Hester Blum - Polar Erratics: The Arctic and the Humanities

I am a scholar of American literature who has moved recently from archival exploration in libraries to edge experiences in the Arctic and Antarctica. Polar humanistic field work has reoriented my understanding of cultural artifacts, situated knowledge, and the limits of humanities storytelling. "Polar Erratics" is an attempt to reckon with what can be assimilated into the world versus what continues to stick up, to disturb the environment—especially in a moment when precarity and errancy are continual states of being.