Whitney Barlow Robles is an award-winning writer, historian, and curator based in Raleigh, North Carolina. She received her Ph.D. in American studies from Harvard University. Her work has appeared in venues such as William and Mary Quarterly, New England Quarterly, and Commonplace.
“A provocative, sparklingly written hybrid work combining original historical scholarship with lively first-person narrative and natural historical observation.”—Anya Zilberstein, author of A Temperate Empire: Making Climate Change in Early America “Curious Species is exceptional: Whitney Robles has crafted a highly original, convincing, nuanced, and thought provoking study of how curiosity and animal nature overlap to shape, inspire, and circumscribe knowledge.”—Cameron B. Strang, author of Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500–1850 “Full of insight and wit, Curious Species is a genre-expanding account of knowledge and politics. Deeply researched and a joy to read, this book illuminates the ways animals from rattlesnakes to raccoons co-made our understandings of them.”—Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait “Early modern cabinets of curiosity generated sensations of wonder. So does Curious Species, with its awe-inspiring tales from the past and breathless accounts of Whitney Barlow Robles’s fearless pursuit of rare coral, raccoons, and rattlesnakes.”—Peter C. Mancall, author of Nature and Culture in the Early Modern Atlantic