Moby-Dick and 19th Century America

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

"I but put that brow before you," Herman Melville wrote in his 1851 novel, Moby-Dick, "read it if you can." Melville was describing the brow of the mighty sperm whale, but his words apply equally to his mighty book. In this seminar, we can and will read Moby-Dick, Melville's maddening masterpiece. We will read Moby-Dick as an invitation into its multiple historical contexts in the 19th-century American and wider worlds. We will explore the world of whaling and the age of sail, the ecological and imaginary expanses of the 19th-century ocean, the intellectual and literary culture of the "American Renaissance," and a nation on a collision course with itself over slavery and empire.