Welcome

The Melville Society is dedicated to the study and appreciation of the nineteenth-century American author Herman Melville, writer of Typee, Moby-Dick, and Billy Budd, such short stories as “Bartleby” and “Benito Cereno,” and several volumes of poetry, including Battle-Pieces and the epic Clarel.

We publish the award-winning journal Leviathan and meet twice a year for fellowship and scholarly discourse at the annual conferences of the Modern Language Association and the American Literature Association.  We also sponsor International Conferences and tours every other year.

Membership and Donations

Membership in The Melville Society is open to all. For information about joining The Melville Society click here. If you want to make a special payment or if you are interested in donating to any of the various projects, endowments, and programs sponsored by The Melville Society, click here.

MLA 2015 Melville Panels

Vancouver, BC
8-11 January 2015

Melville and Comparative Racialization

Building on scholarship that has examined Melville's treatments of African Americans, Pacific islanders, Native Americans, Persians, and other racialized subjects, this panel will focus on the implicit and explicit comparisons that Melville drew between racial groups. What forms the basis for cross-racial analogies, distinctions, hybridizations, and comparisons, and how do these change our understanding of Melville's thinking about race? Are Melville's cross-racial comparisons affected by other social conditions such as colonialism, class, gender, sexuality, and disability?

“After the Eruption”: Melville and the Cultural
Memory of the American Civil War

In response to the 2015 MLA Presidential Theme, “Negotiating Sites of Memory,” the Melville Society presents a special session, “‘After the Eruption’: Melville and the Cultural Memory of the American Civil War.”

“Hawthorne in the Berkshires”

Nathaniel Hawthorne Society Summer Meeting
June 12-15, 2014
North Adams, Massachusetts

Hosted by Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

Reconstruction of Hawthorne's "Little Red Farmhouse" at Tanglewood

In 1850 Hawthorne moved his family to Lenox, where for almost two years he produced a range of literary work: The House of the Seven Gables and a new edition of Twice-ToldTales,as well as The Snow Image and Other Twice-told Tales, A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, and other works for children. Related to this productivity were his new friendships with Herman Melville in nearby Pittsfield and Catharine Sedgwick, Grace Greenwood, and other women who were part of that “d----d mob of scribbling women.” The scenic region, which had become a summer playground for the very rich, also brought him into contact with Shakers, artists, mill owners and workers, and church-goers of all persuasions—contradictory personalities and forces which also impacted his later works. In Lenox, the Hawthornes learned of Margaret Fuller’s death with its accompanying questions about a woman’s professional role and domestic arrangements. In a nutshell, there were dizzying contradictions in Hawthorne’s observations and associations while he was in Lenox.

Melville's "Piazza" below his study at his farmhouse in Pittsfield

Conference venue will be the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, with affordable dormitory housing available in single or shared rooms, the Holiday Inn in walkable downtown North Adams, and various local B&Bs. Possible planned excursions for Saturday afternoon include Arrowhead and the Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield, Hancock Shaker Village, an iron kiln such as inspired Ethan Brand, or a former mill site. Organizers can facilitate individual plans for a Sunday hike on Mount Greylock or Monument Mountain, with a stop at the reconstructed “The Little Red House” in Lenox, depending on interest. Other sites within short walking distance of MCLA include historic Eclipse Mill with its artist galleries, Natural Bridge and Hudson Falls, which inspired a description in Hawthorne’s American Notebooks during a visit in 1838, and the acclaimed Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA). The downtown architecture is dominated by “the seven steeples of North Adams,” a range of monumental 19th-century churches and a synagogue. North Adams is easily accessible by car, or travelers may fly into Albany, Boston, or NYC airports and travel by train or bus to Pittsfield, where a short shuttle service is available to North Adams. All inquiries about the conference site and travel particulars should be addressed to Rosemary Fisk at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Registration and housing costs will be announced by early fall 2013. Graduate students who present papers will be subject to a housing rebate, depending on dormitory availability.

You can visit the "Hawthorne in the Berkshires" Facebook page and the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society website for more information.

2014 Emily Dickinson Institute

On Friday, August 8th, 2014, the EDIS "Dickinson Institute" will be held in Amherst, Massachusetts. The topic is "Emily Dickinson and New England Writers." Members will meet at the Institute with this group to discuss their work in detail. The Institute will also involve a plenary speaker and a gathering of all Institute members at its close to reflect on their work and the larger themes of the conference. The Institute is scheduled for the first day of the Emily Dickinson Annual Meeting, which all participants are welcome to attend.

For more information visit the Emily Dickinson International Society website.

