The first Philpaleo “Roadshow” talk is today! The speaker is Alison Laurence of Stanford University. The talk will take begin 10 am Central Time (Chicago).
Here is the title and abstract (Zoom link to follow):
“Assumption and Apotheosis: Twentieth-Century Dinosaurs as Mineral, Myth, and Companion Animal”
The year is 1920 or so and a college student is doodling dinosaurs. The sketches are not just reflections of the extinct creatures this young man might have seen lately in museums, newspapers, or pulp fiction. These drawings—and the doggerel that accompanies them—are imaginative interpretations that merge dinosaurs with mythological figures of the ancient Mediterranean. The doodler’s name is George Gaylord Simpson and not long after composing his lighthearted "Mythology for a Good Little Dinosaur," he began his formal academic training in paleontology. Simpson, who started his professional paleontological career at the American Museum of Natural History in 1927, ultimately specialized in Mesozoic mammals. Dinosaurs were not his scientific focus. Still, Simpson’s abridged theogony is a significant contribution to what we now might call critical dinosaur studies, for it emphasizes the ambiguous nature of the dinosaur (an ever-shifting category) and invites questions about what a dinosaur is... really. This talk uses Simpson's unpublished "Mythology for a Good Little Dinosaur" as an entry point for exploring how long extinct life is at once animal, mineral, myth, and--due to commercialized dinomania--a quotidian facet of modern life. Has this phenomenon made dinosaurs into companion animals? Generations raised with dinosaurs as childhood companions might say so.
This talk is part of a project called DINOSTALGIA: A MONUMENTAL RECKONING WITH MODERN AMERICAN MONSTERS, a cultural and environmental history that traces how popular display practices transformed dinosaurs from scientific specimens to cultural artifacts, consumer goods, and advocates for extractive ways of living.
Link to join the Zoom meeting:
https://Universityofexeter.zoom.us/j/97243217100?pwd=NldhSnk0RnVHbDNDTUlDQ1owRThZdz09