Crises in the Arctic: Upheavals in the Memoir of Josephine Diebitsch-Peary

Authors

  • Clara Juncker University of Southern Denmark

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v56i1.7172

Keywords:

Josephine Diebitsch-Peary, Robert E. Peary, Arctic exploration, My Arctic Journal, crises

Abstract

In My Arctic Journey: A Year among Ice-Fields and Eskimos (1894), Josephine Diebitsch-Peary documents her experiences during the North Greenland Expedition of 1891–92, which began ominously when her husband, the famed Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary, broke his leg aboard the Kite and was carried to the expedition headquarters near the mouth of MacCormick Fjord. As the first white woman in the Arctic, Diebitsch-Peary faced numerous crises, torn as she was between True Womanhood ideals and desires for hunting and exploration. She navigated internal and external upheavals, depicting the Arctic landscape and native disputes, and vacillating between biased descriptions and identification with Inughuit women. Additional crises included the disappearance of mineralogist and meteorologist John M. Verhoeff and the pressures of her husband’s ambitions. Despite these challenges, she actively participated in the expedition, grappling with traditional role expectations and the demands of polar exploration. Her memoir reflects the personal, national, and international costs of a contested icescape, revealing the struggles she overcame and those she did not.

Author Biography

Clara Juncker, University of Southern Denmark

Ph.D., Tulane University 1986; Dr. Phil., University of Southern Denmark, 2002. Associate Professor, former Director of the Center for American Studies, President of the Danish Association for American Studies, and President of the Nordic Association for American Studies. She has previously been employed at the University of Aarhus; Tulane University, New Orleans; University of California at Los Angeles; The Copenhagen Business School, Skt. Joseph University, Macau, and as an ACLS Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

She has served on the Board of the European Association for American Studies and as the Danish representative in the European American Studies Network. 

She has published widely on both sides of the Atlantic within the fields of 19th- and 20th-century American Literature and Culture, African American Studies, Transnational Studies, Southern Studies, Academic Writing, Gender Studies, War and Culture, and American Art. She has lectured at universities throughout Europe and the United States and at universities in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Lebanon, and The People’s Republic of China.  She looks forward to visiting Greenland.

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Published

2024-05-31

How to Cite

Juncker, C. (2024). Crises in the Arctic: Upheavals in the Memoir of Josephine Diebitsch-Peary. American Studies in Scandinavia, 56(1). https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v56i1.7172

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