Moby-Dick
Joseph Fruscione
Five Thursdays (every other week):
January 24, February 7, February. 21, March 7, March 21,
1:00 - 3:00 p.m
Price: $120 ($110 members)
Books:
Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (Norton edition)
1/24: "Extracts" and Chaps. 1-27 (pgs. 8-107)
2/7: Chaps. 28-54 (pgs. 107-214)
2/21: Chaps. 55-89 (pgs. 214-310)
3/7: Chaps. 90-114 (pgs. 310-373)
3/21: Chaps. 115-135 and Epilogue (pgs. 374-427)
REFUND POLICY: Please note that we can issue class refunds up until seven (7) days before the first class session.
"Call me Ishmael"--perhaps the most famous opening line in American literature. For this winter 2013 course, we'll read the rich, powerful, and complex novel that follows this memorable opening line. We'll learn what Ahab means when he says "I'd strike the sun if it insulted me," or why the cook Fleece 'preaches' to sharks, or why Ishmael catalogs the different types of whales so thoroughly (and obsessively). Over our five class sessions, we'll discuss the many layers and nuances of Melville's novel: Ahab's revenge quest, Ishmael's geographical and metaphysical journey, the scientific and technical material about whales and whaling, the darker elements of Ahab's sense of self, and much more. We'll also learn the how and why of Melville's wonderfully named characters: Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, Queequeg, Daggoo, Tashtego, Pip, Fedallah, Father Mapple, Captains Peleg and Bildad, and others.
The class will start Thursday January 24 and run every other week until March 21. Winter can mean getting to those long novels you've always meant to read. Surely, Moby-Dick is one of them.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Joseph Fruscione is adjunct professor of English at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and an adjunct assistant professor of First-Year Writing at George Washington University. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Delaware (BA, 1996) and graduate work at George Washington University (PhD, 2005), and he has been teaching literature and writing at the university level since 1999. His first book, Faulkner and Hemingway: Biography of a Literary Rivalry, was published by Ohio State University Press in January 2012 (http://ohiostatepress.org/). He has published articles and reviews about several American authors, and he writes the annual bibliographical essay on Fitzgerald and Hemingway studies for American Literary Scholarship. He has also written on Ralph Ellison's complex relationship with Hemingway in an essay from the collection Hemingway and the Black Renaissance (eds. Gary Holcomb and Charles Scruggs, Ohio State UP 2012).
