Editorial Staff

“Call Me Ishmael” Melville Scholar Prof. Hershel Parker on Moby-Dick & Classic Literature

/0 Comments/in , , , /by Editorial Staff
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on
LinkedIn
+

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Gerard and guest co-host Kerry McDonald, senior education fellow with the Foundation for Economic Education, are joined by Hershel Parker, the H. Fletcher Brown professor emeritus at the University of Delaware and the definitive biographer of the 19th-century American novelist, Herman Melville. As we celebrate the anniversary this week of Melville’s birth, Prof. Parker shares what drew him to study the Moby-Dick author’s life, inspirations, and legacy. He discusses why Moby-Dick is often considered the greatest American novel, with its memorable characters such as Ishmael, Captain Ahab, Queequeg, and the diverse crew. He explores the influences of religion, poetry, and culture on Melville’s worldview and writing. Prof. Parker concludes by reading one of his favorite passages from Moby-Dick.

Stories of the Week: Harvard Professor Paul Peterson outlines seven ways that students lose out from being deprived of in-person learning during COVID-19. And, can we expect students to study, read, write, take tests, and submit school work using the same tool they use for playing video games, watching shows, and checking Instagram – or is that concern about technology unrealistic for our era?

Interview Guest:

Hershel Parker is the H. Fletcher Brown Professor Emeritus of the University of Delaware. With Harrison Hayford he co-edited the groundbreaking 1967 Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick. Fifty years later (2017), he did the Third Edition of Norton’s Moby-Dick. For the final two volumes of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, he was the General Editor, succeeding Hayford. Parker’s Herman Melville: A Biography, 1819-1851 (1996), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Both that volume and Herman Melville: A Biography, 1851-1891 (2002) won the top R. R. Hawkins award from the Association of American Publishers. Parker’s other books include, Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons (1984), Melville: The Making of the Poet (2008), and Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative (2012). On Melville’s bicentennial, 2019, he edited Herman Melville: Complete Poems for the Library of America. His current project, based on his own genealogical research, is Ornery People: Depression Okies and the Loss and Retrieval of Historical Memory.

The next episode will air on August 14th, 2020 with Jack McCarthy, President and CEO of AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation and AppleTree Early Learning Public Charter School.

Tweet of the Week:

News Links:

The Price Students Pay When Schools Are Closed – Paul Peterson

https://www.educationnext.org/price-students-pay-when-schools-are-closed/

 The Problem With Online Learning – Mark Bauerlein, RealClearEd/First Things

https://www.realcleareducation.com/2020/07/29/the_problem_with_online_learning_48862.html?utm_source=rced-today-auto&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mailchimp-newsletter&mc_cid=4ae6e28767&mc_eid=d99b9842ca

Get Updates on Our Education Research

Related Posts

Donald Graham on The Washington Post, Media, and Educating Immigrants

This week on The Learning Curve, Donald Graham, Chairman of Graham Holdings Company, discusses the history of The Washington Post, his views on changing media in America, and his work in higher education reform and philanthropy on behalf of immigrant youth.

Columbia Law’s Philip Hamburger on Church, State, & School Choice

This week on The Learning Curve, noted constitutional law professor Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law School discusses the legal basis for private and religious school choice, and how American constitutionalism supports parental choice in education.

AEI’s Dr. Diana Schaub on the Founders, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, & Civics

This week on The Learning Curve, Loyola University Maryland professor and AEI senior fellow Dr. Diana Schaub explores the legacies, speeches, and writings of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, and how knowledge of U.S. history and primary sources can debunk revisionist approaches to teaching history and civics.

Morehouse’s Prof. Marisela Martinez-Cola on Pre-Brown Cases for Educational Equality

This week on The Learning Curve, Morehouse College's Dr. Marisela Martinez-Cola, JD, discusses her book The Bricks before Brown: The Chinese American, Native American, and Mexican Americans' Struggle for Educational Equality, and the long struggle for equal opportunity in American education.

Marquette’s Dr. Howard Fuller on School Choice, Charter Schools, and Race

This week on The Learning Curve, Dr. Howard Fuller, Founder/Director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning (ITL) at Marquette University, discusses education reform, school choice, charter public schools, race, and the ongoing struggle to provide educational opportunity to all children in America.

Columbia’s Pulitzer Winner Prof. Eric Foner on Lincoln, Slavery, & Reconstruction

This week on The Learning Curve, guest cohosts Charlie Chieppo and Alisha Searcy speak with Dr. Eric Foner, Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University and Pulitzer Prize-winning author on Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

Fmr. Mississippi Chief Dr. Carey Wright on State Leadership & NAEP Gains

This week on The Learning Curve, Dr. Carey Wright, former Mississippi state superintendent of education, discusses the dramatic improvements in fourth graders' reading scores in Mississippi during her time there, the importance of early childhood education and literacy programs, the role of literature and art, and the inspiration educators can draw from Mississippi's heroes in the Civil Rights Movement.

U-Hong Kong Prof. Frank Dikötter on China: Mao’s Tyranny to Rising Superpower

This week on The Learning Curve, Dr. Frank Dikötter discusses Chairman Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist revolution, the Great Leap Forward, China's economic ascent under Deng Xiaoping, and the realities that the U.S. and the West must understand as they seek to engage with China as a rising superpower.

Prof. Lorraine Pangle on the Founders, Education, and Civics

This week on The Learning Curve, Lorraine Pangle, professor of political philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, discusses how the Founding Fathers' grounding in classical and Enlightenment thought helped shape America's Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the role of public education as a wellspring of republican self-government.

U.K.’s Robert McCrum on P.G. Wodehouse, ‘Jeeves & Wooster,’ and April Fools’ Day

In this special April Fools' Day edition of The Learning Curve, British writer and editor Robert McCrum, discusses English comic genius P.G. Wodehouse, his inimitable prose style, and much-needed humor he brought to 1920s and '30s Britain in the wake of World War I and the 1918 flu epidemic.