Afterlives of extinction : the politics of display in the modern United States

Long extinct animals have a powerful hold on the American popular imagination. Dinosaurs, in particular, have been iconic and pervasive representatives of a planetary past for much of the twentieth century. While natural history museums are the most obvious spaces in which to encounter extinct animals, these scientific venues have never held exclusive rights to the charismatic mega fauna of the planet's past, nor have they controlled their cultural meanings entirely. This dissertation examines sites in which American publics have encountered extinct animals through interrelated case studies that span the twentieth century, including the American Museum of Natural History's fossil halls, Depression-Era world's fair exhibits, the contested construction of a Pleistocene Park at the La Brea Tar Pits of Los Angeles, Sinclair Oil Company's use of dinosaurs as spokes-creatures for oil culture, and the dinosaurs that currently draw visitors to young earth creationist museums.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Laurence, Alison(Alison G.)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Harriet Ritvo.

• Program in Science, Technology and Society.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124067

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/124067