Publications

Five and a half years after its first appearance as a printed book in 2014, the transdisciplinary anthology The Postcolonial North Atlantic: Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, edited by Professor Lill-Ann Körber (Aarhus Universitet) and Associate Professor Ebbe Volquardsen (Ilisimatusarfik), came out in an open-access second edition today. Stored on the document server of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the book can from now on be downloaded free of charge by anyone.

Whereas a new preface, written by the editors, has been added, the articles in the volume have not been changed or amended since the first edition, and thus reflect the state of the art of the first half of the 2010s. Yet, the texts remain relevant and topical in that they provide fundamental insight into negotiations of the postcolonial status of the North Atlantic nations, and into manifestations of their interconnected, often competing, histories in literature, language, politics, art, fashion, and public discourse. They invite to comparative investigations into the region’s past and present as seen from its diverse and distinct viewpoints, and to explorations of this part of the Nordic region from a joint critical postcolonial perspective.

It is the editors’ hope that The Postcolonial North Atlantic will find many curious new readers and re-readers among students, scholars, and the broader public; and we look forward to continued discussions and North Atlantic journeys.

This article uses historical travel writing by Anglo-European Women to investigate the construction of gendered geographies in the Far North. Applying an interdisciplinary approach that combines history, literary analysis and gender studies, the paper examines the gendered aspects of travel, and the intersectionality of gender, class and race. Using examples from two published travel accounts and personal archives, the paper will demonstrate the historical processes of gender differences and representations, as well as capture the intersectionality of literature and the construction of place in real, imaginary and symbolic terms.

This week’s blog comes from Silke Reeploeg, a lecturer with the University of the Highlands and Islands based in the Shetland Islands. She has taught history and literature on a s200_silke.reeploegvariety of programmes including Orkney and Shetland Studies, Island Studies and Highlands and Islands Culture, and has recently completed a PhD thesis on the historical and cultural links between Scotland and Norway in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.