Serializing MOBY-DICK

This winter 2016 semester, this space will attempt to offer regular dispatches from two new adventures in literature pedagogy from my course in  "The American Renaissance:  1830-1860."

My students and I  will be taking on two separate projects to get a little closer to the rich interdisciplinary and inter-discursive nature of 19th century American texts :

1) a "Time Travel" reading of multiple, consecutive issues of mid-century magazines featuring the work of canonical authors, as well as the many contemporaries publishing beside them in a variety of disciplines.

Each selection focuses upon a different time span and literary turning point.

• The United States Democratic Review (1830s; including early printings of several of Hawthorne's "Twice-Told Tales")  
• The Dial (1840s, including Margaret Fuller's "The Great Lawsuit")
•  Putnam's Monthly (early 1850s, including the holiday issue sequence of Melville's "Bartleby, a Tale of Wall-Street")
• Harper's New Monthly Magazine (late 1850s, including poetry and stories by Emerson, Whitman, Alice Cary, and others) 

2) a (Re?) "Serialization" of Moby-Dick.  Though a couple key chapters did make their way into the literary monthlies of the time, Melville's novel did not receive a full serialized treatment in its day.    My students will work with partners through a dialogue journal experience of the novel to coincide with the whole-class, shared reading of other texts.  I've given a suggested breakdown of ~11 chapters each week over the next 12 weeks (students having read the opening sections--Extracts, Etymologies, and Chapters 1-4, through Ishmail's first encounter with Queequeg--over the winter break between semesters), but student partnerships can set their own reading schedule.

In the past I have used this blog space rather infrequently to share or post information or share ideas and practices that were part of talks or presentations.  But because of a simultaneous project in my undergraduate Writing Pedagogy course inviting students to explore unfamiliar genres (more on that project in a later post), I've committed myself to try to make this a more regular and interactive space. 

For the next few months, then, it will attempt to offer dispatches of this experiment--itself serializing the process of re-serialization a mammoth 19th century novel for a 21st century context.

Our schedule of readings is below.  Feel free to join along and/or comment along the way!

______


LITR 569  American Renaissance 1830-1860
John Staunton
Eastern Michigan University

Preliminary Schedule of Reading/Topics/Assignments Due (Subject to change):

Week 1            M 1/11             Introductions

Melville, Moby-Dick “Etymology”/”Extracts”; Chs 1-3: “Loomings”, “The Carpet-Bag”, “The Spouter Inn”
                                               
Week 2            M 1/18             No Class, MLK Day
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 4-14 (“The Counterpane”-”Nantucket”)

Week 3            M 1/25             READINGS: Caroline Kirkland, A New Home, Who’ll Follow?
                                                Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
                                                 Critical Readings TBA
                                                Transmediation 1
                                                Image ____Student A ______
                                                Music____Student B _____
                                                Text ____Student C ________
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 15-25 (“Chowder”- ‘Postscript”)

Week 4            M 2/1               READINGS: Ralph Waldo Emerson ("Circles", "The American Scholar," and
                                                "The Writer" and/or "The Poet") Link
                                                Margaret Fuller (Woman in the 19th Century) Link to Donna Campbell's American Literature site at Washington State University

                                                Transmediation 2
                                                Image ____Student A ______
                                                Music____Student B _____
                                                Text ____Student C ________
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 26-36 (“Knights and Squires”- “The Quarter Deck * Ahab and All”)

Week 5            M 2/8               READINGS: Julia Ward Howe, The Hermaphrodite

                                                X Version of Critical Inquiry (Proposal and Abstract)
                                                Transmediation 3
                                                Image ____Student A ______
                                                Music____Student B _____
                                                Text ____Student C ________
                                               
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 37-47 (“Sunset”- “The Mat-Maker”)                                            

Week 6            M 2/15             mid -19^th century Poetic Forms 1
                                               selections from Whitman, "Song of Myself" (1855 version)
                                               Longfellow, "Evangeline," Sigourney,  & others)
                                                Critical Teaching Presentation 2
                                                (Critical Readings TBA by group)
                                                __Students 1 , 2 & 3_____
                                                 Transmediation 4
                                                Image ____Student A ______
                                                Music____Student B _____
                                                Text ____Student C ________
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 48-58 (“The First Lowering”- “Brit”)
                                                                     
