About this Issue

Gisela Fosado

The works featured in Gender on Ice demonstrate the way historical and contemporary representations of the poles are far from gender neutral, and in fact, beg for feminist critique and perspective to dismantle, or at least disrupt, the older histories that have formed public and scholarly imaginations for decades. This new issue, arguably our most interdisciplinary to date, features interviews with scientists, scholarship by social scientists, geographers and humanities scholars, and feminist and environmentalist art of the Poles. A gallery of eleven Polar artists makes up Part I of this issue, featuring images, video, as well as explanatory text from and about this stellar group of pioneering artists. Work from these and other artists appears in the rest of the issue as well—photographers, filmmakers, and a wide range of interdisciplinary artists—who all bring new representations of the Polar regions. Part II includes discussions about art depicting the Poles (i.e. Samaras, Bloom and Glasberg), Inuit sovereignty and mapping of the North Pole (Simon, Cuomo, Eisner and Hinkel), and intimacy and imperialism in northern exploration (Grace and Pálsson). Part III presents interviews with Arctic and Antarctic explorers, scientists, as well as artists Anne Aghion and DJ Spooky (Paul Miller).

With the launch of this issue on November 20, 2008, we simultaneously kick off a conference, also entitled "Gender on Ice," which brings together some of the contributors to this issue to discuss gender and the poles. Audio and video from this conference, which includes a screening and panel discussion of Isaac Julien's True North and keynote addresses by Sherrill Grace and Gabrielle Walker will be available as podcasts on iTunes beginning in December 2008.