This volume began life as a series of papers presented at a conference entitled ‘Engendering the Millennium’ held at Boston University in the summer of 1999. Sponsored by the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, the conference was co-organized by Brenda E. Brasher and Lee Quinby as an interdisciplinary event to forefront scholarship across the disciplines that privileged gender in analyzing the apocalyptic. A key conclusion that emerged from the conference proceedings was that gender was a significant factor for apocalypticism, but that the academic literature did not adequately reflect this situation. This volume was designed to redress that gap, at least in part. Papers were selected for the volume through a peer review process involving outside academic consultants including Dr Cynthia Eller and Dr Rosalynd Hackett.

To scholars who have discerned the importance of gender for understanding perceptions of the world and patterns of behavior, the mainstream academic literature on millennialism appears profoundly skewed. This is not to imply that the work compiled to date is totally devoid of value. Early historical, theological and psychological analyses of apocalypticism, and millenarianism to which it is related, have been notable. Classic studies from several decades ago, such as those by Norman Cohn on the middle ages, Ernest Tuveson on the seventeenth century, and Whitney Cross on the ‘burned-over district’ in the United States, illuminated the driving force of apocalyptic belief on human events.