Week 7            M 2/22             NO CLASS—EMU WINTER BREAK
 Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 59-69 (“Squid”- “The Funeral”)                                             
Week 8            M 2/29             Happy Leap Year!
                                                Time Travel Reading Presentations          
                                                (Primary and Critical Readings TBA by groups)
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 70-80 (“The Sphynx” – “The Nut”)
Week 9            M 3/7               READINGS: Henry David Thoreau, Walden Link and " Resistance to Civil
                                                                  Government"Link
                                               & Margaret Fuller, Summer on the Lakes Link  [google ebook]

                                                 Annotated Bibliography for Critical Inquiry
 Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 81-91 (“The Pequod Meets the Virgin”- “The Pequod Meets the Rosebud”)

 Week 10          M 3/14            READINGS:
Harriet Beecher Stowe [Excerpts]
 Link to the Re-Serialization from  The National Era version with contemporary critical commentary
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life [Excerpts] Link
                                                Critical Teaching Presentation 3
                                                (Critical Readings TBA by group)
                                                __ __Students 1 & 2__
                                                 Transmediation 5
                                                Image ____Student A ______
                                                Music____Student B _____
                                                Text ____Student C ________
 Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 92-102 (“Ambergris” - “A Bower in the Arsacides”)
Week 11          M 3/21             READINGS: 19^th Century Prose Forms (Selections from
                                                Hawthorne, Poe, Cary and others)
                                                 Critical Teaching Presentation 4
                                                (Critical Readings TBA by group)
                                                __ _Students 1 & 2_______
                                                 Transmediation 6
                                                Image ____Student A ______
                                                Music____Student B _____
                                                Text ____Student C ________
Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs.103-113 (“Measurement of a Whale’s Skeleton” – “The Forge”)

Week 12          M 3/28             Y Version Critical Inquiry (submitted for peer review in doc
                                                sharing)

Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 114- 124 (“The Gilder”- “The Needle”)

Week 13          M 4/4               mid -19^th century Poetic Forms 2 (READINGS TBA)

                                                Transmediation 7
                                                Image ____Student A ______
                                                Music____Student B _____
                                                Text ____Student C ________                                   

Melville, Moby-Dick, Chs. 125- Epilogue (“The Log and Line”- “Epilogue”)

Week 14          M 4/11             mid- 19^th century Prose Forms 2 (READINGS TBA)

                                                Transmediation 8
                                                Image ____Student A ______
                                                Music____Student B _____
                                                Text ____Student C ________
Week 15          M 4/18             Readings to be selected from LC/DJ Texts
                                                Dialogue Journal Presentations

FINALS           F 4/22              Z Version Critical Inquiry and Abstracts by 7pm
           



 

Locating Sites of Regional Literature--A Sample Engagement for Teachers and Students

Below is a sample engagement I used with SE Michigan Secondary English Teachers to help them locate and name  some of the material resources and places available to support a curriculum and inquiry into Local Literature.  They are offered here for you to borrow and adapt for your own classroom.  Please share your efforts and results in the comments.

Engagement #1:  Locating Sites of Regional Literature

Over the next week your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to investigate some of your local resources available for ‘teaching local literature in a global age.’  Between now and next class meeting  you will visit four sites—one virtual, the others a bit more substantial—to trace what sorts of texts and materials remain accessible for 21^st century readers interested in pursuing local literature.

Here’s what you need to do:

1)    Go to you school library with a copy of our list of suggested local literature.  How many does your library have?  

2)    Then, try to find physical copy of at least one of the texts (likely the one you’ve selected for your dialogue journal or literature circle readings, but it need not be).  If your school does not have a copy available, find out why.  (You may need to talk with your school librarian or media specialist or other faculty).  If your school does have a copy of the text, where is it located?  How many copies of the text are available?  What other texts are near this one?  Who else is there when you are searching for your book?  What are they doing?  If they are reading or browsing books, try to find out what they are reading (you may be direct or discreet, but don’t be creepy by stalking other patrons).  Make a note of all these things.  AND if you find a copy of the text, sit down somewhere to examine the book and to read the first page or two.  What is the most interesting, unusual, or compelling thing, passage, phrase, or word on the first page?  Whether you find a copy of the text here or not, then….

