According to exhibit curator Karen Nipps, senior rare book cataloguer in Houghton, she planned this exhibit at the last minute due to an opening in the exhibit calendar.

It features historic displays of artwork and literature of apocalypse and utopia. Paperback works of science fiction are also on display.

Authors represented in the displays include Dante Alighieri, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Moore, Cyrano de Bergerac, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, William Blake, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Ray Bradbury, Issac Asimov, Alexander Pope and Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Y2K: An Historical Perspective

The Medieval Studies Committee is also offering an academic perspective on the millennium. The committee hosted a mini-conference called "Y1K: Did the Millennium Make a Difference?" yesterday afternoon in the Barker Center.

The conference featured three Harvard professors arguing that the year 1000 was of little significance. Richard A. Landes '71, an associate professor at Boston University and co-founder of its Center for Millennial Studies, argued the other side.

Weinberg Professor of Architectural History Christine Smith spoke on the changes in architectural style in the 10th and 11th centuries, but noted there was very little such change between the years 980 and 1020.

And according to Professor of English and American Literature Daniel G. Donoghue, England might have missed the millennium. The king's scribes, he said, kept faulty records, and may have thought the date was 1049 or 1069, when it was actually 999. The error was not discovered until it was already 1000, he said lightheartedly.