Note: This is a DRAFT syllabus that is subject to change. The final syllabus will be posted by the first day of class on Tuesday, March 31.
Polar Exploration and Its Literature
HSTRY 388 C
Spring 2026
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:30-2:20 p.m.
Denny Hall, Room 256
Dr. Ross Coen
E-mail: rcoen@uw.edu
Office: Smith 103-G
In-person Office Hours: TBD
Virtual Office Hours: TBD
COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES:
The history of polar exploration is commonly understood in terms of the dramatic, romantic, and oftentimes tragic exploits of intrepid mariners such as Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, and Sir John Franklin. And while such stories abound in the literature and will be a significant part of the course, humankind’s connection to the Arctic and Antarctic touches on deeper historical themes such as nationalism, colonialism, science, geographical misconceptions, Indigenous cultures, racial theories, the biological impact of cold, and the advances and limits of technology. This course will trace the evolution of polar exploration, focusing on the 19th and early 20th centuries, to demonstrate that exploration is an integral part of being human. Students will work with primary sources, read and discuss secondary works, think and write analytically, and hone their skills in developing evidence-based arguments.
HSTRY 388 is a seminar course that emphasizes the basic skills of reading, analysis, and verbal and written communication that are central to the historians’ craft. In this course you will read a lot, write a lot, and speak a lot in both class discussion and small-group work. The objectives of the course are twofold: You will learn about the history of polar exploration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and, perhaps more importantly, you will acquire and hone skills in historical research, interpretation, and writing that will prove useful as you continue your university studies.
COURSE SCHEDULE
Please note the course schedule is subject to revision. Any changes to the schedule will be announced in class and posted on the Canvas site. It is the student’s responsibility to keep apprised of the course schedule. All readings, assignments, and other materials will be posted to that week’s Module on Canvas. Please get in the habit of checking Modules on a regular basis so that you remain aware of all assignments.
Week 1: Introduction to the Course
Tuesday, March 31:
Readings TBD
Thursday, April 2:
Andrew Mahoney et al., “Sea-Ice Distribution in the Bering and Chukchi Seas: Information from Historical Whaleships’ Logbooks and Journals” Arctic 64, No. 4 (December 2011), 465-77.
Adriana Craciun, “The Frozen Ocean” PMLA 125, No. 3 (May 2010), 693-702.
Mark C. Serreze, Brave New Arctic: The Untold Story of the Melting North (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), Chapter 1: Beginnings.
Week 2: The Polar Regions and the Explorers
Tuesday, April 7:
Adrian Howkins, The Polar Regions: An Environmental History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016), Introduction and Chapters 1-3.
Thursday, April 9:
With the exception of the DeLong excerpt that is posted on Canvas, all selections below are from Elizabeth Kolbert and Francis Spufford, eds., The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2007)
The Arctic:
Elizabeth Kolbert, Introduction, pp. 1-6.
John Franklin, “The Extreme Misery of the Whole Party,” pp. 7-10.
Elisha Kent Kane, “The Return of Light,” pp. 11-13.
Chauncey Loomis, “Murder in the Arctic?” pp. 14-29.
Salomon August Andrée, “Andrée’s Second Diary,” pp. 58-61.
Hinrich Rink, “Kasiagsak, The Great Liar,” pp. 71-75.
Knud Rasmussen, “Songs of the Inuit,” pp. 76-81.
Gontran De Poncins, “Kabloona,” pp. 88-98.
Tété-Michel Kpomassie, “A Greenland Christmas,” pp. 99-111.
Valerian Albanov, “Land Ho!” pp. 127-33.
George W. DeLong, “The Voyage of the Jeannette,” in The North Pole: A Narrative History, Anthony Brandt, ed. (Washington, DC: National Geographic Adventure Classics, 2005), 292-302.
The Antarctic:
Francis Spufford, Introduction, pp. 1-11
Frederick A. Cook, “Into the Night,” pp. 13-27
Edward Wilson, “Sledge Dogs and Englishmen,” pp. 33-42
Ernest Shackleton, “Farthest South,” pp. 43-54
Nobu Shirase, “Lt. Shirase’s Calling Card,” pp. 55-62.
Week 3: The Northwest Passage
Tuesday, April 14:
Anthony Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots, Introduction and Chapters 1-12 (pages 3-220)
Thursday, April 16:
Wilma Belden Fairchild, “Explorers: Men and Motives,” Geographical Review 38, No. 3 (July 1948), 414-25.
Adriana Craciun, “Writing the Disaster: Franklin and Frankenstein,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 65, No. 4 (March 2011), 433-80.
Week 4: The Northwest Passage, cont.
Tuesday, April 21:
Anthony Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots, Chapters 13-20 and Epilogue (pages 225-396)
First primary source analysis paper due at the start of class.
Thursday, April 23:
W. Gillies Ross, “The Type and Number of Expeditions in the Franklin Search 1847–1859,” Arctic 55, No. 1 (March 2002), 57-69.
Margaret Atwood, Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1996), Chapter 2: “Concerning Franklin and His Gallant Crew.”
