Throughout the polar world, aesthetics play a key role in legal environmental safeguards, but as our world and its climate rapidly change, the force of these provisions is quickly disappearing. Analyzing depictions of icebergs, this talk theorizes a new concept—the “melting sublime”— to help those wielding environmental law fight back against environmental threats at the poles.

Image: Frederic Edwin Church, The Icebergs (1861/63) Oil on Canvas, 5′ 4″ x 9′ 4″, Dallas Museum of Art