Ice and Exploration

1.5 credits · Undergraduate

This history of polar exploration focuses on British - as well as larger Western - attitudes towards new frontiers and the natural world. Emphasis on the themes of class, empire, ethnicity and cultural constructions of courage and masculinity. Topics include the Viking discovery of North America and the Norse settlement in Greenland, the search for the Northwest Passage, the race for the North and South Poles and the conquest of the third pole, Everest.