This panel analyses the entanglement of national identity with the west’s mythos of exploration history, with a focus on Canada and the US. As Lydia Towns demonstrates, twentieth-century celebrations of John Cabot’s expeditions also resulted in debates over who discovered and thus deserved credit for the “founding” of Canada, with the Anglo and Francophone communities divided between Cabot and Jacques Cartier. For Canada, this argument reflected the complexities of Canada’s identity, as a nation destined to be English and Protestant or one with a rich Catholic and French heritage. For some communities, this debate either divided communities along religious and ethnic lines or the appropriation of a “founding” explorer united divergent communities behind a common hero.

The next two papers both examine arctic explorers and the fictionalization of their stories. Roman Cain unpacks the way histories of exploration can be captured and rewritten during the immediate aftermath of the expedition to bolster national identity. Focusing on the celebrations of the Greely expedition and the subsequent exhibition at the Columbian World Fair, Cain demonstrates the manner in which problematic aspects of the expedition were removed from the public discourse in favor of the triumphant American explorer surviving the wilds of the far north. In doing so, the Greely expedition became a potent symbol of nationalism.

Carrying this theme forward into the 21^st century, Sarah Pickman analyzes how public fascination with the lost Franklin expedition shaped concepts of identity, both historically and today. Pickman brings a unique perspective to this discussion by including the way Franklin’s expedition has been used in modern fiction to imagine a more diverse narrative of exploration, thus highlighting alternate perspectives of identity and belonging.

Finally, Lauren Beck’s paper concludes with a critique of controversies over exploration commemoration. Beck assesses the trajectory of violence against commemorative sites to understand which forms of commemoration (i.e., street signs, statues, parks, etc.) are more likely to be defaced or erased, and therefore which forms of physical commemoration enjoy longer lives. This analysis offers unique insight into the histories of commemorative material as well as reveal the transit of authority over them, from birth to disfiguration.

Together, the four papers on this panel offer a rare transhistorical assessment of the ways western explorers and exploration history have been appropriated, manipulated, embraced, criticized and attacked over the past 250 years.