Alison Laurence is a Lecturer at Stanford University in Thinking Matters, a program within Stanford Introductory Studies. She received her Ph.D. from MIT’s interdisciplinary program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) in 2019. A cultural and environmental historian, she specializes in the study of nature on display. Her dissertation, “Afterlives of Extinction: The Politics of Display in the Modern United States,” traced how popular exhibitions transformed dinosaurs and other creatures of deep time from scientific specimens to consumer objects, artifacts of everyday American life, and usable pasts that serve the present. Alison’s work has appeared in the Science Museum Group Journal, the History of Anthropology Newsletter, and the Anthropocene Curriculum. She holds a BA in Classics from Brown University and an MA in History and Public History from the University of New Orleans.
Academic Talk Title: “Sinclair Oil Company and the Making of a Modern Stone-Age Family”
Public Talk Title: “Sinclair’s Dinoland: How Artists and Oilmen Made Midcentury America Mesozoic”
Dates of Visit: December 7-9, 2019