In August 2019, scientists recorded the biggest daily loss of ice in Greenland yet: 12.5 billion tons, a mass that could cover the entire state of Florida with five inches of water. Panic has ensued. At the same time, however, the Arctic has become also linked to more hopeful fantasies of an ice-free ocean that would enable easier resource extraction. This talk asks: how does the enigmatic site of the Arctic become an object of multiple and contradictory imaginings of the future, at once timely and untimely? Working mostly through artistic and literary examples, the lecture hopes to both introduce the value Arctic as an object of humanistic rather than social science inquiry as well as shed light on how the Arctic is also part of our social relationship to the past and future.
Organisation
Verena Liu, Arne Segelke, Alexander Waszynski
Programme (PDF)
The lecture will take place as a hybrid event. If you want to follow the lecture online via Zoom, please contact us at baltic-peripetiesuni-greifswaldde.
Contact
IRTG “Baltic Peripeties – Narratives of Reformations, Revolutions and Catastrophes”
Institut für Deutsche Philologie
Rubenowstraße 3, 17489 Greifswald
baltic-peripetiesuni-greifswaldde
https://peripeties.uni-greifswald.de