WEEK 1: READING MOBY-DICK
Virtual Meetings on Zoom (June 23-28)
Sunday June 23 7 pm (60 minutes on Zoom)
Welcome participants on Zoom (10)
Introductions from Co-Directors, Lead Faculty (10)
Monkey Rope Breakouts (10)
Introduction to Hypothes.is and Digital Resources (25)
Wrap-Up (5)
Daily Schedule
Morning 9:45-10:00 Introduction, Announcements
10:00-10:45 Full Group Discussion
10:45-11:00 Break
11:00-11:45 Small Group Discussion
11:45-12:00 Full Group Wrap-Up
Lunch 12:00-1:00
Afternoon 1:00-1:45 Full Group Discussion
1:45-2:00 Break
2:00-2:45 Small Group Discussion
2:45-3:00 Full Group Wrap-Up
3:00-3:45 Pedagogy Session
Monday June 24 “Blindly Plunging Like Fate into the Lone Atlantic”
Morning Land chapters (Front Matter, 1-23)
Possible Topics: “The Counterpane” (Ishmael and Queequeg), “The Sermon” (New Bedford and Religion), “The Lee Shore” (Fate and Free Will; Land and Sea)
Afternoon Chapters 24-32
Topics: “Knights and Squires” (Shipboard Hierarchy), “Queen Mab” (Masculinity and Gender), “Cetology” (Science and Classification
Secondary Readings:
1. Wyn Kelley, “Melville’s Life,” from Herman Melville: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2008), 3-11, a very brief biography of Melville.
2. Robert Milder, “Herman Melville, 1819-1891: A Brief Biography,” in A Historical Guide to Herman Melville. Ed. Giles Gunn (Oxford, 2005), 17-58.
3. Andrew Delbanco, “Extracts, Preface, and Introduction,” Melville: His World and His Work (Knopf 2005), xiii-16.
Other Supplemental Resources
1. Explanatory Notes from the 1952 Hendricks House Edition of Moby-Dick by Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P. Vincent
2. Harrison Hayford, “Unnecessary Duplicates: A Key to the Writing of Moby-Dick,” in New Perspectives on Melville. Ed. Faith Pullen. Edinburgh, 1978, 128-161.
3. Seaman’s Bethel, New Bedford Whaling, National Park Service
Tuesday June 25 Meaning and Making
Morning Chapters 33-42
Topics: “The Mast-Head” (What Meaning Means), “The Quarter-Deck” (What the Whale Means to Ahab), “The Whiteness of the Whale” (What the Whale Means to Ishmael)
Afternoon Chapters 43-57
Topics: “The Chart” (Making Maps), “The Town-Ho’s Story” (Making Stories), “Monstrous Pictures of Whales” (Making Art)
Supplementary Reading:
1. Melville’s Letters to Hawthorne and others while writing Moby-Dick (in NCE 559-76)
2. Melville’s “Hawthorne and His Mosses” (also in NCE 544-558)
3. “Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World,” Spectacle in Motion, New Bedford Whaling Museum, a 34-minute documentary that moves through the 1848 panorama of a whaling voyage by Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington: the longest painting in the world.
Wednesday June 26 Parts and Wholes
Morning Chapters 58-72
Topics: “The Line” (Parts of the Process), “Stubb Kills a Whale” (Breaking Down the Process), “The Monkey-Rope” (Making Whole)
Afternoon Chapters 73-86
Topics: “Contrasted View” (Whale’s Heads), “The Tail” (Tails and Tales)
Secondary Reading:
1. Ben Schmidt, “American Whaling Mapped” (three-minute visualization of 19-century whaling voyages from logbooks collected in the 19th century by Lt. Matthew Maury)
2. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, “Ships, Whaling, and the Sea,” in A Companion to Herman Melville. Ed. Wyn Kelley (Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 83-97.
3. Mystic Seaport Museum’s 38th Voyage, epic journey of their whaling ship, the Charles W. Morgan, in 2014.
4. A Moby-Dick Tour Through the New Bedford Whaling Museum, guided by Institute Faculty members (7 minutes)
Thursday June 27 Humans and Beyond
Morning Chapters 87-96
Topics: “The Grand Armada” (A Nation of Whales), “Fast Fish and Loose Fish” (Humans and Nations), “The Castaway” (Pip’s God), “A Squeeze” (Men and Angels),
Afternoon Chapters 97-117
Topics: “A Bower” (Men in Whales), “Queequeg in His Coffin” (Theory of the Heavens and the Earth), “The Dying Whale” (Whales and Their Gods)
Friday June 28 Ending
Morning Chapters 118-135
Topics: “The Candles” (It’s Getting Weird), “The Symphony” (It’s Getting Sad), “The Chase” (It’s Getting Exciting)
Afternoon “Epilogue”—Where Have We Gotten? Surviving Moby-Dick
Looking Ahead: Brainstorm Projects and Digital Resources
WEEK 2: THE WORLD OF WHALING
Onsite Meetings in New Bedford (July 7-14)
Lead Faculty (Other than Co-Directors) and Guest Lecturers
Jennifer Baker July 10-11 (lead faculty)
Bob Wallace July 11-13 (lead faculty)
Joe Roman July 10 (guest lecturer)
Lenora Warren July 11 (guest lecturer)
Matt Kish July 12 (guest lecturer)
Marina Wells July 8 (NBWM guest lecturer)
Naomi Slipp July 12 (NBWM guest lecturer)
General Daily Schedule (Except for Field Trips) for Both Weeks
Morning 9:00-9:30 Introduction, Announcements.
