Antarctica and the Humanities

Peder Roberts is Researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. His previous books include The European Antarctic: Science and Strategy in Scandinavia and the British Empire and The Surveillance Imperative: Geosciences during the Cold War and Beyond (with Simone Turchetti). Lize-Marié van der Watt is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Arctic Research Centre at Umeå University (Arcum), Sweden. Her research publications include socio-environmental and political histories of South Africa and Antarctica.  Her current work focuses on the global context of environmental and political change in the Arctic. Adrian Howkins is Associate Professor at Colorado State University, USA. His previous publications include The Polar Regions: An Environmental History (2015), as well as articles and essays in The Journal of Historical Geography, Osiris, and Environmental History.  He is a PI on the NSF-funded McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research project in Antarctica.

Introduction - Antarctica: A Continent for the Humanities by Peder Roberts, Lize-Marié van der Watt and Adrian Howkins. - PART I: THE HEROIC AND THE MUNDANE. - 1. Changing the Subject: Antarctic Diaries and Heroic Reputations by Elizabeth Leane. - 2. Beriberi at Kerguelen: A case study of international Antarctic co-operation 1901-1903 by Cornelia Lüdecke. - PART II: ALTERNATIVE ANTARCTICS. - 3. So far, so close. Approaching experience in the study of the encounter between sealers and the South Shetland Islands (Antarctica, 19th century) by Andrés Zarankin and Melisa A. Salerno. - 4. The white (supremacist) continent: Antarctica and fantasies of Nazi survival by Peder Roberts. - 5. The whiteness of Antarctica: race and South Africa’s Antarctic history by Lize-Marié van der Watt and Sandra Swart. - PART III: WHOSE ANTARCTIC?. - Dag Avango. - 7. Finding Place in Antarctica by Alessandro Antonello. - 8. Scott's Shadow: “Proto Territory” in Contemporary Antarctica by Elena Glasberg. - PART IV: VALUING ANTARCTIC SCIENCE. -  9. SCAR as a healing process? Reflections on science and polar politics in the Cold War and beyond. The Case of Norway by Stian Bones. - 10. Emerging from the shadow of science: some thoughts on the challenges and opportunities for Antarctic history by Adrian Howkins. - Concluding Reflections by Aant Elzinga