This course explores Hollywood’s fascination with imagining the end of the world. From Cold War mushroom clouds to submerged cities, zombie pandemics, and even the occasional meteor, Hollywood has dramatized the apocalypse in ways that reveal American society at the end of its rope. This course examines how apocalyptic films and series reflect political tensions, technological fears, religious narratives, and climate anxieties in different historical moments in the United States. Students will analyze works that span disaster blockbusters, speculative sci-fi, climate allegories, “slow violence” dramas, and documentary realism.
