Melville Society Cultural Project
The Melville Society Cultural Project oversees the Melville Society’s Archive and contributes to a wide variety of programming at the New Bedford Whaling Museum and elsewhere.
About the Melville Society Cultural Project
Established in 1998, with a donation from Elizabeth Schultz, the Melville Society Cultural Project contributes to a wide variety of programming at the Society’s affiliate, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and curates the Melville Archive, which is a growing collection of Melville texts, sources, secondary criticism, adaptive materials, and Melville-related artworks. The Archive also includes the papers of Joyce Sparer Adler, Walter Bezanson, Harrison Hayford, Jay Leyda, and others. MSCP awards our annual Walter Bezanson Fellowship that includes a stipend and housing for research in New Bedford and the Melville Archive. The MSCP also conducts our Book Donation Program that has so far sent major collections of texts by and about Melville to twelve institutions in ten countries on four continents.
Mission Statement
The Melville Society Cultural Project is a research-oriented group of scholars within the Melville Society dedicated to fostering a critical understanding of Herman Melville’s writings, life, and times. The Project, in affiliation with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, collects scholarly and artistic texts related to Melville, oversees the Melville Society’s Archive, and contributes to a wide variety of programming at the Whaling Museum and elsewhere. As teachers and scholars, we seek to promote public awareness of and appreciation for Melville and his writings and assist other scholars and teachers, as well as educational and cultural institutions, in becoming well-informed about the man and his work. In these roles, we take seriously the importance of building partnerships across communities to ensure that the humanities survive and thrive outside the academy.
Artwork by Matt Kish
The Melville Society Cultural Project currently sponsors the following:
The Melville Society Archive
The Melville Society Archive contains primary and secondary materials from the collections of Jill Barnum, Walter Bezanson, Gail Coffler, Harrison Hayford, Jay Leyda, Robert D. Madison, William Reese, Merton M. Sealts, Jr., and Thomas Wendel, and is available to visitors interested in research on Melville's work and life, during regular Library hours.
About the Archive
MSCP at the New Bedford Whaling Museum
The Moby-Dick Marathon
All are invited to assist in reading the entire novel, which occurs on the first non-holiday weekend after the New Year. Special offerings of "The Chapel" and "The Sermon" chapters are held in the Seamen's Bethel Church (the site featured in Moby-Dick).
The Moby-Dick Marathon lecture is delivered each year on the evening preceding the Moby-Dick Marathon.
Learn more
Melville Summer Institute
The Summer institutes take up diverse topics for various groups – including high school teachers and graduate students.
