Joining us to wrap up our 7th year is our “Final Guy,” Mike Wood, with three weeks of “California Screaming: West Coast Cult Horror.” Mike, a historian and archaeologist by profession—and expert on Indonesian culture, history and politics—has been devouring films like PSYCH-OUT (1968), COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE (1970), and MEPHISTO WALTZ (1971), since he was in his teens. In this course, he turns his youthful cinephilia into an exploration of the alternative religious movements and cults in 1960s and 1970s California—perhaps most notoriously represented by Charles Manson and Jim Jones, and their followers—that spawned a whole subgenre of films.
A graduate of the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies (2004), where he focused on the history and politics of Indonesia, Dr. Michael Wood is a full time faculty member in the Department of Humanities, Dawson College. His current research interests include the use and misuse of historical themes and symbols for purposes of nation building, regime legitimization and national branding in Indonesia and the Balkans. Additionally, he has a background in archaeology, having been involved in the excavations of a Roman bathhouse at Tel Dor, Israel, a Mayan palace at Cahel Pech, Belize and the Iron Age fortifications of Tell Jawa, Jordan. He has been interested in pseudo-archaeology, popular misconceptions of the past involving lost civilizations and ancient aliens, since the original broadcasts of the show In Search of in the late 1970’s. He has also held a long interest in the fantasy and horror works of Robert E, Howard, the creator of Conan and has presented on both of these subjects at the Miskatonic Institute. His publications include Official History in Modern Indonesia: New Order Perceptions and Counterviews (2005) and “Indonesian Nationalism” In Nations and Nationalism in Global Perspective: An Encyclopedia of Origins, Development and Contemporary Transitions (2008) and “Archaeology, National Histories and National Borders in Southeast Asia.” In The Borderlands of Southeast Asia: Geopolitics, Terrorism and Globalization (2011).
