Dean's Distinguished Lecture with Hester Blum: "A Manifesto for the Polar Humanities"

Lecture details

This talk is both an account of one English professor's experience in navigating Arctic and Antarctic expeditionary research, and a manifesto for understanding polar humanities research as an urgent need in our present moment. How can we learn from the humanities (not just the science) of climate change?

The Dean’s Distinguished Lecture series showcases outstanding Arts & Sciences faculty, providing an opportunity to share their scholarship with the WashU community.

About Hester Blum

Hester Blum is the Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Professor of English and an affiliated professor in the Environmental Studies Program. She is the author of "The News at the Ends of the Earth: The Print Culture of Polar Exploration" (Duke 2019) and "The View from the Masthead: Maritime Imagination and Antebellum American Sea Narratives" (UNC 2008), and the editor of the Oxford edition of Herman Melville’s "Moby-Dick" (2022), among other volumes. Blum has three books in progress: "Polar Erratics: In and Out of Place in the Arctic and Antarctica;" "Lonesome Dove Reread" (Columbia University Press, under contract); and "Seamen’s Lexicon" (Reaktion Books, under contract). She has participated in several research trips to the Arctic and Antarctica, and her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.