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Alison Laurence

@dinostalgia.bsky.social
459 followers 497 following 184 posts

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 www.alisonlaurence.com

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Reposted by Alison Laurence
Ryan Boyd @ryanboyd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
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.
publicbooks.org
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.
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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
🏺 🗃️ 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)
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
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
tinyurl.com
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.
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Asher Elbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
A great, thoughtful essay about an interesting-sounding book and a decidedly so-so movie, with a pitch-perfect punchline.
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Asher Elbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
HOW TO SURVIVE PREHISTORY from me and @stievenvdp.bsky.social is out April 27, 2027. Preorder now! tinyurl.com/282k4skk
tinyurl.com
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 ...
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Elaine Ayers @eayers0.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
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...
pioneerworks.org
The Sea Before Us | Broadcast
How the inventor of "biology" located life's beginnings in the sea.
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The Believer @thebeliever.net · 27/09/2026
“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-...
thebeliever.net
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…
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
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)!
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Los Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"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": lareviewofbooks.org/article/end-oak…
A still from The End of Oak Street
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
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
lareviewofbooks.org
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.
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
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
tinyurl.com
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.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
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!
dinosaurs and bugs happily party together at the Save the Academy family rally. Saturday September 26, 2-6pm 1900 ben Franklin parkway, come dressed as your favorite dinosaur, insect, animal, or just yourself! There's a duck billed dino, a triceratops, a brachiosaurus, a pterodactyl, a millipede, dragonfly, and beetle!
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Longreads @longreads.com · 22/09/2026
"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...
pioneerworks.org
Where Cities and Oceans Meet | Broadcast
In New Orleans, water is coming. What should we do with the time we have left?
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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Not me carefully writing out every “aside” in this script for a talk
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
This is the kind of headline opportunity which only comes along once or twice in a subeditor's career
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
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
A dinosaur on a white background with the text SAve the academy of Natural sciences museum rally Tuesday Sept 8 10am in front of the academy 1900 ben Franklin Parkway. "Tell Drexel University "Keep the museum open!" with the logos for Philly Science Action, Skype a Scientist, and Green Philly
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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Steven Connor on that “most untrustworthy” type of matter... sand — publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-du…
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
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.
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
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!
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
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
Photo of a copy of 'The Social Dinosaur', out now from Bloomsbury omg
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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
This will not end up on Saturday night live, but it should
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
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!
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Fund the Humanities just because. Fund the Humanities for more vicarious intellectual intercourse on Main. Whichever.
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
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.
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EMILY WILSON @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
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.
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Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
“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?”
contingentmagazine.org
Against the Grave
Mercy Brown's tale has always been one of consumption.
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Contingent Magazine @contingent-mag.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
"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.
contingentmagazine.org
Against the Grave
Mercy Brown's tale has always been one of consumption.
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
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.
Sam Neill as Cardinal Wolsey seated at a desk holding parchment and a quill. He wears a scarlet red cape and a gilded chain of office. He's smiling kindly, more Neill than Wolsey in this image.
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
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...
Erling Haaland and his signature blonde bun walk along the tarmac, having returned to Norway from the World Cup with an exceptionally kitschy souvenir: a taxidermied raccoon posed as if drinking from a whiskey bottle. He is polling his 67 million Instagram followers as to what he should name his "new buddy." Cowboy, Ranger, and TEX are tied and 21%. In the lead, at 38%, R.O.W. or Raccoon on Wheels.A product photo of the taxidermied "Whiskey Raccoon" from the Dallas-based Wild Bill's Western Store. The raccoon's little hands curl around the neck of a bottle of pink-label Greenall's — which is, I think, a gin not a whiskey? His (or her) face is expressive and, with eyes downcast, more than a little sad.
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Ben Miller @extinctmonsters.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Wait everyone shut up for a second: the discovery of the Brachiosaurus holotype is at the exact midpoint between the founding of the United States and today (July 4, 1901)
Bearded guy in a hat lies next to recently uncovered sauropod humerus that is longer than him
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Contingent Magazine @contingent-mag.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Bonus recording now available to donors, or read the original piece on our website. contingentmagazine.org/2026/06/26/w...
