Alison Laurence
@dinostalgia.bsky.social
Cultural historian of extinction at work on DINOSTALGIA, a book about how dinosaurs became cultural artifacts, consumer goods, and spokes-creatures for consumption | History faculty @ San José State University https://www.alisonlaurence.com
I wrote about those antediluvians in The End of Oak Street for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social. Thanks to @sayanniething.bsky.social for letting me get a little weird with the Michigan of it all! Some general spoilers, but only one specific one re: fate of the dog. #FossilFriday tinyurl.com/dinostories
We Tell Ourselves Dinosaur Stories in Order to Live | Los Angeles Review of Books
We live within a library of antediluvian narratives, with more accessioned every day.
tinyurl.com
CFP! I'm putting together an #envhum proposal for ASLE (June 22-24, 2027, in College Park) that draws on the conference theme of terra/terror. It's inspired by the moving work of @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social, @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social, & Extinction Studies scholars. www.asle.org/calls-for-pa...
ASLE » ASLE 2027: Landscapes of Extinction
asle.org
New at @publicbooks.bsky.social: your boy reviewing an incredible new collection of Great Depression worker stories. Turns out the 1930s have a lot to tell the 2020s.
Long-Distance Talkers: The Great Depression Speaks - Public Books
During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration conducted thousands of interviews among American workers. Anne Trubek's “American Made” gives them new voice.
publicbooks.org
🏺 🗃️ Archaeologists/Historians - please shoot me your favourite examples & sources on ancient named animals, the older the better! Prefer farm animals but others also welcome 🐏 🐂 🐖 🫏... 🐕 #histsky (I already have Bramati 2025, & Alivernini & Bramanti 2023)
Chuck Groenink@cgroenink.bsky.social · 7mo agoFinally found this list of 15th century Italian names for cows I had saved ages ago and lost, but don't remember where I first got it from.
A great, thoughtful essay about an interesting-sounding book and a decidedly so-so movie, with a pitch-perfect punchline.
Alison Laurence@dinostalgia.bsky.social · 2w agoI wrote about those antediluvians in The End of Oak Street for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social. Thanks to @sayanniething.bsky.social for letting me get a little weird with the Michigan of it all! Some general spoilers, but only one specific one re: fate of the dog. #FossilFriday tinyurl.com/dinostories
HOW TO SURVIVE PREHISTORY from me and @stievenvdp.bsky.social is out April 27, 2027. Preorder now! tinyurl.com/282k4skk
How to Survive Prehistory: A Guide to the Wildest Beasts of Ancient Earth
From Smithsonian and Scientific American writer Asher Elbein comes the ultimate illustrated guide to prehistory's most dangerous real-life monsters, perfect for lovers of survival guides and dinosaur ...
tinyurl.com
Even more essays in this Ocean Reveries series have been released - Jessica Riskin, one of my all-time favs, excerpting from her new book on Lamarck: "Even the very simplest plants and animals—tiny, fragile, translucent algae and monads—contained the power of life." pioneerworks.org/broadcast/je...
The Sea Before Us | Broadcast
How the inventor of "biology" located life's beginnings in the sea.
pioneerworks.org
“Though less enormous, less voracious, and lacking dramatic soundtracks to pave their entrances and exits, formidable flesh-and-blood, non-animatronic prehistorics do actually walk among us.” On gators: www.thebeliever.net/logger/21st-...
21st Century Prehistoric - Believer Magazine
Judging by the popularity of the Jurassic Park franchise—five feature films, with a sixth blockbuster scheduled for 2021, three “Lego” Jurassic Park shorts, various theme-park attractions, some…
thebeliever.net
Alison is too kind and it's so exciting to see one's work being used so deftly (after a decade of it all just being in my head)!
Alison Laurence@dinostalgia.bsky.social · 2w agoThe essay includes heaps of brilliance from @tattersdill.bsky.social's THE SOCIAL DINOSAUR (it's so quotable!) and multiple links to @restingdinoface.bsky.social's work (her new book TYRANT LIZARD QUEEN is out next month!). Plus the wildest epigraph pairing I'll ever manage. tinyurl.com/dinostories
"To exist alongside dinosaurs is impossible. Their narrative presence, then, brings other out-of-reach pasts into the frame." Alison Laurence reviews "The End of Oak Street" and "The Social Dinosaur": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/end-oak-street-social-dinosaur-popular-imagination-prehistoric
I've got Marx & Sagan in this essay & here's one more Carl—Kasell, the voice of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! For some time, I thought Kasell WAS Sagan (surely host @petersagal.bsky.social's surname led me there). This was quite troubling to me, as a child in the late 90s... tinyurl.com/dinostories
We Tell Ourselves Dinosaur Stories in Order to Live | Los Angeles Review of Books
We live within a library of antediluvian narratives, with more accessioned every day.
lareviewofbooks.org
I wrote about those antediluvians in The End of Oak Street for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social. Thanks to @sayanniething.bsky.social for letting me get a little weird with the Michigan of it all! Some general spoilers, but only one specific one re: fate of the dog. #FossilFriday tinyurl.com/dinostories
We Tell Ourselves Dinosaur Stories in Order to Live | Los Angeles Review of Books
We live within a library of antediluvian narratives, with more accessioned every day.
tinyurl.com
Attention Philly Families! It is critical that we show Drexel and city government that our enthusiasm for the Academy of Natural Sciences is going strong! Bring your kids, friends, & neighbors down to the parkway on Saturday from 2-6pm. It's a kid-friendly rally to support the academy!
