About me
My interest in taxidermy began as a fascination with both its animal-objects -- lingering old and musty beyond their natural course -- as well as my 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.
Ravishing Beasts is a three-part project that includes this blog, a book, and an exhibition. The book, Taxidermy and Longing, is a cultural and poetic history of taxidermy which will be published by Penn State Press as part of a new series on Animals in Cultures. I curated an exhibition at the Museum of Vancouver entitled, Ravishing Beasts: The Strangely Alluring World of Taxidermy (2009-2010), using the museum's own almost forgotten natural history collection. The exhibition received a broad spectrum of international attention from Wallpaper* magazine to Readers’ Digest.
Ravishing Beasts was 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, the Museum of Vancouver, and I am currently working with the Beaty Biodiversity Museum.
Please contact me with your opinions and sightings at ravishingbeasts@gmail.com.
Publications:
FORTHCOMING: The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing, Penn State Press, 2012.
2011 BOOK REVIEW: Archives of Natural History 38:2 Title reviewed: Pat Morris, A history of taxidermy: art, science and bad taste.
2011. "The Living Body of Balto," in The Afterlives of Animals: A Museum Menagerie, ed. Samuel J.M.M. Alberti (University of Virginia Press).
2011. “The Beastly Art of Taxidermy,” TREK: The Magazine of the University of British Columbia.
2010. "Botched Animals and Enigmatic Beasts," in Curious Collectors, Collected Curiosities: An Interdisciplinary Study, ed. Nhora Lucia Serrano and Janelle A. Schwartz (Cambridge Scholars Press).
2010. Ravishing Beasts: The Strangely Alluring World of Taxidermy - Exhibition catalogue of Ravishing Beasts.
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.php?t=curious_knowledge
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) online: http://www.canlit.ca/reviews.php?t=alphabet_of_suffering