Join the Byrd Center in a virtual webinar with Dr. Anneke Schwob from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is a special seminar and collaboration between the Byrd Center and Polar Archives. Register for the event here.
Telling Stories about the Byrd Second Antarctic Expedition: Findings from the Byrd Archives
The public’s hunger for stories about Antarctica was an essential part of the ecology of early polar exploration. Before the advent of a formal U.S. government-sponsored Antarctic program, explorers like Richard Byrd depended heavily on corporate sponsorship and media contracts to fund Antarctic science. The consequences of intertwining of story-telling and knowledge-making rose to the fore during Byrd’s Second Antarctic Expedition (SAE) of 1934, when Byrd disastrously attempted to overwinter alone at Bolling Advance Meteorological Base, a misadventure that eventually became the subject of his 1938 memoir, Alone. Drawing on archival research at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, Dr. Schwob will highlight the competing stories about life on the ice that circulated around the SAE, from publicist Charles Murphy’s tales of polar heroism to the memoirs, journals, and newsletters written by expedition members. These narrative acts, she argues, are essential to understanding not only the development of the U.S. Antarctic Program, but also the evolving role of environmental science and exploration in 20th century American culture.
