In his life and work, Herman Melville traveled widely, from the streets of American cities to the decks of ships in Pacific archipelagos to the tourist sites of London, Rome, Cairo, and Jerusalem. He also traveled far in the worlds of knowledge through a lifetime of reading. And he explored the boundaries of texts themselves, experimenting with literary genres, styles, and creative hybrids. In this class, students will track Melville’s journeys in life and literature, immersing themselves in Melville’s novels, stories, and poems—Typee, Moby-Dick, his magazine fiction, and Billy Budd among others—in order to experience the sweep of his literary and geospatial imagination.
