About me

My interest in taxidermy began as a fascination with both its animal-objects, lingering old and musty beyond their natural course, and my particular interest in the aesthetic side of the natural and unnatural sciences. 

In a sense, taxidermy presents the perfect blend of aesthetics and science.  It offers an exemplary case of how, when the two come together, they create something totally unique, frequently wrong, and altogether compelling.

What is taxidermy? Art, nature, or science?  Something happens when the three occur together, and this blog is part of my larger investigation to figure out what precisely that something is.

Besides this blog, I am currently writing a cultural and poetic history of taxidermy entitled Taxidermy and Longing, and I am curating an exhibition for the Museum of Vancouver on the strangely alluring world of taxidermy.  Ravishing Beasts the exhibition opens October 22nd, 2009 and runs until February 28th, 2010. 

This blog was part of my post-Doctoral Fellowship in the History Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).  I have a Ph.D. from the Programme of Comparative Literature at the University of British Columbia. Also funded by the SSHRC, my thesis, “To make the stubborn Clod relent: Climate, Culture, and Cultivation in Early Modern England,” investigates cultural interpretations of climate and nature in seventeenth-century England.  I also hold B.F.A. in painting and printmaking from the University of British Columbia, a Post-Baccalaureate in painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and a Masters in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities from Stanford University, during which time I focussed on material culture and early modern cabinets of curiosity. I have worked with collections at various galleries and museums including the Medical Division of Stanford Special Collections, the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, the Diane Farris Art Gallery in Vancouver, and the Museum of Vancouver.

Please contact me with your opinions and sightings at ravishingbeasts@gmail.com.

Publications:

FORTHCOMING:

Ravishing Beasts: The Strangely Alluring World of Taxidermy - Exhibition catalogue of Ravishing Beasts. 

"The Living Body of Balto," in The Afterlives of Animals: A Museum Menagerie, ed. Samuel J.M.M. Alberti (University of Virginia Press).

"Botched Animals and Enigmatic Beasts," in Curious Collectors, Collected Curiosities: An Interdisciplinary Study, ed. Nhora Lucia Serrano and Janelle A. Schwartz (Cambridge Scholars Press). 

2009.  "Immortal Beauties," an essay for the catalogue of Mary Frey's exhibition of black glass ambrotypes.  Read the essay here +    See Frey's photographs here +

2008.   "The Matter and Meaning of Museum Taxidermy," museum & society 6:2. online: http://www.le.ac.uk/ms/museumsociety.html - choose Issue 6, volume 2 from the left menu.

2008.   "Ophelia by the Idiots" reprinted from ravishingbeasts in Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, 7. online: http://www.antennae.org.uk/ANTENNAE%20ISSUE%207.doc.pdf

2008.   "Hunting the Windy Vapors" (a medical history of the windy passions), The Believer 6:8. Read here +

2008.   "Objects of Loss and Remembrance," an excerpt from my forthcoming book: Taxidermy and Longing and "Ravishing Beasts," an interview with Rachel Poliquin, both published in Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, 6. Special edition: Rogue Taxidermy. online: http://www.antennae.org.uk/ANTENNAE%20ISSUE%206.doc.pdf]

2007.   "The Visual Erotics of the Mini-Marriage" (a cross-eyed history of cute), The Believer 5:9, 3-8. read the pdf here +  online version here: http://www.believermag.com/issues/200711/

2005.   "Vegetal Prejudice in Early Modern England," in Textual Healing: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Medicine. ed. Elizabeth Furdell. Leiden: Brill Academic Press, 169-193

2004 BOOK REVIEW.  "Dissecting Disciplinarity," Canadian Literature. 182: 141-143. (Titles reviewed: Between Literature and Science: Poe, Lem, and Explorations in Aesthetics, Cognitive Science, and Literary Knowledge, Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, and The Living Prism: Itineraries in Comparative Literature) 

2003.   "Self-Constructing Geographies or How to Author the World," The Supplément. 1.1. online: http://complit.arts.ubc.ca/magazine.vol1.1/poliquin1.htm

2003 BOOK REVIEW.  "Curious Knowledge," Canadian Literature. 179: 115-118. (Titles reviewed: The Aurelian Legacy: British Butterflies and their Collectors, Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, and The Oxford Companion to the Body) online: http://www.canlit.ca/reviews-review.php?id=11539

2002 BOOK REVIEW.  "The Alphabet of Suffering," Canadian Literature. 174: 117-119. (Titles reviewed: Idioglossia and The Representation of Bodily Pain in Late Nineteenth- Century English Culture)