In English. Cross listed with Comparative Literature 195:398:01. May count toward the interdisciplinary German Studies major or minor. (Be sure to consult in advance with the Undergraduate Director).

Considering how the world began has always also meant wondering how it might end. In recent centuries, increasingly, it has also involved thinking about the position of human beings in a physical and moral universe whose structures can no longer be taken for granted. This course examines the ways a selection of writers and philosophers from the Renaissance to the present have represented dramatic upheavals in the physical universe as analogies for crisis and revolution in the realms of history, politics, psychology, science, and the arts.