01 CAC TTH4 12166 IANNINI ABE-2250
This seminar will provide an intensive introduction to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The bulk of the semester will be devoted to a patient and careful reading of the novel itself, tracing some of the key philosophical, aesthetic, and political questions that animate the book, including the relationship between fate, chance and free-will as forces governing the shape and pattern of individual lives, between nationalism and cosmopolitanism as impulses determining the political transformation of the United States and the planet, and between literature, science and religion as rival systems for representing the nature of the universe. We will also consider the relevance of such questions for 21st-century readers confronted by (and seeking to overcome) various kinds of political nihilism, economic exploitation, and ecological cataclysm. During this section of the course, students will be evaluated on the basis of regular in-class reading responses. Additionally, two in-class exams (one at the midpoint of the novel, and one at the end) will test students' overall comprehension of the novel and its contexts. For the remainder of the semester, students will work in conjunction with the instructor to develop independent research projects, culminating in a final research paper of approximately 10 pages, and a brief in-class presentation during the final weeks of the class.