The DHST Commission on the History of Oceanography (ICHO) is pleased to announce the winner of its inaugural Jacqueline Carpine-Lancre Early Career Scholars Prize. The award aims to provide recognition and support for early career scholars who are developing ocean history through their scholarship. Papers must be historical, but in recognition that many disciplines engage the oceans historically and substantively, ICHO encouraged submissions from fields across the humanities and social sciences.
This award is named in honor of Mme. Jacqueline Carpine-Lancre (1933-2022). Mme. Carpine-Lancre played a crucial role in the early establishment of ICHO, serving as its secretary from 1968 until 1997, and later as a vice-president from 1998-2011. Her involvement was instrumental in organizing our inaugural international meetings, completing the publication of conference proceedings, and developing the ICHO newsletter. Her extensive scholarship contributed broadly to the history of oceanography in Monaco and France, the history of polar oceanography, and the history of seafloor mapping. However, her impact extended far beyond her published work. She readily offered her expertise and guidance to help nurture the next generation of researchers and played a pivotal role in establishing an international network of historians focused on sharing their knowledge of the marine sciences. Through this award, we commemorate her remarkable legacy by promoting further research and fresh perspectives on ocean history and nurturing a global community of scholars.
The inaugural winner of the Jacqueline Carpine-Lancre Early Career Scholars Prize is Dr. Tore Størvold, for his unpublished paper, “Towards a Blue Musicology: Oceanic Aesthetics and the Submarine Imaginary.” Dr. Størvold’s “pitch,” a 500-word statement of the contribution of the work to ocean history, is published below. Dr. Størvold holds a Ph.D. in musicology and teaches at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
This essay, with its case studies of Björk’s performance of the song “Oceania” at the opening ceremonies of the 2004 Olympics, and John Luther Adams’s 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Become Ocean” for orchestra, was exciting to read — a compelling analysis of how, as products of culture and responses to environmental debate, contemporary musical compositions have “re-activate[d] historical patterns of envisioning the human-ocean relationship.” The committee was impressed with the paper’s ability to connect a musicological approach to the historiography of natural environments, the study of oceans as acoustic and material space, and the place of oceans in human culture and imagination. By showing how this pair of performances drew on tradition to reflect – and perhaps also challenge – contemporary understandings of oceans, this essay is an impressive contribution to the cultural history of oceans.
Two honorable mentions have been awarded:
Dr. Anna Guasco, for her paper published in Environment and History (2023), “From Devil-Fish to Friendly Whale? Encountering Gray Whales on The California Coast.” Dr. Guasco recently received a Ph.D. from the Department of Geography, Cambridge University.
The committee appreciates Dr. Guasco’s excellent paper on the interrelationships between the grey whales and people in a story of the transformation of the whales’ reputation. The committee was impressed by the way the paper combines meticulous studies of archival and literary sources, with a careful attention to representations and memory, not only for historical accuracy, but also arguing for complex and multi-positional narratives. Embedded in this significant paper is also the discussion on how to write historical narratives of animals as actors although they do not leave behind any records. Here this work contributes to a focal issue in contemporary historical studies, the one about nonhuman agency. The committee finds the paper’s broad context outstanding, with its combined outlook toward the past, the present, and asserting the need to face the future of the oceans’ ecology.
Ms. Katherine Sinclair, for her unpublished paper, “Common Heritage or Imperial Stewardship?: The Southern Ocean as Legal Laboratory for a New International Order.” Ms. Sinclair is a Ph.D. student at Rutgers University, Department of History.
This excellent paper makes a convincing argument for the Kerguelen Islands as a lens through which to see the various frameworks for valuing the region and the oceans more generally. The committee was impressed with the close attention to legal regimes, places (i.e. international institutions) and geographical sites where France and international actors manoeuvred, and at how well the paper integrated the economic, the geopolitical and the ecological. The argument that the Antarctic Treaty and its stewardship “in the interests of all mankind” represented a neo-colonial effort to “uphold longstanding imperial sovereignty claims” in the face of NIEO is original and convincing. This work contributes to the history of the oceans by showing that France used oceanic legal regime negotiations to render imperial claims into national ones, to promote imperial objectives through internationalism, and to ensure France’s role as a new sea power. As the committee believes good histories of oceans do, this paper suggests in its conclusion how historical analysis could form the foundation for a future, decolonialized ocean: “Another ocean is possible.”
To accompany the submission of his prize-winning essay (which has been submitted for publication), Tore Størvold writes:
“Music is one of the many cultural practices that humans rely on to imagine and understand the ocean and to form meaningful, emotional attachments to the sea. In an age of unprecedented threats to the global oceans, the arts can expand our capacity to sense and understand environmental change and direct us towards new ways of existing sustainably with our marine environment.
With this article I wanted to probe my intuitive sense that certain characteristics of music – its temporal, spatial, and textural qualities – were useful tools (‘good to think with’) in attempts to develop productive figurations of the ocean. A turn to music foregrounds listening as a mode of perception and scholarly inquiry less defined by terrestrial categories. Music and sound-based art can be an intellectual resource in cases where visual terms and frameworks have a tough time accounting for the specificity of the oceanic environment. Below the waves, human vision is distorted and eventually voided, and the ear remains a primary perceptual interface for oceanographic investigations. Indeed, sonar and other acoustic technologies are essential tools across all branches of marine science. My article remains focused on music, which provides a repertoire of auditory sensations and listening practices that allow for knowing the ocean in ways that differ from and complement insights from history and literary theory. Music can provide direct, sensory and bodily experiences of rhythm, duration, flow, and depth. These are sensations that align with the phenomenology of submersion and the materiality of the underwater world.
My approach is an interdisciplinary cultural analysis that lingers on this ‘shared ground’ where the musical and the oceanic animate each other. My arguments are structured around two case studies: Björk’s performance of the song ‘Oceania’ at the opening ceremonies of the 2004 Olympics, and John Luther Adams’s 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning Become Ocean for orchestra. Though both are recent examples, they are built on existing cultural templates of storytelling about the ocean. As such, they interpret and re-activate historical patterns of envisioning the human-ocean relationship in music. Adams’s orchestral music relies on both romanticism and apocalypticism in its musical modelling of an inexorable sea-level rise across 42 minutes of continuous sound. A deeper, evolutionary history is activated by Björk in her song ‘Oceania’, which features experimental vocal techniques that intentionally draw upon the mythic figure of the siren to bring humans closer to their marine siblings.
In this article I respond to Helen Rozwadowski’s call to integrate arts and humanities in ocean literacy efforts. As such, I tackle the challenges of interdisciplinarity as I attempt to balance musicological specificity with the need to communicate broadly. Striking the right balance is difficult, yet I hope to have avoided the worst instances of disciplinary jargon as I bring musicological perspectives to the issues currently being debated in the blue humanities.”
Størvold will receive a cash prize from ICHO of 300 USD plus a further 200 USD for research costs or travel to present research. The prize also includes a generous contribution from the University of Chicago Press, a book voucher in the amount of 500 USD. Special thanks go to Karen Darling, editor, for her advocacy and enthusiasm for ocean history, including her work as acquiring editor for the book series Oceans in Depth. Most importantly, of course, the committee thanks all who submitted their writing for consideration. We note that the range and quality of the submissions made selection a real challenge. The Prize will be awarded annually.
History of Oceanography 