Joyce Chaplin (Department of History)
First-Year Seminar 72C | Fall Term | Tuesday, 9:45-11:45 AM
Enrollment limited to 15 | CANVAS SITE
How should we live in the world, both with each other and with everything in the natural world around us? It’s a big question and Herman Melville wrote a big book about it, Moby-Dick (1851), from which this seminar takes its title and its focus. The novel tells a tale of humans who go to sea in a wooden ship, sailing to the literal ends of the earth in the deadly pursuit of whales, source of wealth but also vital beings in their own right. It’s a story with serious consequences, especially when read in our time of environmental and climate emergency, the whale-ship in which we now all sail, at Harvard and beyond. But because Moby-Dick also makes the natural world beautiful and the connections among humans hopeful (even under cruel conditions), it gives us an especially powerful prism to consider today’s most pressing problems.
Note: The seminar will include a trip to the USS Constitution in Boston.
Post-Seminar Module: Students who successfully complete this class will be invited to join a short J-term special program (January 13-23, 2026), exploring New England’s maritime and natural histories—at no cost! There will be no cost to students for supplies or living expenses.