This interdisciplinary gathering of scholars has facilitated an active exchange of ideas, insights and reflections for over forty years. We are now looking forward to another stimulating and productive series of sessions that will focus upon multifaceted perspectives on the present, past and future of the European continent. The 47th annual European Studies Conference will take place at the Milo Bail Student Center on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

I’ll be delivering a paper entitled “The Apocalyptic Other: Nostos, Gog and Magog, and Revelation in the Age of Covid,” as part of the panel ‘Past and Future: The Fate of Institutions, Historiography, and the Apocalyptic Other’ chaired by David Rozema (University of Nebraska-Kearney).

Abstract: Ranging from Homer’s Odyssey to the enigmatic poetry of holocaust survivor Paul Celan in a presentation that combines historical essay and elegy, I review our recent experiences as scholars of apocalyptic thought living through what felt like an apocalyptic moment, in the process drawing into my discussion Gog and Magog, two demons of the eschatological imagination, and their presence in Revelation commentaries of the mediaeval period. At the end of a journey of terror, trauma, isolation, and loss, I find space for hope and redemption—perhaps the best of what apocalyptic writing can do.