Scott Krzych

Scott Krzych received his M.A. in English from the State University of New York-Buffalo, and he is currently completing a Ph.D. in Screen Studies, with an emphasis on theory, at Oklahoma State University. His Ph.D. project examines contemporary evangelical representations of the apocalypse in film, television, and new media.

My dissertation examines evangelical representations of the apocalypse, including such films as A Thief in the Night (1972), Left Behind (2000), and The Omega Code (1999), and such prophecy-based cable programming as The Hal Lindsey Report and Jack Van Impe Presents.I am interested in considering how the tenuous translation of scripture into image, particularly in the attempt to represent visually such concepts as faith, conversion, and community, might open new avenues of thought for considering such concepts as undecidability, event, and universalism—concepts which remain unresolved, though frequently discussed, by many contemporary philosophers. The central conceit of my project is that visual translations of Christian eschatology display a logic of endless deferral, a logic no doubt established by prophetic source texts. I argue, ultimately, that apocalyptic media inevitably loses sight of the very spiritual message it seeks to transmit, and that this failure owes to the emphasis on the present over the future, reason over faith, and the technical means of communication over the object communicated.