Virtual Middlebury
Erik Bleich and Christopher Star

Please join Erik Bleich, Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science, and Christopher Star, Professor of Classics, for a talk entitled “Apocalypse: Everything You Wanted to Know about the End of the World.”

In this talk we trace the development of the word apocalypse from ancient texts to modern media. Originally meaning simply “uncovering,” the word came to denote a “revelation” of God’s plan for how the world will end. In recent years, apocalypse has come to refer to an ever-growing list of catastrophes, such as the “COVID Apocalypse,” or the “AI Apocalypse.” We use data from several U.S. newspapers to show what crises and threats are most commonly evoked as apocalypses. Our findings reveal our biggest fears for the present and the future, and how a term from the ancient world helps us define them. 

Erik Bleich is Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science. He is interested in media coverage of political, social, and cultural phenomena. He is the author of Covering Muslims: American Newspapers in Comparative Perspective (with A. Maurits van der Veen), and his public-facing work has appeared in the AtlanticAsahi Shimbun, the Conversation, the Financial Times, and the Washington Post. He has held visiting positions at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris and the Collegium de Lyon, and as a 2021–22 Fulbright-Tocqueville Distinguished Chair.

Christopher Star is professor of classics and the associate director of the Axinn Center for the Humanities. His most recent book is Apocalypse and Golden Age: The End of the World in Greek and Roman Thought. Currently, he is at work on an anthology of texts by ancient philosophers about global catastrophes and their aftermath.

Register here

Learn more about the Faculty at Home series here.

Sponsored by:
Alumni & Parent Programs

Contact Organizer

Anda, Maureen
manda@middlebury.edu