Declan Kiely

Keynote Speaker

 

Declan Kiely (keynote) has been Director of Exhibitions at the New York Public Library since 2017, curating among many other shows the 2019 exhibition Herman Melville at The New York Public Library, drawn from its extensive Melville Family papers. Previously he had been a curator and Head of Literary and Historical Manuscripts at the Morgan Library, where he organized major exhibits on Austen, Twain, Dickens, Poe, Lincoln, Henry James, and Hemingway. A graduate of the University of London, he was a well-received speaker at BookFest’s Mary Shelley program in 2022. He will trace Melville’s literary career from his popular success as a writer of exotic travel books to the failure of Moby-Dick, after which he largely gave up fiction for poetry and professional obscurity – only to be recognized in the early 20th century as one of the giants of American literature.

Richard H. Brodhead

 

Richard H. Brodhead is the A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University and served as ninth President of Duke University (2004-2017). He earned his BA, MPhil, and PhD at Yale, where he was a long-time chair of the English Department and Dean of Yale College (1993-2004). He is the author of more than a dozen books on American writers, including Hawthorne, Melville, Chesnutt, Faulkner, Stowe, Alcott, Wright, and Welty and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also taught high school teachers for eight summers at the Bread Loaf School in Middlebury, Vt. He will examine the powerful influence of Hawthorne in turning Melville into a writer of genius.

Mary K. Bercaw Edwards

 

Mary K. Bercaw Edwards is Professor of English and Director of Maritime Studies at the University of Connecticut. Former President of the Melville Society, she now serves as an editor for the international journal, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies. She is the author of Melville’s Sources (1987), Cannibal Old Me: Spoken Sources in Melville’s Early Works (2009), and Sailor Talk: Labor, Utterance, and Meaning in the Works of Melville, Conrad, and London (2021) and the co-editor of Wilson Heflin’s Herman Melville’s Whaling Years (2004). She spends her summers working aloft on Mystic Seaport Museum's square-rigged ships, including the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan, which was built only seven months after and seven miles away from Melville's whaleship, the Acushnet. A Coast Guard-licensed captain, Dr. Bercaw Edwards has 58,000 miles at sea, all under sail. She will speak on Herman Melville as a sailor on a 19th-century whaler.

Cyrus R. K. Patell

 

Cyrus R. K. Patell is Professor of English at New York University and Global Network Professor at New York University Abu Dhabi and a winner of NYU’s Distinguished Teaching Award. His scholarly interests include literary cosmopolitanism, New York City history, Global Shakespeare, and American literary and cultural history. He has an AB, MA, and PhD from Harvard University. He is the author of Lucasfilm: Filmmaking, Philosophy, and the Star Wars Universe (2021) and Cosmopolitanism and the Literary Imagination (2015), among other titles, and edited the Cambridge Companion to the Literature of New York (2015). He associate-edited the first two volumes of the Cambridge History of American Literature and co-edited the volume on post-1940 American fiction in the Oxford History of Literature in English. He can also be found on YouTube, which posts his much-viewed 26 lectures on American literature from its origins to the Civil War, including several sessions devoted to Melville. He will speak on Shakespeare’s influence on Moby-Dick.

Robert Rocha

 

Robert Rocha is the Associate Curator of Science and Research at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, where he has worked since 2004. His major responsibilities there include developing all science content for museum exhibits, curating the natural history collection, developing science curriculum for school groups, managing its High School Apprenticeship Program and volunteer corps, developing science programs for general audiences, and providing professional development for teachers. He is executive director of Massachusetts Marine Educators, past president of the National Marine Educators Association, and chair of the Education Committee of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. A graduate of Southwestern Massachusetts University (BS in biology) and Antioch University New England (MS in environmental studies), he has written widely on whaling. He also sails and rows Azorean whaleboats with the Azorean Maritime Heritage Society. He will speak on whales: yesterday, today, and tomorrow.