Assignment: Primary Source Analysis due by the start of class on Thursday, April 23
Week 5: Peary and Cook
Tuesday, April 28:
Robert Peary, “We Reach the Pole” in Kolbert and Spufford, eds., The Ends of the Earth, 62-70.
Matthew Henson, “A Negro Explorer at the North Pole,” in The North Pole: A Narrative History, Anthony Brandt, ed. (Washington, DC: National Geographic Adventure Classics, 2005), 394-98.
Frederick A. Cook, “My Attainment of the Pole,” in The North Pole: A Narrative History, Anthony Brandt, ed. (Washington, DC: National Geographic Adventure Classics, 2005), 372-93.
Michael F. Robinson, “Frederick Cook: A Reappraisal,” in North By Degree: New Perspectives on Arctic Exploration, Susan A. Kaplan and Robert McCracken Peck, eds. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2013), 49-62.
Lyle Dick, “Robert Peary’s North Polar Narratives and the Making of an American Icon,” American Studies 45, No. 2 (Summer 2004), 5-34.
Emma Bonanomi, “To Be Black and American: Matthew Henson and His Post-Pole Lecture Tour, 1909–10,” in North By Degree: New Perspectives on Arctic Exploration, Susan A. Kaplan and Robert McCracken Peck, eds. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2013), 185-209.
Lisa Bloom, Gender on Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), Chapter 1: “Nationalism on Ice: Technology and Masculinity at the North Pole.”
Thursday, April 30:
No class. Each student will have a 20-minute, one-on-one Zoom conference with Professor Coen to discuss final paper topics, sources, and progress to date. Meeting times will be open throughout the week, and a schedule will be made available as the date gets closer.
Week 6: Nansen and Amundsen
Tuesday, May 5-Thursday, May 7:
Roald Amundsen, The North West Passage, Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship “Gjöa” 1903–1907, Volumes 1 and 2 (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1908). [Note: Complete copies of Amundsen’s book are available online at Google Books, HathiTrust, and probably other websites. You will read two chapters for this assignment. First, everyone will read Volume 2, Chapter 10: The North West Passage. Next, please choose one additional chapter from either Volume 1 or Volume 2, read it, and come to class prepared to tell your classmates about it. This is an experiment to see if together we can read and discuss both books more or less in their entirety.]
Kjell-G. Kjaer, “The Arctic vessel Gjøa,” Polar Record 41, No. 4 (September 2005), 355-61.
Fridtjof Nansen, “The Winter Night,” in Kolbert and Spufford, eds., The Ends of the Earth, 45-57.
Peter Schledermann, “The Fram: Profile of a Famous Polar Exploration Vessel,” Arctic 42, No. 4 (December 1989), 384-87.
Jeannette Mirsky, To the Arctic! The Story of Northern Exploration from Earliest Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), chapter 16.
Week 7: The South Pole
Tuesday, May 12-Thursday, May 14:
Roald Amundsen, “Topsy-Turvy,” in Kolbert and Spufford, eds., The Ends of the Earth, 78-85.
Robert Falcon Scott, “Tragedy All Along the Line,” in Kolbert and Spufford, eds., The Ends of the Earth, 86-96.
Apsley Cherry-Garrard, “The Winter Journey,” in The Worst Journey in the World. [Note: This is Chapter 7 in Cherry-Garrard’s book, first published in 1922. There are many digital copies available online at Google Books, HathiTrust, and probably other websites. Please locate one and read this chapter. Be sure you are reading Chapter 7: The Winter Journey. There are other chapters with similar titles, such as ‘The Depot Journey,’ ‘The Polar Journey,’ ‘The Search Journey,’ and so on.]
Francis Spufford, “Scott Dies,” in Kolbert and Spufford, eds., The Ends of the Earth, 97-101.
Douglas Mawson, “Mawson Lives,” in Kolbert and Spufford, eds., The Ends of the Earth, 102-08.
Carolyn Strange, “Reconsidering the ‘Tragic’ Scott Expedition: Cheerful Masculine Home-making in Antarctica, 1910–1913,” Journal of Social History 46, No. 1 (Fall 2012), 66-88.
Week 8: More Heroism & More Tragedy
Tuesday, May 19-Thursday, May 21
Julian Sancton, Madhouse at the End of the Earth (entire book)
Week 9: Perceptions of the Poles
Tuesday, May 26:
Vilhjalmur Stefansson, “Some Erroneous Ideas of Arctic Geography,” Geographical Review 12, no. 2 (April 1922), 264-77.
Jenny Diski, “Cabin 532,” in Kolbert and Spufford, eds., The Ends of the Earth, 162-72.
Andrea Barrett, “See the Esquimaux,” in Kolbert and Spufford, eds., The Ends of the Earth, 30-36.
Robert McCracken Peck, “Arctic Imagery and Decorative Arts,” in North By Degree: New Perspectives on Arctic Exploration, Susan A. Kaplan and Robert McCracken Peck, eds. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2013), 291-318.
