I cannot recommend it enough! And my students all become obsessed with the narrator, Cassandra. It reads like Ferrante
Профиль
Hester Blum
A patched professor in Queen Nature’s granite-founded College. Polar humanities, C19, oceanic studies. Ask me about Moby-Dick. I teach environmental and nineteenth-century American literature at WashU. Protect trans kids. She/her. hesterblum.com
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Публикации
The full book club roster, including Mary Beard on The Odyssey and other provocative pairings: exploringthegreats.com
Exploring the GreatsExploring the Greats is a network of book clubs, each distributed as a video podcast. We go deep on great works, pairing academics with actors and performers who genuinely love the material. Join us!exploringthegreats.comExploring Moby-Dick launches TOMORROW with me and my celebrity friend @robdelaney.bsky.social, who missed his calling as the greatest Melvillean of a generation! exploringthegreats.com/moby-dick
Exploring Moby-Dick — A Herman Melville Podcast & Book ClubJoin Professor Hester Blum and actor-writer Rob Delaney as they navigate Moby-Dick, the both devastating and hilarious journey of men at odds with the sea and themselves. Together they explore the cha...exploringthegreats.comWhat is better than polar ephemera? Excellent article by @sarahmpicks.bsky.social
Sarah PickmanExcited that my article on collecting polar exploration ephemera is live, part of the special issue “Crossings in Polar Art History” for the journal Art History. Thanks to issue editors @issygapp.bsky.social and Mark Cheetham and everyone who spoke to me for this piece, incl. @tchotchke.bsky.social!
Also @alexanderchee.bsky.social I wanted to share this with you! www.publicbooks.org/heated-rival...
“Heated Rivalry” Is the “Moby-Dick” of Canadian Gay Hockey Shows - Public BooksThe literary genre of contemporary MM romance realizes an imagined world that Melville was trying to write into being.www.publicbooks.orgSome Melville-adjacent reading I recommend for @leviathanbookstore.bsky.social, including: The Morgesons, by Elizabeth Stoddard (the Elena Ferrante of the 1860s). This is a sexier, weirder, US Jane Eyre and is the best 19th century novel you’ve never heard of. bookshop.org/lists/recomm...
Recommended Reading: Melville and BeyondCheck out this list on Bookshopbookshop.org
This is probably my most important critical insight
Public BooksIn “heated” (by 19th-century standards) letters, Herman Melville asked Nathaniel Hawthorne to “his cottage.” “Hawthorne seems to have pulled away,” writes @hesterblum.bsky.social, “in a Berkshires version of Heated Rivalry’s tuna meltdown in Boston.”
⟳ Репост от Hester Blum
New at PB: @hesterblum.bsky.social has been reading and teaching “Moby-Dick” for 35 years. “Heated Rivalry,” she writes, fulfills what “Moby-Dick” imagines: the “dizzying possibilities for potentially liberatory worlds.”
“Heated Rivalry” Is the “Moby-Dick” of Canadian Gay Hockey Shows - Public BooksThe literary genre of contemporary MM romance realizes an imagined world that Melville was trying to write into being.www.publicbooks.org
⟳ Репост от Hester Blum
Here it is, my 285th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Add more below, please share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ + blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...
#ScholarSunday Thread 285 (7/19/26) – Black and White and Read All OverHere it is, my 285th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Add more below, please share as widely as possible, &...blackwhiteandread.comIt’s been super interesting to hear from HR fans who are surprised to hear how queer Moby-Dick is—tell peepol!!
Public Books“Shane and Ishmael are both ‘boring’ but their rabbit holing, pedantry, info-dumping, and hyperfocus encompass oceanic depths of feeling. … Both [Ilya and Queequeg] trouble their partners by smoking in bed. I could go on.”