View current syllabus
Delivery Mode: Grouped-study
Carolyn Redl, Ph.D. (May 2004)
"Women's Narratives from the Circumpolar North" is the study of narratives including letters, memoirs, autobiographies, and journals by women from the mid-1800s to the present. These women went to or lived over an extended period of time in the circumpolar north, that is, in any one or more of the eight countries on or adjacent to the Arctic Circle: United States (Alaska); Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut); Greenland; Iceland; Norway; Sweden; Finland; and Russia. The focus of these narratives ranges from exploration, settlement, adventure, and work to travel and life experiences over one or more seasons in various circumpolar places. Current theories from anthropology, history, geography, gender studies, literary studies of life writings, and native and northern studies provide critical frameworks for studying relevant narratives, rendering the study interdisciplinary. Meanings of north to indigenous women and to white women over time are explored. In considering reasons why white women ventured north, the study reveals contrasts between the women's expectations and the realities that they confronted. By beginning with narratives by Inuit and Sami women, the study confronts post- and neo-colonial attitudes and, at the same time, emphasizes the indigenous people's original occupany of the circumpolar north. The study answers questions regarding women's reasons for going north, their contributions to evolving northern cultures, and changing attitudes towards inter-cultural relations and nordicity.
Indigenous men and women conveyed their knowledge orally from one generation to the next and only recently documented it in written form. Written knowledge of the circumpolar north was derived initially from male explorers and male narratives; however, from early in the exploration phase, white women ventured into northern landscapes and wrote about their experiences. Over two hundred books by both indigenous and white women on their northern experiences contribute to Arctic knowledge. Indigenous circumpolar women have increasingly documented their lives either singularly or with others, for example, different generations of the same family. Wives of whalers such as Margaret Penny kept journals of their experiences on whaling trips with their husbands into Arctic waters from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Josephine Diebitsch-Peary camped near present-day Thule while her husband explored the northern ice cap of Greenland at the end of the nineteenth century. She and other explorers' wives published accounts of Arctic experiences. A number of women wrote about events in the Alaskan and Klondike goldfields. Women working as nurses, teachers, biologists, anthropologists, aviators, geodetic surveyors, missionaries, artists, lawyers, diplomats, and politicians have similarly described their northern lives. A growing number of women who adventured in the circumpolar north describe kayaking, canoeing, dog-sledding, and skiing. Some women's narratives describe life over a season, a year, or an extended period. The lives described in these narratives cover a vast range of experiences and provide different perspectives on the circumpolar north.