The Eaton Portrait
By permission of Houghton Library, Harvard University: 61Z-4
click for larger image
Leviathan
Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies appears three times a year in March, June, and October. We welcome articles, notes, reviews, and creative writing on the life, works, and influence of novelist and poet Herman Melville (1819-1891). Click here for more information.
Melville Electronic Library
The Melville Electronic Library is an online resource for Melville texts. Housed on a Hofstra University server, MEL is being developed and maintained by a group of Melville scholars and digital specialists.
Johns Hopkins University Press
To join the Melvillle Society and subscribe to Leviathan, visit Leviathan's Johns Hopkins University Press journal site by clicking here.
Melville Society Cultural Project
The New Bedford Whaling Museum in collaboration with The Melville Society is the established home of the Melville Society Cultural Project and Melville Society Archive. The Melville Society Archive is housed at the New Bedford Whaling Museum's Research Library, where significant works from this collection are also on display. The Melville Society Cultural Project also sponsors a book donation program and presents exciting annual events including the Moby-Dick Marathon and a Birthday Lecture.
2017 MLA Annual Convention
Philadelphia from 5 to 8 January 2017
Thursday, 5 January 3:30–4:45 p.m., 106B, Pennsylvania Convention Center
Melville's Taxonomies
(abstract download link below)
The panel will look into how Melville's works from Mardi on treat matter, fashioning terrestrial landscapes, oceanic milieus and vegetal life into agencies that revise what counts as a person. Topics: Melville and natural histories, persons and things, biological politics, taxonomies of the human, organic and the inorganic, extinction, vegetal and animal life.
Presiding: Branka Arsic, Columbia Univ.
1. "Moby Dick and The Ecological Thought," Paul B. Downes, Univ. of Toronto
2. "Insect Arrangement: Melville’s Untimely Taxonomies," Monique Allewaert, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
3. "Organizing Melville," Maurice S. Lee, Boston Univ.
Respondent: Elisa Tamarkin, Univ. of California, Berkeley
Friday, 6 January 1:45–3:00 p.m., 106B, Pennsylvania Convention Center
Melville and Black Lives Matter
(abstract download link below)
This panel addresses how Melville’s art both speaks to racial crises and mediates philosophical dilemmas, political unrest, concepts of history etc. Black writers (Ralph Ellison, C.L.R. James, Toni Morrison, George Lamming, David Bradley, and more) turned to Melville’s literary forms and provocative content to engage historical and political transformation in the Americas. What is it in Melville’s aporias, assemblages, and abstractions that we can continue to excavate for it’s relevance to social conflict—especially conflict where racial/ethnic/queer difference is performed, expressed, and/or represented?
Presiding: Christopher Freeburg, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana
1. "C. L. R. James and Herman Melville: Moby-Dick as an Antitotalitarian Novel," Gary Vaughn Rasberry, Stanford Univ.
2. "Melville, Mutuality, and the Matter of Black Lives," Christine Ann Wooley, St. Mary's Coll., MD
3. "'Sinister Eye': The Shrouded Women of Melville’s Benito Cereno," Brenna Casey, Duke Univ.
Respondent: Ivy Wilson, Northwestern Univ.
Donations are Welcome!
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Calendar
Upcoming Events
| 19 May 2018 Exhibit: Frank Stella Unbound - Literature and Printmaking |
| 20 May 2018 New Book: The Whale and His Captors |
| 27 May 2018 New Book: Herman Melville and the Politics of the Inhuman |
| 30 May 2018 Exhibit: Martin Machado: Fluid State |
| 15 Jun 2018 Play: Israel Potter - "Almost True and Truly Remarkable Adventures of Israel Potter" |
| 28 Jun 2018 Dance - Leviathan - James Wilton Dance |
| 14 Jul 2018 Exhibit: Grand Panorama - NBWM |
| 01 Aug 2018 Melville's Birthday |
| 03 Aug 2018 Melville Hands On Tour |
| 09 Aug 2018 Play: Moby-Dick |
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Fellowships and Scholarships
Melville Society Archive
Walter E. Bezanson Fellowship
The Melville Society, under the auspices of the Melville Society Cultural Project in New Bedford, offers an annual fellowship to help a scholar undertake research on Herman Melville at the Society’s Archive in the Research Library of the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Click here for more information and application details.
New York Public Library
Short-term Research Fellowships
Graduate students or other affiliated academics whose work would benefit from visiting the Manuscripts and Archives Division to view collections such as the Gansevoort-Lansing collection, and Duyckinck family papers are encouraged to apply.
Click here for more information and application details.
Links
Woodlawn Cemetary
Woodlawn Cemetary - final resting place of Herman, his wife, Elizabeth, and other family members. Click here to view photos of the gravesites.
125th Anniversary Celebration
A celebration of Melville's life at Woodlawn Cemetary on the 125th anniversary of his passing.
Lansingburgh Historical Society
Melville lived for nine years in this Lansingburgh house. It was here that he wrote Typee and Omoo.
Berkshire Historical Society
Melville's Arrowhead home and farm in Pittsfield, MA where he wrote Moby-Dick and lived for most of the 1850s.