1) "Time, Spectacle, and Apocalypticism in Popular Culture" jointly sponsored with SBL's Apocalyptic Literature and Bible and Film sections.
There is an attraction to apocalyptic time and rhetoric that make them perennial favorites in United States' culture. The media and publication hype surrounding the year 2000 is a good example of how apocalyptic fear and anticipation can dominate popular discourse. By 2011, however, one might have expected that Americans were now in "normal" time where apocalyptic expectations were less dominant. This, however, is not the case. In this jointly sponsored session we will examine current discourse in popular culture concerning the year 2012. Although this anticipation is usually grounded in interpretations of the ancient Mayan calendar, proponents are often quick to link their expectations to biblical passages as well. Such interpretations represent the flexibility of the apocalyptic imagination in spite of the disappointment that post-apocalyptic (post-2000) time inevitably brought.
2) ATBS and the "Bible and Popular Culture" section are co-sponsoring a session on Teaching the Bible with Popular Culture. Students are generally far more familiar with popular culture and its artifacts than they are with the Bible. Alternately, much of what they know about the bible is gained not by reading the biblical texts but by how biblical stories are transmitted via popular culture. In this session, we are looking for papers that suggest ways to capitalize on this dichotomy: how can popular culture artifacts be used to teach students about the bible and/or to spark their interest in reading more carefully or more deeply? We especially encourage presenters to go beyond reading a paper by including interactive or other active learning activities at the session.
3) This is an open session for papers that explore and analyze the relationship between the Bible and American popular culture.