CFP--MLA 2027: The Melville Society

           Melville and McCarthyism

This panel invites papers reflecting on the value of Melville’s work for our authoritarian present. A pivotal revival of Melville during the nineteen-fifties by C.L.R. James and F.O. Matthiessen (both victims of McCarthyist surveillance and fear tactics) catapults Moby-Dick to attain the status of an American “classic” emblematic of a more, free democratic ethos. Moreover, Melville remains the author of the longest poem, Clarel, on Palestine in American literary history. Recent literary scholars of Melville also mobilize his writings to analyze the limits and possibilities of U.S. constitutionalism, including the First Amendment. 

How might we mobilize Melville and his consummate commitment to the literary again to critique the genocide in Gaza and the new McCarthyism in academic life today?

Please submit abstracts of 200 words to Munia Bhaumik at munia@ucla.college.edu by March 8.