3) Go to your local PUBLIC library to find a copy of the text in #2.  Again, if your local library or branch does not have a copy of the text, find out why.  Is this a text that you can request through MeLCat?  If so, do so, if the library cannot provide a copy for you.  If the library does have a copy, then obtain a copy.  Note where the text is located within the library? What section is it in?  How many copies are available?  What other texts or materials are nearby?  As above, also take note of other patrons, especially in the section where you find your text.  AND if you find a copy of the text, sit down somewhere to examine the book and to read the first page or two.  Upon this reading and in light of your past experiences with the text and/or trying to find the text, what is the most interesting, unusual, or compelling thing, passage, phrase, or word on the first page? Then…

4)  Go to the nearest commercial bookstore in your community.  Does this store carry a copy of your text?  If not, why not?  Can you order the book for delivery there?  If so, what are the costs to you (time, money, resources) above the cost of the book? If the store does have a copy available, where is it located?  How many copies do they have and in what condition are they?   As above, notice the other patrons and their activity.  If you prefer to have your own copy of the book (rather than the library versions), purchase the text.    Again, sit down somewhere to examine the book and to read the first page or two.  NOW, what is the most interesting, unusual, or compelling thing, passage, phrase, or word on the first page?  If nothing changes with this reading, think about why that is and write about it.  

 5)    Bring your field notes and all copies of the book you have managed to secure to class.

MMLA Special Session: Seeking Local Knowledge in the Global City—A Research and Pedagogy Roundtable

Please join us and/or send us your comments and questions about the presentations below.  Our hope is to continue the conversation beyond the session and conference.  We're especially interested in hearing your own attempts to address the local/global tension in your curriculum and pedagogy.
 
Special Session Panel:  Thursday, November 13, 2014-- 4:00-5:30 Southfield 70 
Seeking Local Knowledge in the Global City—A Research and Pedagogy Roundtable

Organizer/Chair:  John A. Staunton (jstaunto@emich.edu) , Associate Professor, English Education and American Literature, Eastern Michigan University; Co-Director for Teacher Research, Eastern Michigan Writing Project

Description and Rationale:  This special session seeks to bring together presentations highlighting the “regions of pedagogical practice” which may emerge when we seek to teach local and regional literature and cultural history in 21^st-century classrooms.  In particular, the session seeks to investigate the ways in which inquiry into local histories, discourses, practices, and textual artifacts may help to build grounded sites for teaching and learning, both inside and outside traditional educational spaces.  Presentations for the session will represent a range of both pedagogical and curricular practices—ranging from the community and knowledge-building practices of 21^st century cross-cultural advocacy to the recovery of alternate, forgotten, or ‘disappeared’ histories and texts that can remap and sustain contemporary discourses of gender, race, and class in the post-industrial Midwest.  Each will explore in its way the diverse teaching/learning situations and diverse historical and literary content/contexts that will offer case studies of a ‘locally-embedded pedagogy,’ which is simultaneously engaged with larger questions of teaching and learning in a global age.   

Participants:

1)      Robin Lucy (rlucy@emich.edu), Associate Professor of African American Literature, Eastern Michigan University.

“Intentional Communities and Pedagogical Practice”
As an African Americanist, I am increasingly interested in locating moments of inter-racial and class solidarity in my scholarship and teaching.  In examining an intentional community, inter-racial housing project built at Willow Run (site of the plant responsible for constructing the B-24 bomber) during World War II -- a period of heightened racial tension and violence in Michigan cities and industrial workplaces -- I will explore the implications of the history of this site for both my pedagogy and theory of African American writing of the era. 

2)      Charles Cunningham (ccunnin2@emich.edu), Associate Professor of English. 

