My Spring 1996 course on Melville and the Arts was crosslisted between Honors 303 (Humanity and Imagination) and English 390 (Literature and Other Arts). This is the account of its evolution that I entered into our new web site during the last few weeks of the course. I present it here in its original form (minus some of the introductory material that now appears on my home page):
We had begun the semester by reading and discussing Moby-Dick. Each student recorded his or her response to each sequence of chapters in a spiral log book. We then turned to Schultz's comprehensive 1995 book entitled Unpainted to the Last in preparation for our visit to the exhibition itself. Each student reported on images that she or he selected from successive sections of the book. We also consulted the check-list for the exhibition so as to know which of the art works we would actually be seeing in the show.
Once we arrived at the gallery, we would all have some free time to examine the exhibition as a whole. Then each student would present a show-and-tell in front of what turned out to be his or her favorite work. The latter activity took on some additional drama when we learned, a day before our overnight trip, that a production company working for the Discovery channel would be filming members of the class as they were making their presentations.
Much of what you see on this extended web site is a result, either directly or indirectly, of the rare opportunity we had of being in the actual presence of the works that we had previously studied only through reproductions. The two hours we spent in the gallery became the culmination of all we had done and the inspiration for all we would do.
In the gallery, as in the classroom, one student after another spoke about the work he or she most admired. One difference this time (in addition to the presence of the camera) was that we were all walking from one place to another as we took turns speaking and listening. I suddenly realized for the first time that we all had legs! We made good use of those appendages later that afternoon in Chicago--especially during the half hour in which we walked on, through, and under sculptures by Picasso, Dubuffet, and Calder on our way from Stella's Loomings and Knights and Squires at 181 W. Madison Street to his Town-Ho's Story at the Metcalfe Federal Building.
Sitting around the seminar table in Northern Kentucky a few days later, we were back to being talking heads. Having written up the excursion to Evanston and Chicago in their supplemental logs, students were now presenting their final thoughts on their favorite Moby-Dick art work before submitting a paper which analyzed the work and its relation to the novel.
These two weeks before semester break were highly pleasurable for me. By this time the quality of each student's engagement with the novel (as well as with art that the novel had inspired) was very high. The camaraderie among members of the class was also high. This was evident in the keen attention they gave to each other's classroom presentations (and in the appreciative comments they wrote in their supplemental logs). With spring break now upon us, we had six weeks remaining in the course after we came back.
Until now we had closely followed the original syllabus for the course. But the excursion to Evanston and Chicago had generated energies, insights, and possibilities we had not previously envisioned. During the week after Spring break we spent one day, with logs in hand, scanning the horizon. During the next class meeting we changed course, as indicated on the revised syllabus.
What you see on this web site is one part of what we have been doing since then. When Nate DeGroff suggested that we might create a home page for the course, his classmates, as you can see, took him up on it. In the original course procedures I had indicated the possibility of collaborative work in some of the presentations at the end of the semester. The collaboration required for this web site has far exceeded anything I had in mind.
The other major change in the direction of the course was the idea of creating an art exhibition. In the original course procedures I had indicated the possibility of creating an original work of art as one's final presentation. But I had never envisioned that an entire class might choose this option. This class did. At the same time that the group was committing itself to creating a Moby web site, each individual was deciding to create his or her own art work in response to the novel.
Half of the class presented their creations during our class meeting on April 18 (an hour before Melville scholar Merton Sealts lectured to us on "Whose Book is Moby-Dick?"). The rest of the class made their presentations on April 23. Both presentation sessions were held in an exhibition space kindly provided in the Fine Arts building. As the works were presented to the class, they also went up on the wall. The students were as attentive to each other during this process as they had been during their earlier presentations in the classroom or in the gallery in Evanston (as can be seen by the photograph at the top of this page).
On April 18 members of the class presented a wire sculpture, a watercolor with poem, an oil painting, another oil painting, a suite of four photographs, and a body cast. On April 23, their classmates presented a video production, a wall hanging, a glass mosaic, an oil painting (plus installation), an illustrated book (plus musical composition), and this web site. The photo below shows one view of the works on the wall.
All of the above creations were improvisatory responses to our excursion to Evanston and Chicago. Given the short time from conception to creation, each was quite literally unpainted (or uncast) until the last (minute).
The twelve students in this class included four freshmen, three sophomores, and five juniors. Two were art majors, two were lit majors, and three were undecided; the others were majoring in biology, psychology, accounting, computer science, and applied cultural studies. Most of the above creations are the first art works to have been made by the persons who created them.
As a supplement to this page you will find a brief profile of the class members and their creations. The successive entries will lead you back to each student's page, and to whatever creative material she or he has chosen to incorporate into the page.
At some point during the semester someone began referring to this as the "course that never ends." The same might be said of this web site. For the purposes of the course itself, each person's page had to be finished by May 1. But most of us expect to be improving our pages for some time to come.
We will also continue to work on the creation and exhibition of art works. We have been invited to exhibit the works we have created for this course at the Rockford College Art Gallery in Rockford, Illinois, in April 1997.
Having completed a four-month chase, we are now shifting into an actively epilogal mode. Stay tuned for further developments. RKW, 5/8/96