AHR Forum

Millenniums

As we hurtle forward toward the new millennium, this AHR Forum takes us backward to examine millenarian moments in the past. The essays range widely over time and space and thus underscore both the range and the persistence of millenarianism as a world-wide phenomenon: David Ownby discusses millenarianism in medieval China, Alida C. Metcalf recounts a sixteenth-century millenarian sect created by African slaves and Indians, Susan Juster explores the gendered realities of American millenarianism during the revolutionary era, and David G. Rowley analyzes religious and secular millenarianism in twentieth-century Russia. The commentary by medievalist Richard K. Emmerson places these studies in a broader context by emphasizing the interpretative and linguistic problems that must be addressed in every attempt to understand millenarian movements on their own terms. And Paul A. Cohen adds a review essay that surveys recent studies of millennialism and also suggests some of the cultural limitations of our particular millennial moment. The varied sites and subjects in this Forum demonstrate how a single subject like millenarianism can be used to provoke a discussion among historians who study various times and places and how fruitful such a cross-disciplinary discussion can be.

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