2018 Moby-Dick Marathon Lecture Series Kick Off | SF

Submitted by the Event Organizer

2018 Moby-Dick Marathon Lecture Series

2018 Moby-Dick Marathon Lecture Series Launches August 7, 2018
Local Melville Scholars Offer Three Fascinating Evenings of Fresh, Critical Insights
All Free Talks Presented in the Park’s Maritime Research Center

San Francisco, CA – San Francisco Maritime National Park, The San Francisco Maritime National Park Association, the Melville Society and the 2018 Moby-Dick Marathon present a summer Moby-Dick Marathon Lecture Series. All three lectures, scheduled in the San Francisco Maritime Research Center, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, are free and open to the public

2018 Moby-Dick Marathon Lecture Series
August 7 – September 6, 2018 | 7 – 8:30 pm
San Francisco Maritime Research Center, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
FREE

Lecture Series Schedules:

• Tuesday, August 7, 2018 from 7 pm – 8:30 pm
  Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
• Tuesday, August 28, 2018 from 7 pm – 8:30 pm
  There’s No Place Like Home: Moby-Dick and Childhood Trauma
• Thursday, September 6, 2018 from 7 pm – 8:30 pm
  “…But Drowned the Infinite”: Reading Moby-Dick in the Wake of Climate Change

Tuesday, August 7, 2018
2018 Moby-Dick Marathon Lecture Series

From correspondence with British publisher Richard Bentley in June of 1850, it appears that Herman Melville initially set out to write “a romance of adventure founded upon certain wild legends in the Southern Sperm Whale Fisheries.” This is not quite the narrative that entered into print a year later, however. After Melville had already begun work on his manuscript, President Fillmore, on September 18, 1850, signed legislation that would expand federal power for the interstate rendition of fugitive slaves.

This lecture explores how Melville’s 1851 publication of Moby-Dick offers a critical representation of the politics and philosophical problems that emerged with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.