I love teaching Moby-Dick in my American Literature: Beginnings to 1914 survey class. Rather than read Melville’s tome all at once, I took a page from one of my mentors, Benjamin Reiss, and spread it out over the whole semester. As a result, students read digestible chunks of the novel alongside the other texts we read. This allows us to juxtapose Melville’s omnivorous, maximalist novel with prose and poetry by a wide range of other authors, underscoring common themes. We enjoyed listening to this Freakonomics episode on whaling for some extra context. I also love showing students Matt Kish‘s astounding abstract art inspired by Moby-Dick.
Here are some of the slides I designed to accompany our discussions:
Melville