Having arrived at its 50^th anniversary a markedly different entity than when it was first founded, it is particularly fitting that the theme uniting the Center for 21^st Century’s work for the past year was In the Eschaton. Grappling with issues of shifting ideals, transition, endings and resurrections, six scholars took to the podium in a cozy room with rose walls on September 14^th to challenge their audience to consider the eschaton and its significance through their presentations on the wide array of projects they each undertook during their time as C21 fellows.

As I nestled into a surprisingly comfortable chair in Room 118 of Curtin Hall, the first thing I noticed was the excited buzz of greetings exchanged between colleagues after a summer apart. The collegial atmosphere warmed the somewhat austere setting of Curtin Hall and, as Center Director Richard Grusin began his opening remarks, the incoming cohort of fellows took their seats in a row directly behind the outgoing cohort, the first of many unspoken nods to the eschaton, for as one era ends, so begins another.

The lights dimmed and the projector whirred to life as Xin Huang (Women’s & Gender Studies) began the presentations. Speaking to her work in China with the one-child cohort and shifting ideas of gender and sexuality, Huang captured my attention with her insight on burgeoning androgyny and queer fan cultures in the one-child cohort. This, in turn, pushed me to consider that, while eschatology traditionally speaks to the end of time and finality, the dissolution of the one-child policy in China and the country’s broader engagement with global societies—both endings of a sort—were also the birthplace for something new.

Following Huang, Ingrid Jordt (Anthropology) spoke to the end of a particular era in Burmese society: an era without democracy and social media, and the manner in which Burma is currently “grappling with issues of the digital in what’s unarguably a global human rights tragedy.” Simultaneously building deep empathy for her interlocutors and challenging me to reconsider my distanced empathy for the Rohingya’s plight, Jordt reminded us that the promises of technoliberal and techno-utopian ideologies rarely hold true. The end of Myanmar’s isolation from social media was the beginning of something much darker than a lack of access to Facebook.

Andrew Kincaid (English) took the podium after Jordt and, with a well-placed joke about ignoring the explicit advice not to simply read a paper, returned us to the context of Milwaukee in highlighting how the Center was a place of “creative chaos” for him. In allowing him to explore notions of radio and mediation, C21 enabled Kincaid to wander about the academic landscape before ending his journey at the shores of the nearby lake. In his forthcoming book, Oceanic Metaphors in Theory, Kincaid hopes to investigate these relationships of waves and mediation. His enthusiasm for his forthcoming book and academic exploration hinted at another eschaton present in the room, that of closure following a year of hard work and collegiality between the outgoing fellows.

Echoing the celebration of “creative chaos in a reflective space” that C21 provides, Jesse McLean (Film, Video, Animation & New Genres) spoke next, enthralling me with her work on humanity’s “fraught relationships with digital devices,” demonstrated ironically by the projector’s inability to produce sound during McLean’s presentation. In making the digital visible, McLean questions the role of digital technology in our lives, similar to Jordt in some ways, by asking, “Are we building our own demise?”

Penultimate presenter Alison Staudinger (Democracy & Justice Studies, UW-Green Bay) spoke to another form of eschaton in Hannah Arendt and Flannery O’Connor’s work. Addressing the manner in which both authors engaged with notions of the end, one approaching them from a place of natality and the other from a place of grace, Staudinger posed the question of what it means to be a bystander to the eschaton. Can one ever escape the end of an era?

Concluding the presentations, Kay Wells (Art History) presented on a project that began during her year as a fellow, one that struck close to home given its location in Colonial Williamsburg, a place I spent my summers as a child having grown up but a fifteen-minute drive from the colonial capital. I have to admit that Wells elicited a knee jerk reaction of “Well that’s unfair,” from me with her claims about the “uncanny experience” that walking through a revival project entails. Ultimately, however, her argument rang true in noting that we ought to “trouble un-nuanced appreciation and acceptance of revivalist moments,” particularly when they are tied to erasing the diverse immigrant past of our country’s beginnings.

Whether personal or professional, the eschaton made manifest on September 14^th demonstrated the importance of C21’s role in supporting work central to aspects of life both on campus and in broader society. Just as the outgoing fellows were excited for the end of their year because that end was but the beginning of a new chapter for them all, so too was it hard for me to leave the room without feeling galvanized for the possibilities of the year to come and the work that will be done both now and in the future in conjunction with the Center for 21^st Century Studies.