"Panting and snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean overruns the globe." Melville, Moby-Dick

In this writing-intensive course, you'll read selected works of poetry, drama, fiction and autobiography in which the sea functions as the physical, philosophical and psychological setting. The class is divided into smaller groups and organized as a round-table tutorial. Studying how early maritime works influenced later writers leads you through more than two centuries of primarily American literature. Through the additional use of literary theory and maritime history, Literature of the Sea uncovers the rich and varied contexts in which maritime literature was, and continues to be, written.

Important books are chosen to take the utmost advantage of our settings. You'll read Jack London when in San Francisco Bay, Steinbeck while at Cannery Row in Monterey, Derek Walcott while offshore in the Caribbean, David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars in the Pacific Northwest, Cooper when offshore in the North Atlantic and, of course, Moby-Dick when on Mystic Seaport's wooden whaling vessel, the Charles W. Morgan – built in the same year and in the same style as the whaling vessel on which Herman Melville sailed.