WOMEN'S NARRATIVES OF POLAR ENCOUNTERS, EXTRACTIVISM AND EXPLORATION FROM THE 19TH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT

What is the POLAR X PROJECT?
The literature of polar exploration is often constrained, whether explicitly or not, by ideas of heroism, nationalism, whiteness and masculinity. The POLAR X PROJECT proposes to interrogate these notions and collaboratively develop a new framework for thinking about polar narratives in the Arctic and Antarctic. 
 
Led by Michèle Mendelssohn (Oxford University) & Cécile Roudeau (Université Paris Cité), the aim of the POLAR X PROJECT is to generate an innovative multi-disciplinary approach to investigate the vexed relationship between the extraction of scientific, natural and ethnographically specific resources from the 19th century to the present day. We aim to achieve this through the intersecting lenses of literature, politics, gender and indigeneity, history of science, environmental history, art history and visual studies. We hope to open the discussion more broadly to climatologists, geologists, geographers, anthropologists and polar studies specialists. 
 
Co-funded by the Universities of Oxford and Université Paris Cité, the POLAR X PROJECT involves: (1) the POLAR X WORKSHOP & SYMPOSIUM, (2) a publication on the literature of Arctic extractivism and exploration, (3) a possible future funding application for a collaborative research grant for follow-on research. 

Attend at Université Paris Cité and online (invitation only!)

Click here for the program

Click here for the Zoom link (password required)

What is the POLAR X WORKSHOP AND SYMPOSIUM about and who is it for?
Over 2 days in Paris and online, the POLAR X WORKSHOP & SYMPOSIUM will provide an opportunity for established and emerging scholars to enter into conversation with one another over key texts, respond to works in progress, and reflect on what shifts in our conception of polar encounters might mean for our research and pedagogy.  
 
The workshop will provide an opportunity for scholars at all career stages across multiple intersecting and overlapping fields to broaden their professional networks and create connections enabling future collaborations. 
 
The intention is to provide a welcoming space for interventions that question the field’s past imperatives and propose new directions of travel. 

Workshop format
The organizing principle of the workshop is to promote exchange and build fellowship through a collaborative focus on literary and critical texts and objects. These will be the central medium through which we focus our explorations of broader cultural phenomena and their historical and intellectual contexts.

Photographic portrait of Anna Boberg from the Encyclopedia of Swedish Artists (Svenskt konstnärslexikon) edited by Allhems publishers between 1952 and 1967.

Cycle of Life (21st c.), etching and aquatint on wove paper by Germaine Arnaktauyok.

Supported by

Organizing Committee

Michèle Mendelssohn (Oxford University)
Cécile Roudeau (Université Paris Cité)
​
Clara-Louise Mourier (Université Paris Cité)
​Emma Thiébaut (Université Paris Cité)

Credits

Cover: Northern Lights. Study from North Norway (early 20th c.), oil on canvas by Anna Boberg.