Events

Call for Papers: Melville and Religious Experience
The Melville Society Panel
American Literature Association, San Francisco
May 27-30, 2010

Few writers have engaged more subtly or more broadly with the subject of religious experience than Melville. On both a cognitive and an affective level, Melville’s work is in dialogue with a staggering range of religious traditions. This panel invites papers on the topic of Melville’s representations of religious experience from throughout his career, from Typee to his late poetry and Billy Budd. How does Melville represent belief, unbelief, and tensions and accommodations between the two? How do we understand Melville’s treatment of Judaism, Christianity (in its Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox varieties), Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and/or the indigenous faiths of the South Pacific? Within the context of American Protestant religious culture, what roles do Calvinism, Arminianism, Unitarianism, Methodism, or the faiths of religious communities like the Quakers, the Dunkers, the Mormons, the Adventists, or the Shakers play in Melville’s art? How does Melville negotiate the relationship between the universal and the particular in his treatment of religious experience? To what degree is Melville’s representation of religious experience fluid over the course of his career? To what degree does his religious thought remain consistent? Send 300-500 word abstracts to Brian Yothers at byothers_at_utep.edu by January 5, 2010. Please include abstracts in the body of the email and as an attachment.

Melville's Marginalia featured on the History Channel

Melville's Marginalia Online was consulted in the production of "MonsterQuest: The Real Moby Dick," which aired Wednesday, August 26, 2009, on the History Channel. The program includes discussions of Melville's marginalia in his copy of Thomas Beale's The Natural History of the Sperm Whale and his use of Owen Chase's Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex (Sealts Nos. 52 and 134).

Melville's Marginalia Online to go Virtual

Thanks to the generosity and cooperation of institutions and collectors—including Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center, the Rosenbach Museum and Library, and Mr. William Reese, of the William Reese Company—Melville's Marginalia Online is moving forward with its plans for a digital photographic archive. Scanning of copies owned by Melville has begun at the Digital Library of Villanova University's Falvey Memorial Library, and the marginalia project is currently developing a new interface that will combine its editorial and comment features with digital photographs of marked and annotated pages in Melville's books. Following the launch of the "Online Catalog" in November 2008, this transformation of the site is scheduled to begin in spring 2009. Additional institutions that have contributed essential advice and/or services are Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the University of Virginia Library's Special Collections Division, the New York Public Library's Manuscripts and Archives Division, and Harvard University's Houghton Library.

New Melville Web Site

Herman Melville Poet has launched at hermanmelvillepoet.org and includes "introductory overviews, commentary, bibliographies, image galleries, and photo albums related to the poetry, verse, and prose-and-verse writings of Herman Melville." Created and maintained by Robert Sandberg, the site also houses the Perpetual Melville Log, enabling users to consult specific days of the year for information on important events and episodes from the lifetime and posthumous fame of Herman Melville.

Special Issue of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies devoted to Melville's Reading and Marginalia

The following scholarship appeared in the October 2008 issue of Leviathan (10.3), including new source attributions and previously unedited marginalia. To join the Melville Society and subscribe to Leviathan, visit the society's web page.

Articles

1. "Melville's Notes from Thomas Roscoe's The German Novelists," Scott Norsworthy, Cambridge, MN

2. "One's Own Faith: Melville's Reading of The New Testament and Psalms," Brian Yothers, University of Texas at El Paso

Notes

3. "Melville's Mosses Review and the Proclamation of Hawthorne as America's Literary Messiah," Jonathan A. Cook, Notre Dame Academy and Lord Fairfax Community College

4. "Congreve and Akenside: Two Poetic Allusions in Melville's 'Fragments from a Writing Desk,'" Peter Norberg, Saint Joseph's University

Melville's Hand