Junior Full Professor Joanna Kodzik is organising an international and interdisciplinary conference together with the MIARC team and in cooperation with the research group Nordic Blue Humanities at the Sorbonne University from 8-10 October 2025 in Versailles / Paris and on-line.
In association with UArctic Thematic Network Arctic Cultures and History (ARCH) and UArctic Regional Centre for Continental Europe the Malaurie Institute of Arctic Research Monaco-UVSQ proposes a reflection on stones in the Arctic inspired by the works of its co-founder Jean Malaurie and the title of his memoirs De la pierre à l'âme [From stone to soul] within the field of Arctic Humanities. STONES and the MINERAL ARCTIC will serve as an object of research and source of inspiration for discussing the diversity of entities represented by colors, mineral constitution, weight, hard or porose surface, forms and shapes as well as structures and their mental representations. Aspects of particular interest include changes, continuities, demarcations, overlapping, entanglements, inclusion or exclusion, connection and disconnections.
The conference is dedicated to the (non)materiality of STONES and ROCKS, which is understood both as an idea and a resource, as the epitome of emptiness and fullness, from Antiquity until the long 19th century. The principal focus will be on musings about and imaginations, images and attributions of meaning to Arctic stones, rocks and mineral environments in text and visual media, in the arts and crafts, communication about resources, religious practices, colonial economic profit or practices of knowledge production, collecting and structuring, trade and production of commodities and remedies.
Programme:
8 October 2025, Versailles UVSQ, Villa Panhard on the Science Campus
9:00-9:30 welcome by the organisers
9:30-10:15 Joanna Kodzik (University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yveline):
The Arctic and the enlightened idea of universalism in Abaham Gottlob Werner’s Mineralogische Geographie
[MineralogicalGeography] (1770)
10:15-11:00 Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir (University of Iceland):
Polarized Light and Iceland Spar: The Cultural and Scientific Contexts
11:00-11:15 coffee break
11:15-12:00 Bergur Djurhuus Hansen (University of the Faroe Islands):
Leaving no Stone Unturned
12:00-12:45 Alexandre Zeitler (University of Strasbourg):
The role of Nepheline in the formation and dissemination of hybrid discourse on Stjernøya.
12:45 -14:15 lunch break
14:15-15:00 Åsa Andersson Martii (Sámi and Lantalaiset artist, traditional healer and researcher):
Sacred Sáivavárri and sentient Sieidi stones in the Mineral Arctic: Indigenous Methodologies for Reweaving Human–Land
Relations in Northern Sápmi.
15:00-15:45 Francis Joy (University of Lapland) and John C. Ryan (University of Notre
Dame, Australia/ University of Lapland):
Sacred landscapes in northern Fennoscandia and their links with Sámi oral traditions.
9 October 2025, Versailles UVSQ, Villa Panhard on the Science Campus
10:15-11:00 Thierry Rodon (University of Laval):
Arctic Extractivism: Myths, Minerals, and the Making of Territory
11:00-11:15 coffee break
11:15-12:00 Alexandre Delangle (University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines):
Stones, sailors and scholars, Gathering and editing Martin Frobisher’s Arctic voyages to North America and forgotten relics
12:00-12:45 Benjamin Ferguson (Wofford College):
Golden Opportunities in Alaskan Literature: How Rex Beach and Robert Service Epitomized and Influenced ‘The Last Frontier’
in their Gold Rush Writings
12:45-14:15 lunch break
14:15-15:00 Jan Borm (University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines):
‘A shelter from immensity’: Rockwell Kent’s account of his stay in Greenland in 1932 as told by himself in Salamina (1935):
rocks, representation and cultural Relativism
15:00-15:45 Julie Graff (Université du Québec à Montréal):
Carving out spaces of representation: The work of Kumukuluk Saggiak and Elijah Pootoogook at Expo’67.
18:00 Le pôle Nord: Lecture in French by Jan Borm (University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines) at the library in Versailles : bibliothèque municipale de Versailles Bibliothèque Choiseul (ex Centrale) - 5, rue de l'Indépendance américaine - 78000 Versailles
10 October 2025 EPHE, Maison des Sciences de L'Homme (FMSH), 54 Boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris
14:00-14:15 welcome by Sylvain Briens - Nordic Blue Humanities
14:15-15:00 Erki Tammiksaar (University of Tartu):
Ice age theories in Skandinavia and Russia
15:00-15:45 Anna Street (Le Mans University):
Waves of Ice: Eco-Emotions of the Feminine Aquatic
15:45-16:15 Emil Andersen (Musée National duDanemark)
Between the sky and the shining ice: the first European expedition to the Greenland ice sheet 1729
16:15-16:45 Sylvain Briens (Sorbonne University):
Cryopoetics and Transoceanic Resistance in the Anthropocen
16:45-17:00 wrap up and dicussion
Programm Blue Humanities Seminar
