The hands of the Doomsday Clock are moving ever closer to midnight. The final countdown is upon us – are we on the verge of destruction? In our current climate, a preoccupation with apocalyptic scenarios and predictions seems to be unavoidable. As time appears to be running out, human narratives of disaster – due in no small part to the current military conflicts taking place across the world – are unfolding with ever-increasing rapidity. And yet these narratives are not a modern invention; they have existed for centuries.

Due to the subject’s current relevance and its continual presence throughout (literary) history, this year’s annual conference at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies (FSGS) is dedicated to the aesthetics and politics of apocalypse with a particular view to their temporality.

During the conference, international guests, together with members of the FSGS past and present, will examine how apocalypses are told and imagined. They will delve into apocalypses as the subject matter of literary productions and explore the complexity and ambiguity of narratives that deal with the topic. From Dante’s Commedia to the poetry of Stefan George, approaches to individual works will be presented in dialogue with reflections and observations on various forms of how the apocalypse has been perceived throughout the Anthropocene.

The annual conference will be accompanied by a theatrical performance by NIE on November 17, and will conclude with a panel discussion in cooperation with the Cluster of Excellence 2020 “Temporal Communities” on November 18.

Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies:

The FSGS is a structured doctoral program and a permanent institution within Freie Universität Berlin’s Department of Philosophy and Humanities. Various institutes from across the Department of Philosophy and Humanities participate in the FSGS, as do the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies and the Institute for Latin American Studies. The FSGS also collaborates with multiple departments from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, thus covering the entire spectrum of literary studies. The graduate school oversees dissertation projects in literary studies that are exceptional in both their design and theoretical framework and that investigate European and non-European texts in a historical and/or intercultural, transcultural context.