26058		9:30-10:45	TR			PACE	

When I was growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, I was fascinated
by two very different visions of the future.  On the one hand, I was
transfixed by the powerful language and vivid imagery of the Book of
Revelation in the Christian Bible. At the same time I was entranced
by the promises of a world of flying cars, trips to the moon, and
universal prosperity that appeared regularly in the magazine section
of the Sunday newspaper. As time passed new futures appeared in the
culture around me the horror of a future devastated by nuclear war,
the hope for a world of racial and cultural tolerance, to mention but
two of them. When years later I encountered the work of historians
who sought to trace the development of different visions of the
future as a means of determining the ideas and values of past eras,
my old fascination with such futures returned, and I eventually
decided to use the "history of the future" as an organizing concept
around which to build a course.

In this course we will explore such issues as expectations of the end
of the world, hopes that science and technology could produce a new
and better life for humanity, encounters with other cultures, space
exploration, concerns about economic, racial, and gender equality in
the world of the future, fears about the growing destructiveness of
warfare,  fears of nuclear or environmental disaster, and the
conceptualization of the future in terms of the acquisition of
consumer goods.  Grades be based on weekly web assignments, two 5-
page essays, in-class team exercises,  You can find more information
about this course at http://www.indiana.edu/~futhist/