BATHSHEBA DEMUTH
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bathsheba Demuth is writer and environmental historian specialising in the lands and seas of the Russian and North American Arctic. Her interest in northern places and cultures began when she was 18 and moved to the village of Old Crow in the Yukon, where she trained huskies for several years. From the archive to the dog sled, she is interested in how the histories of people, ideas, and ecologies intersect. In addition to her prize-winning book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, her writing has appeared in publications from The American Historical Review to The New Yorker and The Best American Science and Nature Writing. She is currently the Dean’s Associate Professor of History and Environment and Society at Brown University.
ABOUT THE TALK
For part three, we were pleased to be joined by environmental historian Bathsheba Demuth and the visual artist Mhairi Killin. Despite the distance that separates the Hebridean island of Iona from the Bering Strait which is located between the Pacific and the Arctic oceans, there are links between both regions. Whales are one of them. In their work, Mhairi and Bathsheba reflect on different types of relationships with whales, both historically and at present. It shows how vastly those relationships can differ and change, often in response to social and political contexts. In the context of care, healing and regeneration, their work also encourages to reframe our relationship with other-than-human beings through attentiveness, listening and a renewed sense of awareness of the web of life that surrounds us.
