In this lecture, Dr. Savage examines the coloniality of gardening in 20th century Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), through representations in contemporary cultural production.
The garden, a built environment of ecological manipulation, is shown to yield nourishing vegetables and attractive houseplants, but this is not its only produce. Spanning literature, film, and visual art, the greenhouses and winter gardens of Danish settlers are depicted as symbols of mannered and “civilized” reproduction. The garden becomes a site of colonial transformation through the Danish settler housewife’s habit and technique, turning an Indigenous society into a “cultured” European nation. Approaching these texts via Danish gardening history, local Inuit folklore, and Indigenous theorizations of place, Dr. Savage demonstrates how these gardens are embedded in wider colonial webs of trade, extraction, and gender politics.
Bio
Maxine Savage is a Killam Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies (CENES) at UBC. Their research examines discourses of sexuality, race, and place in 20th and 21st century cultural production connected to Danish colonialism in Iceland, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), and the US Virgin Islands. Dr. Savage is also a Postdoctoral Affiliate at the Centre for European Studies at UBC. Prior to joining CENES, they received their Ph.D. in Scandinavian Languages and Literature from the University of Washington.
