The Breathless Zoo is coming!

The front cover of my book - The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and The Culture of Longing! It is due out in early August ... fingers crossed.
Regular readers will already know about the book, but if this is your first time, here is a little introduction. Taking off from some of the things I talk about in this blog, my book explores the cultural and poetic history of preserving animals in lively postures from sixteenth-century cabinets of wonders to contemporary animal art. Why does anyone want to preserve an animal, and what does this animal-thing become? I suggest that taxidermy is always entwined with the enduring human longing to find meaning within the natural world. By drawing out the longings at the heart of taxidermy—the longing for wonder, beauty, spectacle, order, narrative, allegory, and remembrance—I explore the animal spectacles we desire to see, human assumptions of superiority, the yearnings for hidden truths within animal form, and the loneliness and longing that haunt our strange human existence, being both within and apart from nature.
Just to toot my own horn somewhat, here is what one of my favourite artists, Marc Dion, had to say about the book:
“With The Breathless Zoo, Rachel Poliquin has made a major contribution to the blossoming field of animal studies. This book is the new benchmark on the place of taxidermy in the social history of art, science, and popular culture. Marvelous, rigorous, and extensively well researched, the work is also refreshingly pleasurable to read. Throughout, Poliquin explores the complex questions around the rich cultural texture of taxidermy. And unlike other works on the topic, The Breathless Zoo examines not only what taxidermy is but also what it means. For those of us engaged in thinking about animals, this is the book on the culture of taxidermy we have long awaited—a book of great innovation that slices through the history of science, blood sports, and art.”
Toot! Toot! Read more about the book in Penn State Press's online catalogue here: http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-05372-1.html
Also, if you would like to pre-order the book by amazon, indiebound, or powells, please click one of the following links.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0271053720/penstapre-20/ref=nosim/
http://www.indiebound.org/book/0271053720?aff=PennStatePress




Friday, May 18, 2012 at 12:28PM