Helen Reddick, “The Polar Trek and the Children’s Book,” in North By Degree: New Perspectives on Arctic Exploration, Susan A. Kaplan and Robert McCracken Peck, eds. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2013), 319-32.
Thursday, May 28:
Small-group presentations
Week 10: Review and Catch-Up
Tuesday, June 2-Thursday, June 4:
Readings TBD.
Week 11: Finals Week
Thursday, June 11, 10:30 a.m.-12:20 p.m.
There is no Final Exam in the course. Instead, two things will happen in this period. First, your Final Research Paper is due; it must be uploaded to Canvas by the start of the period. Second, students are invited to join the instructor in the classroom to watch a movie about polar exploration—something like ‘Nanook of the North,’ Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Gold Rush,’ or John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing.’ We will decide the film by popular vote. Snacks will be provided by the instructor. Attendance at the film screening is not required.
Assignments
1) Students will come to each class prepared to engage in thoughtful and courteous discussion that reflects completion and comprehension of assigned readings. Students will also actively participate in small-group work. Participation is worth 20 percent of the course grade and will be evaluated according to the following rubric:
- 18-20 percent: excellent contributor to class; participates in discussion in nearly every class session; speaks and listens thoughtfully to peers, reflecting careful reading and attention to class content; informed, collegial contributions to group and in-class assignments.
- 14-17 percent: contributes to discussion in the majority of class sessions, reflecting completion of reading assignments and attention to class content; completion of most in-class work.
- 10-13 percent: contributes to discussion half of the time or less, reflecting completion of assigned reading and some attention to class content; completion of some in-class work.
- 6-9 percent: rarely speaks in class; low engagement in group work; missing in-class assignments.
- 5 percent and below: rarely or never speaks in class, could not demonstrate by comments or in-class assignments that reading had been completed or other content mastered; lack of collegiality to peers.
2) Students will write one Primary Source Analysis, 3-4 pages in length. The paper must analyze and interpret a single primary source, such as a collection of pages from a ship’s logbook, a selection of letters to/from a polar explorer, an excerpt of an expedition journal authored and published by an explorer after the completion of the journey, and so on. Students will select the primary sources themselves, and the sources must not substantially duplicate materials to be covered in class. More information will be provided by the instructor. The paper is worth 20 percent of the overall course grade, and it is due on Thursday, April 23.
3) Working in teams of three or four, students will research and prepare in-class presentations on an important figure in the history of polar exploration. Students will select the historical figure themselves, and the individual must be someone we have not covered extensively in class. The presentations should be 20 minutes in duration, and they must consist of photographs, maps, quotes from primary sources, and/or other historical materials. The presentation should also situate/contextualize the figure in the history of polar exploration. More information will be provided by the instructor. Presentations will be made in class on Thursday, May 28. The presentation is worth 20 percent of the course grade.
4) Students will write a final paper, 9-10 pages in length, on any aspect of polar exploration that has not already been covered in class. More information will be provided. The final paper is due on Thursday, June 11, and it is worth 40 percent of the course grade.
Grade breakdown:
Participation 20 percent
Primary source analysis 20 percent
Small group presentation 20 percent
Final research paper 40 percent
Students must complete all assignments to receive a passing grade in the course. For instance, if you earn enough points to qualify for a passing grade in four of the above assignments but you skip any one of them, you will not pass the course.
Required Readings
There are three required books. Please acquire copies if you have not done so already.
Elizabeth Kolbert and Francis Spufford, eds., The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2007)
Anthony Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage (New York: Anchor Books, 2010)
Julian Sancton, Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey Into the Dark Antarctic Night (New York: Crown, 2021)
In addition, you will be reading a selection of articles, excerpts, letters, and other materials, all of which are either posted on the Canvas course page or available online. You will be reading up to—and in some cases significantly more than—a hundred pages each week. This may seem like a lot, but written work is the foundation of historical inquiry. Completion of the reading assignments is vital to your success in the course. When doing the readings, please do not simply read the words in an effort to get it over with as quickly as possible. Engage your critical thinking skills and, in the case of primary sources, identify the purpose of the work, its scope, intended audience, author’s motivation, and so on. When reading a secondary source, identify the author’s argument, evidence, sources, and so on. Keep a note pad handy and jot down important themes from the readings, then refer to your notes during class discussions. The reading load will vary from week to week, so please look ahead in the syllabus and plan accordingly.
Attendance Policy
Class attendance is required. I acknowledge students may be absent on occasion for a variety of reasons, and all I ask is that you contact me before (if possible) or as soon as possible after the class you missed. During these trying and uncertain times, I am fully prepared to extend deadlines when warranted. Students should prioritize their physical and mental health. If you anticipate or encounter a problem (illness, injury, family crisis, etc.), it is always useful to contact the professor promptly. I respect your privacy and will do what I can to try to reasonably accommodate your situation.
Statement on Artificial Intelligence
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is not allowed in the course, and the instructor considers any such use a form of academic misconduct. Tools that use AI and large language models to generate text or images include, but are not limited to, ChatGPT, GPT4, Bing Chat, and “Write with AI” in Google Docs. Please do not use any AI tools in this course.