Endorsements

The mediated Arctic charts emergent geographical imaginaries of the Arctic. In the twenty-first century, the Arctic has entered worldwide public discussion to an unprecedented extent in the context of climate change, global scrambles for resources, and new shipping lanes. Alongside this new hypervisibility in environmental, geopolitical, and economic debates, the last two decades have seen an explosion of fictional and artistic mediations of the Arctic. Responding to these trends, The mediated Arctic analyses twenty-first-century works that reimagine and remap the Arctic, whether through actual cartographic practice or through the geographical and spatial possibilities of literature, film, television, animation, comics, visual art, or hip hop. Taking a circumpolar approach, it enquires into the multiple relationships between the material and the medial, asking how elements of Arctic geography such as ice, rivers, wetlands, coastlines, and urban spaces are translated into aesthetic forms that carry political force. The authors thereby pay special attention to Indigenous cultural production alongside outside perspectives on the Arctic. While the 'Arctic' is a Southern invention steeped in colonial histories, it is increasingly claimed by Indigenous communities to denote circumpolar homelands, forge Northern alliances, and decolonise the spatial imagination. Grounded in extensive collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers from multiple disciplines and different epistemological traditions, this book is an essential contribution to our understanding of the transformative geographical force of words, images, and stories in a circumpolar context. Like the works it discusses, The mediated Arctic does not merely 'describe' the Arctic but takes part in its ongoing creation.