{"id":205689,"date":"2023-10-18T07:17:53","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T11:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=205689"},"modified":"2023-10-17T10:28:36","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T14:28:36","slug":"chasing-the-great-white-whale-in-the-digital-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2023\/10\/chasing-the-great-white-whale-in-the-digital-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Chasing the Great White Whale in the Digital Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

Call me Ishmael.<\/p>\n

This opening line of Herman Melville\u2019s 1851 novel \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d has rung through English classrooms for decades. Despite how much the world has changed since its publication, \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d remains a beloved classic, and educators are constantly searching for new ways to teach the book to young readers.<\/p>\n

Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, professor of English and director of maritime studies, is co-directing a series of workshops funded by a $196,000 grant from National Endowment for the Humanities alongside collaborators from other institutions to help K-12 teachers develop innovative ways to teach the novel.<\/p>\n

The grant is a collaboration between the Melville Society Cultural Project and the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which houses the Melville Society\u2019s archive of rare editions of Melville\u2019s works, scholarly books and papers, and artworks.<\/p>\n

The group first received this grant in 2019 and again in 2021. The program supports 25 teachers.<\/p>\n

K-12 teachers from anywhere in the country can apply. In previous years, most teachers have been in humanities disciplines such as English and history. However, social science teachers and even a mathematics teacher have taken part.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time, we actually had a mathematics teacher, and it was great,\u201d Bercaw Edwards says. \u201cIt was wonderful to see the math element of \u2018Moby-Dick.\u2019 So, it makes us even more eager to expand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
(Adobe Stock)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The upcoming iteration of the program will use a hybrid model with an in-person and online segment.<\/p>\n

In the online segment, participants will first read the novel together, focusing on many of the main themes and questions in \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d including race, gender, science, and philosophy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing about Melville is you can pair him with anything,\u201d Bercaw Edwards says.<\/p>\n

The program will include a focus on digital resources related to Melville and \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d especially digital archives. For example, the Herman Melville Electronic Library allows students to annotate and respond to the text online.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do a lot of work on how you can approach Melville in various digital projects,\u201d Bercaw Edwards says.<\/p>\n

During this section of the program, the professors leading the workshops present their own research. Bercaw Edwards is an expert on Melville and whaling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to emphasize the fact that Melville not only knew whaling all the ways that are thought of \u2013 aesthetically, morally existentially \u2013 but he also knew whaling kinesthetically,\u201d Bercaw Edwards says. \u201cHe spent four years at sea and served on three different whale ships. So, he actually knew with his feet and his arms and his hands what whaling was like.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second segment of the program will take place in-person in New Bedford. Participants will take part in field trips to locations related to \u201cMoby-Dick, including the Mystic Seaport Museum where the Charles W. Morgan, the only existing wooden whaling ship, is located. Bercaw Edwards has worked on the Charles W. Morgan for 46 years, giving her the undisputed title of the person who has spent the most time aboard the Morgan, living or dead.<\/p>\n

The group will also go to Arrowhead, Mass. where Melville wrote the book; climb the mountain where Melville met Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom he dedicated \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d; and take a whale-watching trip.<\/p>\n

Participants will look at contemporary art inspired by \u201cMoby-Dick.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to show that Melville and \u2018Moby-Dick\u2019 are still living,\u201d Bercaw Edwards says. \u201cPeople are constantly creating art of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of the workshop, each teacher develops and presents a \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d lesson plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope that [at the end of the program] they\u2019ve been inspired to figure out other ways to read the book besides simply reading the book and writing an essay, other innovative ways to use it,\u201d Bercaw Edwards says.<\/p>\n

Bercaw Edwards says she is continually surprised by how popular and beloved \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d continues to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just amazing to me that a book that\u2019s 500 pages long, and dense, and hard to read and yet it\u2019s incredibly popular,\u201d Bercaw Edwards says. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the things that we always are trying to unpack: Why? What is it about this book that was published in 1851 that people still love, and that K-12 teachers love?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary K Bercaw Edwards is co-directing a program that supports K-12 teachers in developing new ways of teaching Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":205871,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1711,2226,2460,2076,2235,173],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2277],"class_list":["post-205689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-clas","category-faculty","category-research","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-avery-point"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 21:47:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205689"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205879,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205689\/revisions\/205879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/205871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205689"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=205689"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=205689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}