A Moby-Dick Week 2021 Event

The “Great Democratic God”
A Talk with Elissa Greenwald

Melville’s masterpiece dramatizes the 19th-century whaling industry and the adventures of the multinational crew of the Pequod who take up their captain’s quest for the white whale. It raises issues about community, industry, religion, and democracy that have taken on special urgency in the United States in the 21st century. This talk will explore what we can learn from Melville’s writing and what perspectives we bring to bear on it now to illuminate these issues.

Elissa Greenwald received a B.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from Yale, where she was a member of the fourth class of undergraduate women. She has written a book, Realism and the Romance: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and American Fiction, as well as articles about 19th and 20th-century English and American writers. She recently retired after teaching literature for 25 years at the high school and university levels. In the winter of 2021, she taught a course on Moby-Dick through the Open University of Wellfleet. She has visited the Cape every year for half a century and hopes to see more whales there in the future.

Email araff@clamsnet.org for the Zoom link.

Download a full schedule of Moby-Dick Week Events here! For more information on any of these great events, please contact Brittany Taylor at btaylor@clamsnet.org.