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The Speakers Bureau is a directory of arctic researchers and experts that are available to visit organizations, communities or schools to give presentations. The directory contains names, addresses, science specialties, and presentation experience.
We encourage organizations and communities applying to the Arctic Visiting Speakers Series to use the Speakers Bureau to select a visiting speaker. If a particular subject or speaker is not listed, please contact Judy Fahnestock at avs [at] arcus [dot] org, for suggested speakers.
Patricia Erikson
About:
Patricia Erikson's research pursues the history of arctic exploration, with particular emphasis on the participation of women. For the last ten years she has researched the archival collection of Josephine Peary's papers and photographs to document the role of Robert Peary's wife in late 19th/early 20th century exploration of Northwest Greenland. She employs a feminist geography analysis to look at issues of race, class, and gender in the Arctic. "I believe that the discussion of gender in the Arctic, as well as issues of race, are insufficiently discussed."
After years of archival research on polar exploration history, Erikson traveled to Northwest Greenland to retrace the journey of Robert Peary, enabling completion of the manuscript of her historical novel, In the Shadow of the North Pole, the story of the American quest for the North Pole from the perspective of Peary's wife, Josephine.
Erikson is also the author of the non-fiction book Voices of a Thousand People: The Makah Cultural and Research Center, several chapters in edited collections, and articles in academic journals such as American Anthropologist, Cultural Anthropology, and Ethnohistory.
When she's not writing, Erikson teaches in the American and New England Studies Department at the University of Southern Maine, consults for museums and public school districts, and seeks the rush of arctic air on Maine's ski slopes.
A few representative lectures include:
- No Place for a Woman: Josephine Peary and American Expeditions to Discover the North Pole
- Homemaking, Snowbabies, and the Search for the North Pole
- Josephine Peary and American Narratives of Arctic Discovery
