John Hay is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he specializes in nineteenth-century American literature. He is the author of Postapocalyptic Fantasies in Antebellum American Literature (2017) and a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.

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• Introduction. The United States of apocalypse John Hay; Part I. America as Apocalypse: 1. The apocalypse of settler colonialism and the case for the americocene Jared Hickman; 2. Apocalyptic violence in visual media Mark Noble; 3. Revelation, secret knowledge, and 9/11 conspiracy theory Lindsey Michael Banco; 4. Decolonial eschatologies of native American literatures Adam Spry; Part II. American Apocalypse in (and out of) History: 5. The puritans prepare for the second coming Lindsay DiCuirci; 6. The American revolution as extinction and rebirth Christen Mucher; 7. Race, American enlightenment, and the end times Mark Alan Mattes; 8. Sentimental premonitions and antebellum spectacle Melissa Gniadek; 9. Antebellum anticipations of annihilation Gordon Fraser; 10. The apocalyptic fury of the civil war Timothy Donahue; 11. Apocalyptic form in the American Fin de Siècle Jane Fisher; 12. The ruins of American modernism Alastair Morrison; 13. Mutually assured destruction in cold war/postwar America Jacqueline Foertsch; 14. Postmodern American literature at the end of history Timothy Parrish; 15. Ecology, ethics, and the apocalyptic lyric in recent American poetry Jennifer Ashton; 16. Disaster response in post-2000 American apocalyptic fiction Heather J. Hicks; Part III. Varieties of Apocalyptic Experience: 17. New history for a new earth Kevin M. Modestino; 18. W. E. B. Du Bois's apocalyptic ambivalence Autumn Womack; 19. The empty cities of urban apocalypse Nick Yablon; 20. The planetary futures of eco-apocalypse Ursula K. Heise; 21. The last laughs of doomsday humor Frances McDonald; 22. The catastrophic end-games of young adult literature Claire P. Curtis; 23. Apocalyptic trauma and the politics of mourning a world Irene Visser; 24. Posthuman postapocalypse Matthew A. Taylor; Further reading.