SCAN 240

Spring 2015 All Classes

All Classes

Arctic Narratives

Credit: 3 hours.

Study of the Arctic, its peoples and cultures, as imagined in literature, art, history, media and film. This course makes cross-cultural comparisons with accounts by indigenous people and Scandinavian, American, and European visitors to or settlers in to the Arctic. This course includes emphasis on environmental, colonial, and social aspects from theoretical and historical perspectives.

Same as CWL 282, EURO 240. See SCAN 240.

This course satisfies the General Education Criteria in Fall 2022 for:

Humanities – Lit & Arts

Cultural Studies - Western

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SCAN 240 class schedule data for spring 2015
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	62405	Lecture	CHP	12:00PM -2:50PM	M	329 Davenport Hall	Stenport, A	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/20/15-05/06/15 Degree Notes: Literature and the Arts, and Western Compartv Cult course. Section Info: New Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Seminar - restricted to CHP students 'The Arctic', we are told, is 'disappearing'. As the globe heats up, polar ice and glaciers are melting, wreaking havoc on local communities and impacting the world as a whole. While current effects of climate change are transforming the Northern circumpolar region, and opening it up to resource extraction, shipping, and geopolitical land claims, the rhetoric of a fragile, threatened, and vulnerable Arctic has a long history. Imagined by Southerners for centuries as remote and desolate, as a white or blank space upon which to project dreams and fears, the circumpolar region has provided a bountiful home for indigenous populations for millennia. In this seminar, we investigate how cultural and environmental factors have shaped the regions past, influence the present, and project a future. This is an interdisciplinary course that investigates representations of the Arctic in literature, art, cinema, media, and scientific, environmental, and geographical writing. We will study the early polar explorers as they raced to the pole, and how contemporary artists reinterpret that legacy; we will investigate how the Cold War militarized the Arctic region and how Hollywood and other cinema traditions portrayed the stalemate; we will study the region?s indigenous populations?especially the S�mi of Northern Scandinavia?and their struggle for self-government; we will trace instances of geopolitical jostling over resource extraction and the technologies that are making the Arctic visible and known to us today, especially in the form of satellite imagery, and we will discuss how matters of policy and governance of the region are represented in media. Cross listed with CWL 282 and EURO 240. Mondays 2-5 PM Professor Anna W. Stenport aws@illinois.edu Restriction(s): Restricted to Chancellor's Scholar-CHPHonors students.