“Teaching Literature in Context:  Southeast Michigan”  

In 2011, a group of interdisciplinary university faculty participated in a seminar to reflect on our positions as college educators in southeast Michigan, trying to ground our teaching and service within the context of the large, public comprehensive university to the specificity of a place and its history.   I will discuss my contribution to the seminar, which was to examine the possibilities and challenges, especially in light of the material and textual resources informing that situated history, for that grounding in the literature classroom.

3)      Lori Burlingame (lburlinga@emich.edu),  Associate Professor of English, Eastern Michigan University. 

“Deconstructing Native American Mascots: A Local History”

     This paper explores the history of the struggle to end the use of Native American mascots and logos at educational institutions in Southeastern Michigan, with particular emphasis on the work of the Native American Student Organization, for which I am the faculty adviser, at Eastern Michigan University.  Although there is still some controversy surrounding this issue, in 1991, Eastern Michigan University changed its mascot from the Hurons to the Eagles at the request of the Native American Student Organization.  This local history will be grounded in a more global or national discussion of the reasons for Native communities' objections to the use of Native American logos and mascots in sports and the impact that such appropriations have on Native peoples.  Finally, this paper will touch briefly on the intersections between the mascot issue and the Native American literature classroom through references to the works of Spokane/Coeur d'Alene writer Sherman Alexie, who employs biting humor to provide powerful social critiques of stereotypical representations of Native peoples, including sports mascots.  Discussion of this issue in the classroom can help to facilitate greater cross-cultural understanding and more positive cross-cultural relationships.

4)      John A. Staunton (jstaunto@emich.edu), Associate Professor English, Eastern Michigan University

“Teaching/Learning Local Literature in a Global Age”

The presentation shares the results of what happened when a group of SE Michigan teachers pursued a curriculum and inquiry into teaching local literature with their students.  The historical and contemporary literature by and about people from Michigan is especially suited to this inquiry.  Richly diverse in its genres and subject matter—from the early frontier fictions of the “Old North West,” to the exurban tales of the out-sourced and unemployed, to the religious, ethnic, and cultural divisions (and fusions) amid the decaying metropolises—the literature of Michigan offers students and teachers a way to consider both 1) the interconnections of local/regionalist literary texts, literary performances, and their classroom practice and 2) the tensions and contacts between local practices (whether literary, performative, or pedagogical) and more ‘global’ discourses (of the literary, the aesthetic, or teaching/learning) which seek to frame, assess, or circumscribe those practices.   

Transmediating the Survey for Teacher Candidates--an Invitation for #NCTE13

Instead of simply reporting for participants what happened in my classes when students engaged in transmediations, I want to invite #NCTE13 participants to share some of their own.

Ideally, students and I would have the shared experience of having read a full text, but for the sake of demonstration I will invite you to read and respond to the following short excerpt from Whitman's "By Blue Ontario's Shore"(1856):

Are you he who would assume a place to teach or be

                                a poet here in the States?

The place is august, the terms obdurate.

Walt Whitman, “By Blue Ontario’s Shore” (1856)

1) Consider what this question and observation mean for you in your own teaching context.  What might they mean for your students?

2) Share that understanding in the comments by uploading a text, image, or short clip of music.

NCTE 2013: Re-Inventing the Literature Survey for English/Education -- Friday 9:30-10:45

Session Code:	A.13
Title:	Re-Inventing the Literature Survey for English/Education
Level:	Secondary, College, Teacher Education
Topic of Interest:	Literature
Add to Planner:	Add Item to Planner
Description:	Will examine the prospects for English Education and Literature Pedagogy at the secondary and post-secondary levels that emerge at the convergence of secondary English teacher candidates, the British/American Literature Surveys, and the new Common Core Standards for English/Language Arts.
Participant(s):	Chair: John Staunton Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti - Speaker: James Lang director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, Worcester, Massachusetts - Turning Points in Teaching/Learning the Survey Speaker: Andrew Smyth Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven - Teacher Candidates in the Shakespeare Course Speaker: John Staunton Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti - Transmediating the Survey for Teacher Candidates Speaker: Chris Walsh Boston University, Massachusetts - The Blank Syllabus
Location:	Sheraton, Sheraton/Constitution Ballroom B, Second Floor
Time:	Friday 11/22 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM