Education
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2000
Karen Oslund, Ph.D.
Professor
Contact Info
Areas of Expertise
Scandinavia, W. Europe, and the global Arctic, 1750-present; environmental history, history of science and technology; indigenous/native studies, colonial and postcolonial studies
Biography
Karen Oslund is writing a study of Inuit-Western whaling communities in the Hudson Bay, Cumberland Sound, and western Greenland during the long nineteenth century. Ships which were overwintering in the Arctic or shipwrecked there became small hybrid communities centered around survival and adaption to the Arctic winter, creating both environmental and cultural changes in the Arctic landscapes. This book explores these emotional communities from the perspective of both Inuit and New England-based whalers, concentrating on the dislocations of time and space which were created by different Arctic locations and by the voyages there and back.
Prof. Oslund is also editor in chief of the “Travel in Translation” series at Bridwell Press, for more information, see here: https://www.smu.edu/libraries/locations/bridwell/bridwell-press/series. Please write to koslund AT_TOWSON regarding potential submissions for the series.
Selected Publications
Books
Icelanders Eastward: Sailors and the Emerging Modern World (Liverpool University Press, 2026): https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781805968740
Iceland Imagined: Nature, Culture, and Storytelling in the North Atlantic (University of Washington Press, 2011)
Cultivating the Colonies: Colonial States and their Environmental Legacies (co edited with Christina Folke Ax, Niels Brimnes, and Niklas Thode Jensen), Ohio University Press, 2011.
The Study of Language and the Politics of Community in Global Context, 1740-1940 (co-edited with David Hoyt), Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.
Articles
”The Emotional Labor of Travel: Two Eighteenth-Century Sailors and their Journeys to Find a Home,” to appear in Arctic Humanities, ed. Jan Borm, Sumarliði Ísleifsson, Bergur Djurhuus Hansen (Brill, 2026)
”Líf í útlegð: Ferðasaga Árna Magnússonar sem hnattræn ævisaga” (”A Life in Exile: Reading The Travels of Árni Magnússon as Global Biography”), Saga: tímarit Sögufélags, vol. 60, no. 1 (Spring 2022), pp. 116-143 (in Icelandic, with an English summary)
"Greenland in the Center: What Happened When Danish-Norwegian Officials met the English and Dutch Whalers in Disko Bay, 1780-1820," Acta Borealia: A Journal of Circumpolar Cultures, Spring 2016, vol. 33(1): Read more here.
"Scarcity in the Arctic: A Colonial Condition?," in The Imagination of Limits: Exploring Scarcity and Abundance, ed. Frederike Felcht and Katie Ritson, RCC Perspectives 2015, no. 2, pp. 29-36
Recent Lectures and Presentations
“Gathering in the Nets: Sailors and their Labor Networks in Denmark-Norway,” at the 31th Nordic Historians Congress, Reykjavík, Iceland, August 13-15, 2025.
“Our Farms in Africa: the Strategic Geography of Danish Plantations in West Africa,” at the Congress of the Society for Global Nineteenth Century Studies, Kuwait City, Kuwait, January 16-19, 2025.
“Down into the Earth We Go: Symbiosis of Bodies and Nature in Icelandic Art,” at the 4th World Congress for Environmental History, Oulu, Finland, August 19-23, 2024.
“The Empire between Greenland and China: Sailors’ Lives in the Danish-Norwegian Colonial Service,” at the Congress of the Society for Global Nineteenth Century Studies, Singapore, June 19-22, 2023
“When the Icelanders went to India: The Global Adventures of an Eighteenth Century Sailor,” at the World Historical Association Conference, Bilbao, Spain, June 23-25, 2022
"Heimweh and Fernweh in the Travel Narratives of Icelandic Sailors,” at “Iceland and the Faroe Islands seen from within and without - cross-cultural perspectives, 17th-21st century” conference, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, June 14-16, 2022
"The Man who Traveled the Earth: Árni Magnússon and Natural History in the Enlightenment,” Symposium at the Center for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, June 3, 2022
"The Ecological Icelander: Whaling and Whaling Debates in and around Iceland, 1970s-present“ at the 3rd World Congress of Environmental History, Florianópolis, Brazil, July, 22-26, 2019
"Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: Icelanders and the World in the 18th century“ invited paper at the Danish National Archives, Copenhagen, September 13, 2018
"A Farm in Africa: Paul Erdmann Isert and Botanics in Eighteenth-century West Africa," at the 25th International Congress of the History of Science and Technology, Rio de Janerio, Brazil, July 23-29th, 2017
"Survival and Adaptation: Modern and Traditional Whaling in the Arctic," 2015 outreach film for the Rachel Carson Center, available on Youtube
Awards and Honors
- Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Centre, Global (dis)connections, Ludwig Maxmilian University, Munich, Germany, 2026-2027
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Rachel Carson Center, Global Fellows Award, 2021
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American-Scandinavian Foundation Award for Study in Denmark, 2016-2017
- Research Fellowship from the Rachel Carson Center for the Study of Environment and Society in Munich, Germany, for 2012-2013
- Faculty Research and Development Grant, Towson University, Summer 2012
- Research Fellow in Environmental History, German Historical Institute, Washington
D.C.,
2004-2006 - Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellow in International Studies, John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., 2003-04