Imagining the Arctic: Heroism, Spectacle and Polar Exploration
- Submitting institution
-
Falmouth University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 114
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- I.B. Tauris / Bloomsbury
- ISBN
- 978-0755600991
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
F - Inequality and storytelling
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Production of a longer-form output demonstrating sustained research effort (book)
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Imagining the Arctic questions how images were created, represented and reconfigured in the nineteenth century; the ways that the Arctic and the North as imaginative spaces were constructed; and how this plays out in the present. Almost six years of primary archival research recovered texts and striking images, many reproduced for the first time since the nineteenth century, to show how exploration was projected through a series of spectacular visuals, helping us to reconstruct the ways that heroes and the wilderness were imagined. Imagining the Arctic offered original insights into our understanding of exploration and its pull on the public imagination.
This research drew attention to the ways in which geographical knowledge was presented, represented, and misrepresented. It explored the various, and dynamic, forms in which Arctic expeditions were re-enacted, explained, and justified. By unpacking many of the tensions and interests that were present, a range of meanings are revealed. This is also helpful when we try to understand the continued imaginative appeal of these kinds of landscapes in the modern world.
A decade in the making, this monograph was drawn from my doctorate on Arctic imaginative geographies, problematizing cultures of polar exploration and heritage, photography, print culture, spectacle and exhibition, and engaging the complexities of nineteenth-century hagiography. Making a ‘invaluable contribution’ to the new field of polar humanities, it has been described by leading historian Professor Andrew Lambert as a ‘rich and compelling study’ and as a ‘monumental cultural and political chronicle’ by the journal Nature. It was selected to be published in the peer-reviewed ‘Historical Geography Series’ by Tauris, chaired by Professor Robert Mayhew. It was first released in London and New York by global academic publisher I.B. Tauris in November 2016 and a second edition is being released in a trade paperback by Bloomsbury in December 2019.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -