The Ends of the Earth: Polar Exploration, Print Culture, and Climate Change

The Ends of the Earth: Polar Exploration, Print Culture, and Climate Change is an online symposium which will showcase recent scholarship at the intersection of American literary studies, environmental humanities, and print culture and serve as a provocation to the audience: what kinds of knowledge are produced at the (geographical, ecological, and possibly even the temporal) ends of the earth? 

Friday, March 26, 2020 

2:00-4:30 pm Central Time 

Zoom webinar 

Please register in advance to receive a Zoom link at https://illinois.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rOnQCs0tQ_ungrS0VPhvRg 

Free and open to the public. Please drop in and out as your schedule allows, or stay for the whole symposium.  

Schedule of Events: 

2:00 pm Central Time- Introduction of the speakers and of the polar collections at the University of Illinois 

2:20pm Central Time - “A Humanist in the Northwest Passage,” A talk by Hester Blum, Professor of English at Penn State  

3:00 pm Central Time - “Land of Wondrous Cold: The Victorians in Antarctica.” A talk by Gillen D’Arcy Wood, Langan Professorial Scholar of Environmental Humanities and Associate Director of iSEE at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) 

3:45pm – 4:30 pm Central Time - Discussion and Q&A with Hester Blum and Gillen D’Arcy Wood, facilitated by co-organizers Jamie L. Jones, Assistant Professor, Department of English, UIUC, and Adam Doskey, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, UIUC.  

Speaker Gillen D’Arcy Wood recently published Land of Wondrous Cold: The Race to Discover Antarctica and Unlock the Secrets of Its Ice (Princeton University Press, 2020).  Link: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172200/land-of-wondrous-cold 

Speaker Hester Blum recently published The News at the Ends of the Earth: The Print Culture of Polar Exploration (Duke University Press, 2019). Link: https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-news-at-the-ends-of-the-earth 

Sponsored by the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, UIUC; the Trowbridge Initiative in American Cultures; iSEE (Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and the Environment); and other generous campus sponsors. 

If you will need disability-related accommodations in order to participate in this program/event, please contact Jamie L. Jones at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Early requests are strongly encouraged to allow sufficient time to meet your access needs.