9:30-10:30 Lecture, Discussion
10:30-12:00 Workshops and Visits
Lunch 12:00-1:30 Participant Confabulations
Afternoon 1:30-2:45 Workshop, Lecture, Demonstration
3:00-5:00 Excursions and Work Time
Sunday July 7
Welcome participants at a seafood dinner in New Bedford. Introductions.
Monday July 8 Melville and New Bedford
Morning Faculty Panel: Melville Biography & Composition of Moby-Dick
Melville Trail Walk
Afternoon Workshop: Introduction to the Archive
NBWM Guest Lecture: Whaling Logs, Nautical Archives, and the Material Culture of Whaling (Marina Wells)
Group Work: Exploring the Museum.
Supplementary Reading:
1. Walter E. Bezanson, “Uncommon Common Sailor,” in Melville’s Evermoving Dawn: Centennial Essays. Eds. John Bryant and Robert Milder (Kent University Press, 1997): 31-57, which accounts for the ways that Melville translated his experiences as a sailor into literary capital for Moby-Dick and the five books that preceded it.
2. Wilson Heflin, Herman Melville’s Whaling Years (Vanderbilt, 2004), Eds Thomas Heffernan and Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, Chapters 1, 6. 8, and 18.
Tuesday July 9 Field Trip: Mystic Seaport Museum
Presentations on Material Culture of Whaling, Whaleships, and Life at Sea
Program:
7:30 Depart for Mystic Seaport Museum
9:00 Mary K Bercaw Edwards greets participants at the Visitor Reception Center
(South Entrance of the Museum)
9:15 Mary K’s Moby-Dick tour of the 1841 Whaleship Charles W. Morgan
10:15 Help set sails aboard the Charles W. Morgan
10:45 Whaleboat demonstration
11:30 Whaleboat rowing for participants
12:30 Lunch on your own with possible performance of “Moby-Dick in Minutes”
2:00 Whaling Songs, Work Songs, and Ballads by Ethnomusicologist Craig Edwards
3:00 Depart Mystic Seaport Museum
Supplementary Reading:
1. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards and Wyn Kelley, “Melville and the Spoken Word,” in Moby-Dick (Norton Critical, 3rd edition, 2018), 686-692.
Wednesday July 10 Cetology and Environment
Morning Excursion: Seafood Processing Plant
Faculty Lecture: Cetology, Climate Change, and Conservation (Jennifer Baker)
Afternoon Guest Lecture: Whale Ecologies (Joe Roman)
Excursion to New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center
Secondary Reading:
1. Joe Roman, selections from Eat, Poop. Die: How Animals Make Our World (2023), and Whale (2006)
2. Jennifer Baker, “Anatomy,” In A New Companion to Herman Melville. Ed. Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge. Wiley, 2021.
3. Philip Armstrong, “What Animals Mean, in Moby-Dick, For Example,” Textual Practice 19:1 (2005): 93-111.
Thursday July 11 Gender, Sexuality, and Race
Morning Faculty Lecture: Gender in Moby-Dick (Jennifer Baker)
Artifact Analysis in Museum Collections/Exhibitions
Afternoon Guest Lecture: Race at Sea (Lenora Warren)
Melville and Frederick Douglass: Visit to Nathan & Polly Johnson House
Secondary Reading:
1. Rita Bode, “Suckled by the Sea,” Melville and Women, Eds. Elizabeth Schultz and Haskell Springer (Kent State Press, 2006), 181-198.
2. Ellen Weinauer, “Melville and Masculinity,” In A New Companion to Herman Melville. Ed. Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge. Wiley, 2022.
3. Robert K. Wallace, “In the Whaling City“ from Melville and Douglass: Anchored Together in a Neighborly Style (Spinner Publications, 2005), 15-22, which traces the circulations of Herman Melville and Frederick Douglass as they were in New Bedford at the same time.
4. Lenora Warren, “Melville’s Spectral Mutinies.” In A New Companion to Herman Melville. Ed. Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge. Wiley, 2022.
5. Christopher Freeburg, “Knowing the Bottomless Deep,” from Melville and the Idea of Blackness. Cambridge, 2012, pp. 20-60.
6. James Noel, “Diversity, Reading Publics, and the Community College,” In A New Companion to Herman Melville. Ed. Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge. Wiley, 2022.
7. Michael Sawyer, “The Pequod as Middle Passage: Melville’s Meditation on the ‘Long’ Shipwreck,” In A New Companion to Herman Melville. Ed. Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge. Wiley, 2022.
Evening Film Showing: Moby Dick (Huston, 1956) with short introduction to Moby-Dick
in/and popular culture (Tim Marr); open to families & public.
