The End That Does: Art, Science and Millennial Accomplishment

Millennial movements do not always go boom and bust. As innovative responses to worlds in crisis or projections of possibilities for a world in the doldrums, millennialism has been a prime mover for many an artistic and scientific vision of the world reconfigured. Flourishing well beyond the life of any prophet, bearing fruit well beyond the waning of any redemptive scheme, these visions merit a history of their own. The End that Does tracks the interplay of the arts, the sciences, and millennial imagination across 3000 years of surprising conclusions.

Cathy Gutierrez is an Assistant Professor in the Religion Department of Sweet Briar College in Virginia. Her area of research specially is nineteenth-century American religions, particularly Spiritualism and related phenomena. She is the editor of the forthcoming book The Occult in Nineteenth-Century America and has published on various aspects of millennialism in America. Hillel Schwartz is a cultural historian who has published widely on millenarian movements and centurial expectations. He is currently Visions Scholar at the University of California, San Diego. As Senior Fellow to the Millennium Institute, he worked internationally on issues of sustainability and with the Parliament of the World's Religions he helped create a working document for the engagement of spiritual and religious traditions with the central predicament of the 21st century.