Wyn Kelley

Wyn Kelley, a member of the Literature Faculty since 1985, has taught classes on literature of the Americas (in São Paulo, Brazil), digital texts, environmental writing, literature of migration, North American writers, and literary modes (comedy, melodrama, gothic). Her scholarship focuses on Herman Melville’s works in transatlantic contexts and on the intersections of traditional and new media. Currently Associate Director of the Melville Electronic Library (MEL), an interactive archive of Melville’s texts, sources, and adaptations, she is also founding member of the Melville Society Cultural Project, which collaborates with the New Bedford Whaling Museum on projects related to Melville, whaling, and climate change.

Nineteenth-century American literature; Herman Melville; nineteenth- and twentieth-century women’s fiction, popular culture, and media studies; teaching and technology.

A New Companion to Herman Melville.
Wiley-Blackwell Publishing. Forthcoming in 2022.

Reading in a Participatory Culture: Remixing Moby-Dick in the English Classroom.
Ed. Henry Jenkins and Wyn Kelley.
Teachers College Press, 2013.
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Participatory-Culture-Moby-Dick-Classroom/dp/0807754013/

An Introduction to Herman Melville
Blackwell Publishers, January 2008
http://www.amazon.com/Herman-Melville-Introduction-Wyn-Kelley/dp/1405131586/

“Whole Oceans Away”: Melville and the Pacific
Ed. Jill Barnum, Wyn Kelley, Christopher Sten
Kent State University Press, 2007
http://www.amazon.com/Whole-Oceans-Away-Melville-Pacific/dp/0873388933/

A Companion to Herman Melville
Blackwell Publishing, 2006
http://www.amazon.com/Companion-Melville-Blackwell-Companions-Literature/dp/1405122315/

Melville’s City: Literary and Urban Form in Nineteenth-Century New York
Cambridge University Press, 1996
http://www.amazon.com/Melvilles-City-Nineteenth-Century-Cambridge-Literature/dp/0521560543/

Chapters in Books

Forthcoming

‘Portuguese Vengeance’: Melville’s Narrative of Empire and Resistance.” Oxford Guide to Herman Melville. Ed. Jennifer Greiman and Michael Jonik. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forthcoming. 2022.

“Arctic Whiteness: William Bradford, Herman Melville, and the Invisible Spheres of Fright.”  In Race and Vision in the Nineteenth Century United States. Ed. Shirley Samuels.  Lexington Books. 37-52. 2019

“Melville by Design.” Teaching with Digital Humanities: Tools and Methods for Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Ed. Jennifer Travis and Jessica DeSpain. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. 57-70. 2018

“Melville: Ocean and City.” In Cambridge Companion to the American Renaissance. Ed. Christopher Phillips. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 157-71. 2018

“Melville and the Spoken Word.” With Mary K. Bercaw Edwards. In Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. Ed. Hershel Parker.  Third Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton. 686-92. 2017

“This Matter of Writing: Melville and the Manuscript Page.” In Critical Insights; Billy Budd, Sailor. Ed. Brian Yothers. Salem: Salem Press. 128-46. 2017

“Pierre’s Domestic Ambiguities.” Rpt in Herman Melville, Pierre. Ed. Robert S. Levine and Cindy Weinstein. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton. 496-518. 2017

“Melville’s Flummery.” In The Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-Century   American Letters and Letter-Writing. Eds. Celeste-Marie Bernier, Judie Newman, and Matthew Pethers.  Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2016

“Pierre, Life History, and the Obscure.” Robert S. Levine, ed. The New Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville. New York: Cambridge University Pres, 2013.

“‘Free Robe and Vest’: Melville and the Uncollected Fragment.” Douglas Robillard and Sanford Marovitz, eds. Melville as Poet: The Art of “Pulsed Life.” Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2013.

“‘Writ in Water’: The Books of Moby-Dick,” in Alfred Bendixen, ed. Blackwell Companion to the American Novel. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2012.

“Billy Budd, Sailor: Or How to Read a Book,” Eric Carl Link, ed., Critical Insights: Herman Melville. Hackensack, NJ: Salem Press, Inc, 2012.

“Hawthorne and Melville in the Shoals: ‘Agatha,’ the Trials of Authorship, and the Dream of Collaboration,” and “Letters on Foolscap.” Jana Argersinger, Leland S. Person, eds. Hawthorne and Melville: Writing A Relationship. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008.

Articles in refereed journals

“Empire in Her Eyes”: Melville and America’s Brazilian Original.” Conference Issue    Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies. 22.1 (March 2020).

“Melville’s London and Ours.” Conference Issue of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies. 20.1 (March 2018): 123-6.

“Ahoy, Engineers! From STEM to stern, Herman Melville’s classic whaling novel resonates with MIT students.” MIT Technology Review. October 20, 2015.

“Seeing Twice: William Bradford’s The Arctic Regions in Print and Paint.” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 3.2 (Fall 2015): 429-36.

“Mapping Moby-Dick in Locast.” With Pelin Arlsan and Amar Boghani. The Electronic Journal of Communication 24 (1 & 2). Web. 2014

“The Bunk.” Common-Place: Sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society 15 (1). N.p. Web. 2014

“Melville’s Carnival Neighborhood.” Lectora: Revista de Dones i Textualitat 20 (2014).  Ed. Rodrigo Andres Gonzalez.  University of Barcelona. Barcelona, Spain. 2014

Subjects taught the current academic year:

 

Subjects taught in recent years:

Melville Society Cultural Project Steering Committee (in collaboration with New Bedford Whaling Museum): Plan conferences, symposia, public lectures, and film series; manage archive of books by and about Herman Melville; consult on museum exhibitions; support literacy and educational programs in New Bedford and Pawtucket, RI.

Associate Director, Melville Electronic Library (MEL): Organize meetings and work flow of the project teams. Develop tools for mapping Melville’s travels and texts. Edit texts and materials for the website.

HyperStudio (MIT): Develop pedagogy around reading and writing practices in Communications Intensive classes. Involved in Annotation Studio, a suite of educational tools for annotating texts. Also working on different forms of mapping and visualization of literary works.

New Media Literacies (University of Southern California): Work with MIT/USC research group on creative/educational appropriations of classic texts in new media.