Secondary Reading:
1. Jaime Campomar, “Melville in Film Adaptation: The Lives and Deaths of Pip.” In A New Companion to Herman Melville. Ed. Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge. Wiley, 2022.
2. John Bryant, “Rewriting Moby-Dick: Politics, Textual Identity, and the Revision Narrative,” PMLA (October, 2010): 1043-1060.
3. David Peloquin, “John Huston’s 1956 Film Moby Dick: A 60th Anniversary,” Leviathan 19:2 (June 2017): 111-4.
Friday July 12 Art of the Whale
Morning NBWM Guest Lecture: Global Scrimshaw Exhibition (Naomi Slipp)
Faculty Lecture: Melville, Art, and the Schultz Collection (Bob Wallace)
Encounters with Moby-Dick Art at Museum
Afternoon Guest Lecture: Matt Kish
Secondary Reading:
1. Matt Kish, Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page (Tin House Books, 2011) Artist Matt Kish will discuss his remarkable enterprise of creating an original piece of art every day for each of the 552 pages of Moby-Dick, and his subsequent projects of illustrating the whales, crew members, and extracts from Moby-Dick.
2. Matt Kish, “Art and Illustration,” In A New Companion to Herman Melville. Ed. Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge. Wiley, 2022.
3. Maria Giovanna Campobasso, “Matt Kish’s ‘Every Page of Moby-Dick, Illustrated’: A Multimodal Approach,” Multimodal Communication, Vol 5, No 1, 2016, 31-40.
4. Selection from Elizabeth Schultz, Unpainted to the Last: Moby-Dick and Twentieth-Century Art (Kansas, 1995), 123-160, 358-361, color plates of Moby-Dick art, part 1, part 2.
5. Robert K. Wallace, “Moby-Dick and the Arts in the Early Twenty-First Century,“ in Moby-Dick (Norton Critical, 3rd edition, 2018), 692-701.
6. Jeffrey Markham, “‘Of Whales in Paint’: Melville in the High School Classroom.” In A New Companion to Herman Melville. Ed. Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge. Wiley, 2022.
7. Michael P. Dyer (then Maritime Curator, New Bedford Whaling Museum; now Curator of Maritime History, Mystic Seaport Museum), “Visualizing Melville: An Exhibition of Words, Ideas, Images, and Objects,” from 2021 Marathon (54 minutes); and Dyer, “Visualizing Melville: A Museum Exhibition Perspective.” In A New Companion to Herman Melville. Ed. Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge. Wiley, 2022.
Evening (5 pm) Friday Gam at Moby Dick Brewery
Saturday July 13 Field Trip: Whale Watch
Sunday July 14 Free Day; Optional Trip to Nantucket
WEEK THREE: TEACHING IN A DIGITAL AGE
Onsite Meetings in New Bedford (July 15-19)
Lead Faculty (Other than Co-Directors), Digital Pedagogy Coordinator, and K-12 Leader
Chris Sten July 15-17 (lead faculty)
Tony McGowan July 15-19 (lead faulty)
Erica Zimmer July 15-19 (digital pedagogy coordinator)
Michelle Fernandes July 17-19 (K-12 leader)
Monday July 15
Morning Faculty Lecture: Moby-Dick as Trauma Narrative (Christopher Sten)
Consultation with Lead Faculty and Digital Pedagogy Coordinator
Secondary Reading
1. Judith Herman, “Terror” and “Disconnection” from Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence, Basic, 2015.
2. Cindy Weinstein, “Melville’s Operatives,” The Literature of Labor and the Labors of Literature: Allegory in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. Cambridge, 1995, pp. 87-128.
Afternoon Faculty Lecture: Violence and Extinction in Moby-Dick (Tony McGowan)
Consultation with Lead Faculty and Digital Pedagogy Coordinator
Tuesday July 16 Field Trip: Arrowhead.
Tour of Arrowhead, the home in Pittsfield in the Berkshires where Melville wrote Moby-Dick
Visit to the Melville Room at the Berkshire Athenaeum, a repository of valuable Melville artifacts
Reenactment by participants of a picnic and hike that Melville took up Monument
Mountain with Nathaniel Hawthorne and others on August 5, 1850, while in the throes of writing his Whale.
Wednesday July 17 In the Classroom
Morning Faculty Lecture: Melville Projects, including A New Companion to Herman
Melville, Melville Electronic Library, and Melville’s Marginalia Online
(Wyn Kelley)
Workshop: K-12 Leader Michelle Fernandes
Workshop: Digital Pedagogy Coordinator Erica Zimmer
Afternoon Teacher Presentations
Thursday July 18 In the Classroom
Morning Teacher Presentations
Afternoon Teacher Presentations
Evening Final Dinner
Friday July 19 In the Classroom
Morning Teacher Presentations
Afternoon Faculty Panel: “How Moby-Dick can Swim on through your Classroom”
Please Note: Information on how to access the readings will be forthcoming. The syllabus is subject to change based on unforeseen circumstances, but we expect it to remain much as you see above.