In the first meeting of the new year, we’ll be thinking about dinosaurs and popular culture, continuing our reading from Svetlana Boym’s The Future of Nostalgia (2001). In this chapter, Boym explores what she calls “Jurassic Park syndrome” and the development of a “nostalgia industry” in popular culture. If you’d like to read Boym’s introduction to The Future of Nostalgia but couldn’t join us for the discussion last term, you can find it here.
- Svetlana Boym, “The Dinosaur: Nostalgia and Popular Culture”, in The Future of Nostalgia (2001) (PDF – password protected access).
“Dinosaurs are ideal animals for the nostalgia industry because nobody remembers them. Their extinction is a guarantee of commercial success; it allows for total restoration and global exportability… The dinosaur is America’s unicorn, the mythical animal of Nature’s Nation.” (Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p.33)
Time & Place:
- 14:00-15:30, Wed 16 Jan 2019
- Shackleton Room (Arts 439)
Welcome… to Jurassic Park.
If you’d like to (re)visit Jurassic Park before we meet, the first film is available to watch free online via Box of Broadcasts (use your Birmingham institutional username and password to login).
About the Doctoral Seminar:
This is an informal weekly reading group run for postgraduates within the Department of English Literature. We select a short text to read in advance, often a work of theory, then meet to discuss it. The seminar provides an opportunity to consider aspects of the reading that were thought-provoking or challenging for you, think about how it relates to texts you may have studied or plan to read, and share aspects of your own research and academic practice. It’s also a chance to get together, try out ideas, and meet fellow postgraduate researchers. There will be tea, coffee and biscuits and you are very welcome!
For access to readings, please email Dorothy Butchard (d.butchard@bham.ac.uk).