Introduction to the Special Issue: Teaching Apocalypse, Now

Abstract

The past few years have been particularly turbulent ones socially, economically, and politically in the United States and around the world. Helping our students critically analyze the causes and effects of racial injustice, misogyny (including transphobia, homophobia, and restrictions on reproductive health care), and wealth gaps has long been part of the purview of a sociological education, and recently our classrooms have increasingly become spaces in which to consider militarism and war, a global pandemic, the deepening integration of technology into our lives, and the steep rise of authoritarianism both in the United States and elsewhere. Of course, added to this are the profound urgency of climate change and its undeniable impacts on our world. We are, many might argue, living in a dystopia. Or a horror film. Certainly, an apocalypse. All these terms—“dystopia,” “horror,” and “apocalypse”—are relative to history, race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and income, among other social factors. Certainly, the middle passage of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was horror; certainly, the genocide of Native Americans was apocalyptic and their continued survival a lesson in the postapocalypse. Just as certainly, the rash of antitransgender laws and the steep rise in forced-birth laws in recent years can be understood as dystopic, as can the COVID-19 global pandemic, the unremitting presence of (and reliance on) technology in our world, and the January 6, 2021, uprising against the U.S. presidential election. All of these and more can also be understood as signs or warnings of the future, particularly for sociologists who also study history. However, history and sociology are not the only fields that can help us—and help our students—understand the world around us. The stories we tell about these phenomena, particularly in literature and televisually (through TV and film), whether fiction or nonfiction, also offer important insights for the sociological imagination, perhaps even a checklist of conditions or a training manual for the future. We noted in our initial call for papers published in volume 49, issue 1 of Teaching Sociology in 2021 that “the salience of such narratives is (domestically and globally) acute”; the months since have only increased this urgency. In this special issue of Teaching Sociology, we consider what is to be gained by the use of horror, dystopia, and postapocalyptic stories in the sociology classroom. We take a transdisciplinary approach to sociology in considering the use of genre-specific tools, including popular media with which many students already have a familiarity, to encourage critical analysis of the social conditions that lead to and derive from conditions of unrest, disparity, injustice, and social change. Contributors offer insights into how certain stories can be used sociologically and also how students might negotiate social meanings through familiar media. However, contributors to this issue go beyond a mere defense of horror, dystopia, and the postapocalypse in the sociology classroom to detail their successes and failures in working with students through this transand interdisciplinary approach, providing readers with detailed and thoughtful roadmaps for future application. For example, Randall Wyatt’s examination of white supremacy and anti-Blackness in the critically acclaimed television show Lovecraft Country provides a road map to a concise analysis of advanced sociological concepts. As Wyatt explains, Lovecraft Country’s in-depth and intersectional reliance on Blackness, sexuality, and white supremacy as central story mechanisms (rather than incidental or plot devices) offers students a familiar entrance into considering these social structures but, importantly, also offers students an opportunity to apply these concepts to the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon and, in turn, to apply the 1120866 TSOXXX10.1177/0092055X221120866Teaching SociologyEditorial editorial2022