Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History
Benjamin Franklin Hall
427 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
RSVP to attend in person or virtually.
Free and open to the public.
On Tuesday, December 10, 2024, Whitney Barlow Robles will present her book Curious Species, a compelling and innovative exploration of how animals shaped the field of natural history and its ecological afterlives.
In an eclectic fusion of history and nature writing, Robles alternates between careful historical investigations and probing personal narratives. These excavations of the past and present of distinct nonhuman creatures reveal the animal foundations of human knowledge and show why tackling our current environmental crisis first requires looking back in time.
Whitney Barlow Robles studies the history of natural history. As a writer and historian, her work tells stories about science, the environment, and nonhuman characters. She is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of History at Dartmouth College, was a member of Dartmouth’s Society of Fellows from 2019–2022, and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2019.