Jen Rose Smith

"Icy Matters" is a transdisciplinary analysis of the social and material landscapes of ice. Drawing from archival research and cultural studies analyses of Indigenous literatures and popular Science discourse, the project examines ice in three ways. First, ice as a terrain of conflict and extraction that shapes Indigenous politics historically and in a moment of climate change. Second, ice as a materiality and geography for scientific data sourcing and cultural imaginaries of Western political thought. Third, ice as a protagonist in Universalizing narratives of the Human via racializing origin stories of migrations into "the New World," and the supposed contemporary apocalyptic ending of a doomed planet through ice melt. "Icy Matters" argues that ice has come to signify a bookend for Human history spatially and temporally.