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
This techno-fascist Odyssey outrage is entirely predictable—and so very boring! The Homeric cycle is (ought to be) an open-access usable past... And these legendary stories are far more rewarding when we recognize that they are living myths, not scenes carved in stone.
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
This lovely project is going straight onto my Animal History syllabus (and maybe my Historiography syllabus too!) paired with Jane C. Desmond's chapter on "The Inflammatory Politics of Pet Obituaries in Newspapers." #envhum folks might be interested in the work that @coyotemedia.org is doing!
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Megan L. Cook @meganlcook.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
In honor of me reading all of these thesis proposals, what was *your* senior thesis about?
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Tanti auguri to the eternal city! It's been 2,779 (?) years ab urbe condita in 753 BCE — which puts #America250 in amusing perspective. Rome’s impossibly precise founding date, April 21, was chosen many centuries after the fact to align with the Parilia, an existing pastoral festival 🐑
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
An unforgettable opossum is waiting on the other side of this link... #histsci #envhist
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
An unforgettable opossum is waiting on the other side of this link... #histsci #envhist
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Contingent Magazine @contingent-mag.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
"Brushing off these practices as unscientific implies that 'true' science is, and always has been, unimpeachable. It denies us a chance to examine what flaws may fuel our own ways of thinking." A new mailbag from @wbarlowrobles.bsky.social
contingentmagazine.org
They Thought What?
Unpacking the history (and present) of science
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Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
I’ve been out of the game for a while and lost track of people in the move to this place, so if you’re an adjunct/VAP/postdoc in history, can you reply and let me know what you work on? I am an editor at @contingent-mag.bsky.social and we are often looking for book reviewers etc.
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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
In the 1850s, before it was denuded by archaeologists and the tourism industry, 420 species of flowers and plants grew on the Roman Colosseum — and every single one is catalogued in amateur botanist Richard Deakin's Flora of the Colosseum of Rome (1855): publicdomainreview.org/collection/r...
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Contingent Magazine @contingent-mag.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Seven years ago, we published our first piece, a gorgeous essay by @kerileighmerritt.bsky.social. Since then, we've published nearly 400 pieces and paid every single contributor for their work. Thanks to everyone who's donated to, read, and taught with our magazine over the years!
contingentmagazine.org
War Happens in Dark Places, Too
In thick woods and swamplands and on small river islands, they bided their time.
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Contingent Magazine @contingent-mag.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
“Imagination is a vital tool that any writer must deploy to access aspects of the past.” Our latest, from Ben Nadler.
contingentmagazine.org
Why Write Historical Fiction?
I wanted to understand a hidden part of my own family’s history.
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Jennifer Schell @jenniferschell16.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
So pleased to have an essay in the latest issue of Configurations! It's called, "Stories of Arctic Crisis and Alaskan Mammoths: Neocolonial and Anticolonial Approaches to De-Extinction and Rewilding." muse.jhu.edu/issue/56326 #mammoth, #Alaska, #neocolonialism, #woodbison, #colossal
Herd of large, brown woolly mammoths walking out of a forest into a snowy clearing.
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Ben Miller @extinctmonsters.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
Gary Staab is making an alarmingly large bison family that will travel among a number of museums this March. Some stops are only 1 day, so mark your calendars. www.si.edu/newsdesk/rel...
Man uses tool on face of 20-foot clay bison sculpture in a dark workshop
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Folk Horror Revival 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @folkhorrorrevival.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
#WyrdWednesday Sad times. Snakepit Operator, Highway 66, Sayre, Oklahoma. Photo by Steve Fitch, 1973. americanart.si.edu/artwork/snak...
Black and white photograph of a man wearing a checked shirt standing next to a sign saying 'We do not have a dinosaur'.
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Contingent Magazine @contingent-mag.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
"The 1927 expedition to Paris exposed the central contradiction of the early American Legion – an organization that sought to present itself as a benign custodian of memory and shared sacrifice in combat, yet one haunted by its history of vigilantism and exclusionary nationalism."
contingentmagazine.org
Over There, Again
The American Legion at home and abroad
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Alison Laurence @dinostalgia.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Self soothing by watching highlights from Yuki Kawamura's iconic debut on repeat. Shortest* player in franchise history, baby, let's gooo. www.youtube.com/watch?v=52uF... *Nate Robinson is shorter, I'd wager.
youtube.com
Yuki Kawamura makes his Chicago Bulls season debut | FULL HIGHLIGHTS
YouTube video by Chicago Bulls
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Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
Every child who learned to read English in New England before 1800 would have been familiar with an image of John Rogers being burned at the stake. It was one of the main images reproduced in the New England Primer, and one of the first longer passages children learned to read independently.
woodcut image showing John Rogers being led to a stake to be burned, with soldiers standing by, as well as his wife and children. This version has strong, thick lines, and the children appear to be wearing little crowns
from New England Primer in the Beinecke Library at Yalewoodcut image showing John Rogers being engulfed in smoke, with a soldier standing by, as well as Rogers' wife and children. This version is much more detailed, with plumes of smoke and details on the clothes like pockets and collars
from New England Primer in the Beinecke Library at Yale
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Contingent Magazine @contingent-mag.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
This year, we are adding audio versions of many of your favorite articles, and donors to the magazine get early access through our private podcast feed! Donate today and you’ll get to hear all of our monster series authors over the next few weeks, beginning with Sam Moore.
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dr. e. katherine @actualkatherine.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Re: archivists 🧡
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