Ice humanities

Abstract

Our collection aims to contribute to what we would think of as a rapidly solidifying field called ice humanities. Taking inspiration from the blue humanities and critical ocean studies, we make the case for the distinctiveness of ice and snow. It is timely for humanities scholars to turn their attention to ice in a way that oceans and seas have become sites for environmental and geohumanities and artistic practice and scholarship. No longer regarded as peripheral, the perceived isolation and marginality of ice-filled regions of the Earth is eroding rapidly. Can a self-conscious turn to ice humanities help us reimagine the aesthetics, culture, geography, sociology, as well as settler and indigenous histories of ice? It is an ambitious and wide-ranging agenda, and this edited collection aims to serve as a point of departure, and of inspiration, for a longer conversation that needs to be had about one of the world’s most crucial objects in what is increasingly appearing as an elemental time.