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ISSN 2154-896X print/ISSN 2154-8978 online© 2011 Taylor & Francis http://dx. doi. org/10.1080/2154896X. 2011.626619 http://www. tandfonline. com endeavours in areas such as the visual arts, literature, music and photography, but also research within fields such as cultural geography, cultural history, sociology, philosophy and gender studies. It includes any scholarship dealing with sociocultural aspects of humanity’s relationship with the southernmost continent, past and present. This turn towards the sociocultural does not, of course, entail a turning away from the more “traditional” Antarctic disciplines mentioned above; on the contrary, this new scholarship is often at its best when it interfaces with these areas. The first six essays offered in this issue of The Polar Journal represent one aspect of this broad “cultural turn.” All of the authors gave papers at one or both of the sister conferences “Imagining Antarctica …