American Literature Association Conference

Two Panels Sponsored by the Melville Society
May 22-25, 2014
Washington, D.C.

Herman Melville’s Poetic (Dis)continuities

Herman Melville’s poetry and poetic career can be characterized as distinctly lacking in continuity. Not only does his turn to poetry signal a dramatic shift in his life’s work, his poems and collections typically defy patterns of continuum—poems embedded into prose pieces, collections strikingly departing from each other thematically and stylistically, publication ambitions and relationships to readers inconsistent and nebulous. Within individual poems, too, we witness Melville’s stylistic and philosophical fissions, abrasions, and reversals. Part of Melville’s inability to attract a wider readership and to fully enter into the canon of American poets is undoubtedly his work’s resistance to interpretive frameworks that foreground narratives of artistic evolution, development, and continuity.

This panel seeks to address the continuous and discontinuous elements of Melville’s poetry and of his career as a poet. What are the threads of repetition, similarity, and consistency that persist in his poetry and in his authorial practices? What are the most revealing and illustrative of his discontinuities? How might his discontinuities ironically help us generate useful narratives of his poetic career?

Melville and the Politics of Print

Presentations on Melville’s work as it relates to book history or the history of periodicals.  Issues to be addressed might include: copyright, serialization, illustrations, editing Melville, Melville in/and libraries, adaptations of Melville’s work to non-print media such as film or radio, digital Melville, Melville in the archive, the Melville revival, literary celebrity.   How can a focus on practices of writing, printing, and reading from the nineteenth century to the present generate new insights into Melville’s work?

Mystic Seaport's 35th Annual Symposium
"MUSIC OF THE SEA"

Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut
June 13 & 14, 2014

Sponsored by Mystic Seaport Museum, the University of Connecticut at Avery Point,
and The United States Coast Guard Academy

Presentations on literature, history, folklore, ethnomusicology, or other appropriate disciplines that address any aspect of music or verse of the sea or inland waters from the Age of Sail through the present day. The two-day symposium is part of a three-day event whose focus celebrates the lives and work of sailors through musical performance.

The Friday, June 13, session will be held on the maritime campus of the University of Connecticut at Avery Point in Groton, Connecticut, and the Saturday session, June 14, at Mystic Seaport, in Mystic, Connecticut. All presenters are welcome to attend the Sea Music Festival at Mystic Seaport for the weekend free of charge. This is a wonderful festival with music workshops around the grounds of the museum and music everywhere!

Topics of interest in the past have included such topics and subjects as shipboard work songs, songs of maritime or other occupational trades, songs of rivers and lakes, the use of sea music in literature, including Herman Melville's works, seafaring cultures and cultural change, ethnicity and ethnic influences, cultural exchanges, ballad and broadside traditions, technology, regional interests, and popular culture.

If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, Executive Secretary of The Melville Society, at <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. >.

 Ahab's Dream - Art Exhibit
Peter Martin - Artist
New Bedford Whaling Museum
January - June, 2014

Peter Martin with Ahab's Dream
click to enlarge

Peter Martin, whose art work is being added to the New Bedford Whaling Museum archive this year, will be exhibiting a show of Moby-Dick paper cuts at the Moby-Dick Marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum from January to June, 2014. Concerning this exhibit of large scale paper and fiber cuttings inspired by Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Peter shares that he feels that it best represents his journey as an artist. See our Event Calendar for more details.

Melville the Man
click to enlarge

New Moby-Dick Opera

by Eugeniusz Knapik

Polish National Opera - Teatr Wielki

Eugeniusz Knapik is working on a new Moby-Dick opera whose debut is expected to be one of the most important operatic events in Poland. Indeed, in the words of Melville scholar, Paweł Jędrzejko, its opening will likely prove to be one of the major opera events in not only Poland, but all of Europe.

The links below should be helpful to anyone interested in following the opera as it makes its way to the Polish National Opera stage in Warsaw, Poland.

Eugeniusz Knapik on Wikipedia

Teatr Wielki (Grand Theatre) - Polish National Opera

Eugeniusz Knapik Biography - Katowice Academy of Music

Eugeniusz Knapik, born in Ruda Śląska in 1951, is a pianist, classical composer and university teacher. He

Tim Marr reading from Clarel at Mar Saba

Gordon Poole reading "In a Bye-Canal," a poem from the "Fruit of Travel Long Ago" section of  Timoleon

Neapolitan Folk Songs and Dances at the Eighth International Melville Conference, Rome, June 2011.

Featured Photo Albums - MLA Seattle 2012 - January 5-8