I am on sabbatical for the 2023-2024 academic year. I will return in August 2024.
THE TELEPHONE NUMBER ABOVE IS THERE BY DEFAULT. I DO NOT MONITOR THAT LINE. PLEASE
CONTACT ME VIA EMAIL.
About Me:
I began my career at sea in the U.S. Coast Guard. After completing my tour, I sailed as A.B. Seaman in tankers,
container ships, breakbulk vessels, and offshore tugboats. I served with the San Francisco
Bar Pilots from 1991-2000, where I became captain of the offshore pilot vessel California. I hold a license as Master, Steam or Motor Vessels of 200 tons (US) and Mate 1600
tons (US) and I'm an active full book member of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific
(#2741). While running the pilot boat four days a week, I started taking college classes
at Laney College, part of the Peralta Community College District in Oakland. I successfully
applied for transfer to the Department of English at the University of California,
Berkeley in 2001. Upon graduation in 2003, I returned to the Bar Pilots, until 2024
when I was accepted into the graduate program in English at Cornell University in
upstate New York.
As a student at Cornell, my research in British Literature and Critical Theory was generously
supported by fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Society for the
Humanities at Cornell and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I wanted to understand
how seafaring, so crucial to the development of colonies and nations, was represented
in art and literature, and how the history of human engagements with the sea since
the mid-eighteenth century have helped to develop culture. A recently published book
chapter, “Practices: Robots, Memories, Autonomy, and the Future" in A Cultural History of the Sea in the Global Age, (2021) explores the dense social and material infrastructure of marine transportation
since the 1920's and the changing ideal of "autonomy," the idea that tradition — and
literature— celebrates as a central trope of maritime culture. In more recent public
lectures and seminars, I have begun to explore the concept and meaning of autonomy
and "mastery," how these ideas have developed along with marine transportation, and
what it means for the 21st century. An exciting collaboration with faculty and grad
students in the Sapienza University of Rome, Dipartimento di Storia, Antropologia, Religioni, Aret,
Spettacolo, that began via Zoom during the pandemic has led to exciting work with international
oceanic scholars based in Anthropology, History, Sociology, and Legal Studies, including
a new chapter called, "No Masters: Towards A Craft of Radical Maritime Autonomy" that will appear in a forthcoming
volume from Prospero Editore, Milan.
Currently, I'm at work on a project to delineate an "oceanic reader," exploring ways
to "read the ocean" in eighteenth century and Romantic poetry, and later prose. Taking
up the call for new work in the critical oceanic humanities, I seek to describe a
method of reading texts where the ocean may figure obliquely, or as a submerged presence,
following theoretical and pedagogical work in the environmental humanities, and also
(especially) Margaret Cohen's pathmaking project on how material maritime practices
helped develop the eighteenth-century novel. I argue that characteristics of what
Cohen, following Joseph Conrad, calls "the Mariner's Craft" are also crucial -- along
with collaborating with colleagues in the empirical ocean sciences -- to developing
reading and teaching strategies to actively and productively engage with the challenges
of the Anthropocene. This new research will feed directly into teaching my courses,
briefly described below.
My upper division literature and culture classes (Literature of the Sea; Globalization of Culture; Maritime Culture) are informed
by all these issues, and I encourage my students to become colleagues and join me
in pursuing them in shared research projects. I am never prouder than when former
undergraduate students successfully apply to graduate school, like those currently
studying at the University of California, SF State, and elsewhere. Staying in touch
with these remarkable individuals as they enter careers far beyond what they imagined
as freshmen cadets makes me happier than anything.
My lower-division courses (Intro to Literature; English Composition; Critical Thinking) are designed to help
students in all majors get "up to speed" and build the skills necessary to advance
their own academic and professional careers at Cal Maritime and beyond. But more than
just brushing up basic skills, these courses are designed with the student and Cal
Maritime cadet in mind: along with my colleagues in C&C, we understand the workload,
campus environment, and the many requirements competing for one's attention at our
unique university. My classes are designed to be rigorous and rewarding, but never
generic, and never simply reused semester after semester. Recent themes in Intro to
Literature have included, "Robotics and AI," "Revolutionary Literature," "Literature
of Nature and the Environment," "Sea Stories," where readings, assignments, and discussions
are always new, current, and fresh.
My colleagues among the faculty recognized me with the Outstanding Teaching award in 2015, and
a CSU "Educational Experience Enhancement" award with course release for providing
exceptional service to the students the same year. In 2017, I was honored with the
President's Cabinet award, and in 2018 the faculty again recognized my work by selecting
me for the award for Outstanding Service.
In 2024 I was elected to Fellowship of the Nautical Institute and began serving as a director and trustee. I serve on the NI Executive Board at
several meetings each year in London. I am a past Chair and Hon. Secretary of the
NI US West Coast branch, and Faculty Advisor to the Cal Maritime NI Club, NI@CMA.
Since 2012, I have served in several roles, including Executive Secretary, of the
Melville Society, where I am now on the Murray Endowment Committee.
I'm always happy to answer questions about my courses or my work, or our programs at Cal Maritime.
Please see contact information, or drop by my office.
Please explore the tabs at the top for selected course materials, students' work,
and public media.
"A Sailor Looks at Maritime Lit" an invited public lecture given as part of the Maritime Education for Students of
the Sea series hosted by the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association. July
29, 2021.
"Surviving Autonomy: Radical Craft vs Mastery at Sea" a presentation as part of Sapienza University of Rome's "Ermenautica Sapieriinrotta"
lecture series. June 1, 2021.
Paths That Shine: Nantucket and the Essex, with Nathaniel Philbrick, Tristram Coffin Dammin, Colin Dewey, Peggy Goodwin. Directed
by Ben Cortes, Director of Photography Derek Knowles. Courtyard Films, 2015. [Sorry,
this video is presently unavailable.]
A clip from a documentary film showing my "old job" on the Pilot Boat California,
c 1998.
Videos produced in, by, and for courses:
British Literature of the Sea (EGL 309), Spring 2021. Students recorded their own
versions of portions of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by S.T. Coleridge, "after"
the 2020 Ancient Mariner Big Read project. Dr. Dewey then compiled their audio recordings into this video.
Maritime Culture (HUM 350) Fall 2020 lecture to accompany class reading of chapter 6 of Outlaws of the Atlantic by Marcus Rediker
Maritime Culture (HUM 350) Fall 2020 class project. Song written, performed, and recorded by students and inspired by
a class visit and conversation with Prof. Marcus Rediker. Video by Dr. Dewey
Financial Capitalism and the Global Eighteenth Century, a video lcture for "Globalization of Culture" (HUM 325) Spring 2021.