R e s e a r c h

Viking Futures Book and Film Project

AlVarez Hughes’s book project and documentary film trace how Iceland is narrativized and imagined through future talk and nostalgia for pre-colonial sovereignty and the impact of these practices on the construction of whiteness and gender in “Europe” from the “periphery”.

Storytelling practices within Iceland (particularly due to ongoing crises) circulate and produce often-untranslatable concepts of value, gender, human/non-human relations and time. However, many stories about Iceland posit the “Icelandic Model” as key to economic recovery and democratic superiority despite ongoing scandals, busts and government instability.

In their work, they argue that queer and trans studies, post-colonial, critical race and ethnic studies and critical queer indigenous studies provide tools necessary to understand the influence of colonialism and racism on the formation of contemporary capitalism. By centering Icelandic storytelling and cultural production around post-millennial financial and political crises, they show how uneven political-economic practices and place-specific queer possibilities come to be lauded and exported as templates for global economic futures.

Ethnographic research, writing and film production for this project were funded and supported by the American-Scandinavian Foundation, Leifur-Eiriksson Foundation, the Hella Mears Graduate Fellowship in German and European Studies, the Graduate School and the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and the Bates College Faculty Development Fund.