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Northern Stories: Fiction as a Source of Knowledge

Northern Stories: Fiction as a Source of Knowledge
Type: 
Poster
Emilie Springer1
1Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Alaska Fairbanks, PO BOX 750975, Fairbanks, AK, 99775, USA, Phone 907-399-1175, Fax 206 963-7385, esspringer [at] alaska [dot] edu

Literature offers an engaging opportunity for the transfer of place-based knowledge and history. The imaginative dimensions of a novel are an ideal tool for sharing and communicating ideas: the text is designed to hold the reader's attention, they are memorable and they are realistically complex. Literature is not restricted by presumptions of accuracy and as such can explore lifestyle and ethnographic information in a way that is inappropriate to scientific writing. In the context of the north and my own research parameters of marine resource management and participant behavior in Alaska, I will compare the following novels: Jack London's The Sea Wolf, Frederica de Laguna's Fog on the Mountain and William McCloskey's Highliners. As a control text I will refer to the standards of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, a personally influential novel with references to many accurate dimensions of the historic international sperm whale fishery.

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This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the ARCUS Cooperative Agreement ARC-0618885. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.