Professor of English
The
for popular culture scholarship on dinosaur films.*
Dino-Filmography
A chronological list of the films, with summaries (some extensive) and other notes.
Cavespeak
A brief dictionary of cave language.
"Ode to Derna"
A paean to the like totally best character in Planet of Dinosaurs.
Dino-Film Abstract
Originally my proposal for a session of the Popular Culture Association's national conference, now an abstract to an article eventually to be published.
Dinosaur-Dragon Abstract
Originally my proposal for a session of the Popular Culture Association's national conference, now an abstract to an article published as "Medieval Dragons and Dinosaur Films" in Popular Culture Review 9.1 (February 1998): 17-30.
Stop-Motion Animation
A short encyclopedia article published in The Guide to United States Popular Culture, ed. Ray B. Browne & Pat Browne (Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 2001).
Jurassic Park
A short encyclopedia article published in The Guide to United States Popular Culture.
Bibliography
A list of published materials on dinosaur films.
Film Assignment
For composition classes.
The Lost World: Paper Topics
Advice on ways to focus a literary analysis of the 1912 adventure novel by Arthur Conan Doyle (which led to the first significant dinosaur film in 1925).
Kong Teaching Notes
Commentary on typical and excerpted remarks about the 1933 film.
One Million Years B.C. Teaching Notes
Commentary especially on the beginning of the 1966 film.
*Note: It's a rather finer type of cheese. Because these films invariably manifest anthropocentric and speciesistic arrogance, and because they insist not simply on a paranoid "kill or be killed" outlook on existence, but on an absolutely irrational "eat or be eaten" dynamic, I have been examining dinosaur films for several years. They have offered a successful component in my teaching of literature and composition here in the English Department at Washington State University, and I find it crucial to resist the impulse to shut down intellectually on popular materials which promise "mindless" entertainment, for this is the insidious stuff, reaching more people than Milton, Moby Dick, or PBS. Also, it's personal: I like lizards (and birds); my last iguana's name was Basil.
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Michael Delahoyde, Professor of English