Ice @ NCS Reykjavik

by J J Cohen

I don't think I've ever been so happy to send an email. This one just went out to the twelve participants in my "Ice" Roundtables at NCS Reykjavik 2015. Collaborative experiential learning for the win.

Dear members of the NCS "Ice" roundtables, 

Here's hoping you are already looking forward to the NCS Congress next July. 

Langjökull (I took this picture in 2012)

The conference officially begins on Wednesday July 16 -- and once underway, is quite intense. Our roundtables are in fact on opening day. Even though we are for the most part literary critics, I feel strongly that we should be speaking of ice in ways that foreground its materiality, even its slippery agency: as most of you observe in your paper abstracts, ice is more than trope, figure, and metaphor. It acts, and it calls for response. 

And maybe even companionship. To that end, I am arranging for the 12 members of this roundtable to have the opportunity to take a glacier hike before the conference begins. On Tuesday July 15 those who arrive in Reykjavik a day early will have the chance to go to the Sólheimajökull outlet glacier in the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap. Oddur Sigurðsson of the Icelandic Meteorological Office (respondent to the first Ice roundtable) has offered to act as a guide to the history and the nature of this remarkable expanse of living ice. I am working with a local company to provide transportation and necessary equipment (crampons, axes). 

This will not be a dangerous hike, and requires no prior experience! Please consider coming. My hope is that our experience together will affect the roundtables profoundly.
The expedition should cost a little less than $200 (that covers guides, equipment, transport: it's a good price). I will try to get GW to pay for dinner for those brave souls -- and I hope it will be 12 brave souls! -- who hike the glacier. 

Would you let me know as soon as possible whether or not you think you will be able to come? 

All the best,
Jeffrey