Apocalyptics After ‘68
Doctoral Dissertation 

In the first of two sections of this multimodal dissertation project, I analyze depictions of apocalyptic catastrophe in three novels of the years around 1968. In my analysis, I draw on psychoanalytic and critical theory to explore the potentials for interdependent identity and community building across differences symbolic, imagined, and real within catastrophe and its implicit threat of total destruction. In the final section, I draw on the literary, theoretical, and psychoanalytic principles I have outlined in the first, analytic section and consider their relevance for the contemporary experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, explosive ecological destruction, and the global uprising for Black Lives. I draw on the autoethnography methodology for this Digital Humanities exploration of nonlinear analysis, outside the tradition of 'criticism.'