"Perhaps it’s easier for some to imagine relocating humanity to Mars than relocating sediment to save New Orleans." @brad.bolman.com for @pioneerwork.bsky.social: pioneerworks.org/broadcast/we...
Where Cities and Oceans Meet | Broadcast
In New Orleans, water is coming. What should we do with the time we have left?
pioneerworks.org
Not me carefully writing out every “aside” in this script for a talk
This is the kind of headline opportunity which only comes along once or twice in a subeditor's career
Los Angeles Times@latimes.com · 3w agoNew evidence shows that you are only slightly hotter than a T. rex
Attention Philadelphia! We're hosting a rally to demand that Drexel University maintain The Academy of Natural Sciences Museum open to the public. Join us on Tuesday morning at 10am in front of the academy. Please spread the word, we need all hands on deck! RSVP here: luma.com/1qwnrqz2
Steven Connor on that “most untrustworthy” type of matter... sand — https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-dust-that-measures-all-our-time
Sometimes I doubt my book project: Do dinosaurs really function as spokes-creatures for consumption? Have I somehow Sokal hoaxed myself? Grateful for this reporting on a monstrous trend and vexed that this rex is being so defamed—I suppose that those who are extinct cannot legally be libeled.
404 Media@404media.co · 2mo agoSCOOP: 404 Media placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it. What did we find? It ended up at an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books. Yes. This is literally the logo outside the Amazon warehouse door. Read now:
Two chapters in and I've dog-eared almost every page... Will's book is *very* good, no surprise there, and his ideas were rattling around in my brain through the entirety of The End of Oak Street (also, imo, very good). #FossilFriday 🦕 Ask your library to acquire a copy of The Social Dinosaur!
Will Tattersdill@tattersdill.bsky.social · 2mo agoSo here we go then: the result of many years thinking about how dinosaurs make science and the imagination work together. It's written for both literary critics and scientists and my dearest hope is that it will help foster an academy where we talk to each other more
So here we go then: the result of many years thinking about how dinosaurs make science and the imagination work together. It's written for both literary critics and scientists and my dearest hope is that it will help foster an academy where we talk to each other more
Waiting with bated breath to read all the analyses of how, where, and why undergrad enrollment in Classics changed in AY 2026-27. Oh, the dissertations to be written!
Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 2mo agoEmily is channeling a LOT to academic rage at our impotence.
Fund the Humanities just because. Fund the Humanities for more vicarious intellectual intercourse on Main. Whichever.
Grateful for all the good writing that this film is... engendering. Since so many of its best bits are borrowed from The Aeneid, I am desperate for some patron to get an adaptation underway: stories in a story, naturally, about Virgil writing his epic encomium. Pattinson plays Aeneas AND Augustus.
Alexander Chee@alexanderchee.bsky.social · 3mo agoI didn’t really have any interest in seeing The Odyssey until I read this. open.substack.com/pub/flintdel...
There is a lot to say about the Nolan Odyssey movie. But one point that I think has not been emphasized enough is: this is a film about living in LA, as Nolan, my erstwhile British compatriot and age mate, has done for years. I gather it’s a strange place.
“In that moment, what hope did Edwin and his father feel? What shame? When Edwin drank down his sister, did he remember the girl she had been—the one we do not know—or only imagine a fiend?”
Against the Grave
Mercy Brown's tale has always been one of consumption.
contingentmagazine.org
"The historical record can only create a woman-shaped grave for Mercy Brown. She only gains a narrative after she dies." Our latest, from Genna Duplisea.
Against the Grave
Mercy Brown's tale has always been one of consumption.
contingentmagazine.org
Sam Neill was, of course, Dinosaur Man (and by all accounts the loveliest human). But The Tudors found me at a formative age so for me it's his Cardinal Wolsey — a scheming but sympathetic statesman who died by... creative liberty. The Tudors soundtrack is second only to LotR as my writing playlist.
I don't think I have another taxidermy article in me, but ooh this is tempting. And rich. Any #envhist scholars out there want to write about Haaland's $750 "Whiskey Raccoon"? Currently sold out but the website promises, ominously, "inventory [is] on the way." wildbillswestern.com/products/h-m...
