English 243.301: Melville and the World T/Th, 1:30-3:00 Fisher-Bennett 141

Adam Lewis [email protected] Office: McNeil Center 215 Office Hours: T/Th, 3:00-4:00, or by appointment (3355 Woodland Walk, across Walnut from FBH)

COURSE DESCRIPTION Herman Melville traveled widely throughout the world, from the Pacific Islands and the Mediterranean to the streets of New York City and London. How does Melville’s writing critically and creatively map the world of the nineteenth century? In this seminar we will read a selection of Melville’s novels, including Moby-Dick, as well as some short fiction and poetry, with an eye toward the geographical, cultural, and political contexts in which he wrote them. In this course we will consider how Melville’s writing takes up and engages popular and mass culture, American expansion and war, and conflicts over race and slavery, as well as issues of religion, sexuality, and labor.

REQUIRED TEXTS Books available at Penn Book Center. Purchase these editions so we’re all on the same page. Herman Melville, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (Penguin, 1996) HM, Moby-Dick (Norton Critical Edition, 2002) HM, Billy Budd and Other Stories (Penguin, 1986) HM, Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (Penguin, 2008) HM, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (Oxford, 1999)

*Additional required and supplemental readings, websites, and other media will be available through the Canvas course site. Required readings on Canvas marked below by [C]

ASSIGMENTS & GRADING Attendance & Participation (30%) – Class meetings will be seminar-style and therefore require everyone’s active presence. This means not only bringing yourself and ideas to class, but also the assigned book(s) and your reading journals. Also, in groups of 2-3, students will bring a set of questions, select passages, and/or ideas from secondary readings to begin and guide class discussions. Each student will be responsible for leading 2 course discussions with a classmate or two, once before and once after spring break. Each presentation will count toward 5% of your participation grade 2

*An important part of participation includes how you engage with your classmates when it is not your turn to lead discussion. Help each other out! Participation during guest lectures and the visit to the Van Pelt special collections is also included in attendance and participation. -Journal (20%) & Wiki (15%) – During the course you are required to keep a reading journal. This is meant to be way to engage with the readings in more fluid and less formal way than an analytic essay. In the 19th century, many readers kept commonplace books, journals where they would copy out passages of books they enjoyed or wanted to remember. Today we might think of this as reposting on a blog or other form of social media. Take this approach for the reading journal, copying out passages from the reading you found particularly compelling or confusing along with your initial thoughts, reactions, or comments. You should also include things you encounter outside of this class—perhaps something from other classes, popular culture, and media that you think resonates with or connects to class, however tangentially. You will need to do at least two entries per week. Reading journals can be done as one word document added to over the course, a blog, even written out by hand—as long as I can check it periodically throughout the semester. Through the course’s Canvas site, you’ll also be responsible for collaboratively building a MelvilleWiki. As you do the readings, make sure to note keywords, references, and allusions (historical, biblical, classical, geographical, thematic, etc.). Each week you will be responsible for creating or updating entries on the wiki that provide background and explanation of two allusions or references. For example, you might note in chapter 27 of Moby-Dick that the narrator describes the ship’s crew as “An Anacharsis Clootz deputation,” and then track down some information about this reference (beyond the footnote) and post it on the wiki. Perhaps later someone else happens to notice the same name appear in Billy Budd. They could add to the entry with some explanation of its context in that story. The point of the wiki is to collectively document the dense layers of allusion in Melville’s work and to track how certain references recur throughout his writing. -Final Project (35%) – A 10-15 page research paper exploring the cultural influences in Melville’s writing or Melville’s place in contemporary popular culture. You can build on supplementary material from the 19th century that we look at in class or in Van Pelt special collections, film and other adaptations of Melville’s work, or discuss his influence on later writers and artists. More on this soon. The final research project will include a short proposal and informal presentation of your research.

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SCHEDULE OF READINGS -- 1.16 – Introductions; “How Wellingborough Redburn’s Taste for the Sea Was Born and Bred in Him” (from Redburn); Laurie Robertson-Lorant, “A Traveling Life” [C] -- 1.21 – Typee, 1-75 (introduction is optional) 1.23 – Typee, 76-130 -- 1.28 – Typee, 131-225 [Guest lecture by Mairin Odle] 1.30 – Typee, 226-271; literary reviews of Typee (in Moby-Dick Contexts, 465-482); Christopher N. Phillips, “Mapping Imagination and Experience in Melville’s Pacific Novels” [C] -- 2.4 – “Hawthorne and His Mosses;” J. N. Reynolds, “Mocha Dick: Or the White Whale” and Owen Chase, “The Essex Wrecked by a Whale” (in M-D Contexts); Moby-Dick, 7-22 2.6 – Moby-Dick, 23-79 -- 2.11 – Moby-Dick, 80-170 2.13 – Moby-Dick, 170-223 -- 2.18 – Moby-Dick, 223-313 2.20 – Moby-Dick, 313-363 -- 2.25 – Moby-Dick, 363-427 2.27 – Michael Rogin, “Moby-Dick and the American 1848” [C] -- 3.4 – “Bartleby, the Scrivener;” “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” (in BB); Karl Marx, from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 3.6 – *Visit to the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts -- 4

SPRING BREAK -- 3.18 – Israel Potter, 1-95; Trumbull, Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter [C] 3.20 – Israel Potter, 96-148; Authentic Anecdote of “Old Zack” [C] [Guest lecture by John Garcia] -- 3.25 – Israel Potter, 149-223; from Ann Fabian, The Unvarnished Truth [C] 3.27 – Benito Cereno, 161-193; look at October 1855 issue of Putnam’s Monthly Magazine in American Periodicals Database (available through Penn library) -- 4.1 – Benito Cereno, 193-228; excerpts from The Pirates Own Book (1837) [C] *1-page prospectus for final paper due in class 4.3 – Benito Cereno, 228-258 -- 4.8 – The Confidence-Man, 1-99; excerpts from Crockett Almanac (1839)[C] 4.10 – The Confidence-Man, 99-171 -- 4.15 – The Confidence-Man, 172-267; excerpts from William Wells Brown, Clotel [C] 4.17 – The Confidence-Man, 268-336 -- 4.22 – Billy Budd, 289-337 4.24 – Billy Budd, 337-385 -- 4.29 – Conclusions and informal discussion of research projects

Final Paper Due May 9th!