/isis/citation/CBB000640390/)
Book
Lester D. Friedman;
Allison B. Kavey;
(2016)
Monstrous Progeny: A History of the Frankenstein Narratives
(/isis/citation/CBB423366579/)
Article
Francisco Pérez-Fernández;
Francisco López-Muñoz;
(2019)
The Kirkbride buildings in contemporary culture (1850–2015): from ‘moral management’ to horror films
(/isis/citation/CBB808007727/)
Book
Michael Ruse;
(2016)
Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us about Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB247868178/)
Book
Marco Castellari;
(2014)
Formula e metafora: figure di scienziati nelle letterature e culture contemporanee
(/isis/citation/CBB976488878/)
Book
Jeff Karnicky;
(2016)
Scarlet Experiment: Birds and Humans in America
(/isis/citation/CBB488937827/)
Article
Persson, Mathias;
(2004)
Ett numinöst och programmerat kosmos: Religion och naturvetenskap i Peter Nilsons Projekt Nyaga
(/isis/citation/CBB000770375/)
Article
Hudson, Dale;
(2013)
“Of Course There Are Werewolves and Vampires”: True Blood and the Right to Rights for Other Species
(/isis/citation/CBB001201821/)
Thesis
Tindol, Robert;
(2007)
The Impact of Science on the American Literary Jeremiad
(/isis/citation/CBB001561368/)
Article
Geraci, Robert M.;
(2008)
Apocalyptic AI: Religion and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence
(/isis/citation/CBB001030738/)
Thesis
Essig, Mark Regan;
(2000)
Science and sensation: Poison murder and forensic medicine in nineteenth-century America
(/isis/citation/CBB001560984/)
Be the first to comment!