Jan Borm

University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines

About the keynote speaker

Jan Borm is Full Professor in British Literature and Director of the Institute of Arctic Research Jean Malaurie at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, associate member of the University Paris-Saclay, as well as UArctic Chair in Arctic Humanities. A specialist of travel literature, he has published numerous articles, notably on representations of the Arctic, in English, French and German. He has edited or co-edited nineteen collective works including Bruce Chatwin’s posthumous volume Anatomy of Restlessness (Jonathan Cape, 1996). He is editor-in-chief of the online peer-reviewed journal Inter-Nord and editor of the “Arctic Humanities” series published by Brill.

Keynote presentation Greenland under feminine eyes: three Anglophone women travellers of the 20th and 21st century

Greenland has received increasing media attention in recent years, be it in the context of studies on the impact of climate change in the Arctic or an evolving geopolitical situation. In cultural and literary studies, the focus has been largely on male narratives about the island when it comes to travel writing, be it in a colonial context or as far as narrative ethnography is concerned. This talk will focus on three travelogues written by two British female travellers and one American authoress: the Scottish botanist Isobel Wylie Hutchison (1882-1982), contemporary poet and artist Nancy Campbell (born 1978) as well as the travel writer Gretel Ehrlich (born 1946). Reading their accounts in parallel will allow us to discuss their literary strategies and ways of representing Greenland and raise the question of the female gaze in travel writing.