Campus Directory
Professor
Culture & Communication
Dept Chair 12 Mo
Culture & Communication
| Degree | Major Emphasis | Institution | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ph.D. | British Literature, Critical Theory | Cornell University | 2011 |
| M.A. | English | Cornell University | 2008 |
| B.A. (Honors) | English | University of California, Berkeley | 2003 |
| Fellow of the Nautical Institute | |||
| Master, 200 GRT; Mate, 1600 GRT Able Bodied Seaman, Unlimited |
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THE TELEPHONE NUMBER ON THIS PAGE IS THERE BY DEFAULT. I DO NOT MONITOR THAT LINE. PLEASE CONTACT ME VIA EMAIL.
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 2004 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.
While still a new member of the faculty, my colleagues recognized me with the campus Outstanding Teaching award in 2015, and an additional CSU "Educational Experience Enhancement" award with course release, for providing exceptional service to students the same year. In 2017, while serving as Vice-Chair of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, I was the campus representative to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU),"Emerging Leaders" program. In August 2017, I was honored with the President's Cabinet award which recognized my committment to Cal Maritime through these and other activities. The award citation particularly noted that my:
commitment and dedication to Cal Maritime as a respectful, diverse learning institution, is inspiring. The person embraces diversity of perspective but also challenges students to confront their biases, think inclusively, and examine the world through different lenses. In addition, this person engages in maritime-related research projects that are cross-departmental and contribute further to a sense of inclusion on campus. This person is a tireless advocate for our University, and is an organizing force, encouraging faculty and others to share their considerable expertise with constituents outside of Cal Maritime.
In 2018 the faculty again recognized my work by selecting me for the campus award for Outstanding Service. In 2019, upon receivng early tenure and promotion to Associate Professor, I was elected Chair of the Department of Culture and Communication. I was promored to Professor in 2023.
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 publications and presentations, course materials, students' work, and public media.
"'No Masters!' -- Towards A Craft of Radical Maritime Autonomy" in Apocalissi e Utopie: Approfondimento radicalismo marittimo, Ed. Matteo Aria, Milan: Prospero Editore, forthcoming (in press 2024).
“Back to the Future? Educating Today’s ‘Compleat Mariner’ by Remembering an Ancient Craft,” Seaways, February (2024), 14–16.
“Practices: 'Robots, Memories, Autonomy, and the Future'" in A Cultural History of the Sea in the Global Age, Series Ed, Margaret Cohen, 6 vols. London, Bloomsbury Press, (2021).
"The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff." Review, Sea History, 167, Spring (2019), 56.
“Melville’s Paintings and Prints,” Herman Melville in Context, Ed. Kevin Hayes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Surviving the Essex: The Afterlife of America’s Most Storied Shipwreck, by David O. Dowling and The Essex and the Whale: Melville’s Leviathan Library and the Birth of Moby-Dick, by R. D. Madison,” review essay solicited by Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, Oct 2017.
“Call me Captain,” gCaptain.com, Unofficial Networks LLC, July 26, 2017. Web.
“By Guess or by God: Catastrophe in The Heart of the Sea,” gCaptain.com, Unofficial Networks LLC, 12 Sep. 2016. Web.
“Conrad and the Mariner’s Craft: Sea Stories for Real Sailors (2 parts),” gCaptain.com, Unofficial Networks LLC, May-Jun. 2016. Web.
“Paths that Shine: Nantucket and the Essex.” Ben Cortes, Producer, and Derek Knowles, Director. USA: Courtyard Films (2015). Motion picture.
“We Know Ocean! Improving Ocean Literacy at Cal Maritime,” Sea History, 154, Spring (2016): 30-33.
“Seeing the Eliphant: A Maine Couple’s Adventures in Gold Rush San Francisco, by Kenneth R. Martin,” review essay solicited by Sea History, 151, Summer (2015): 52-53.
“The Irish Poet and the Natural World 1581-1819: An Anthology of Verse in English from the Tudors to the Romantics, Andrew Carpenter and Lucy Collins, eds.” review essay solicited by The Journal of Ecocriticism, Vol 7, No 1 Summer (2015): 18-19.
“Crafty Sailors, Unruly Seas: Margaret Cohen’s Oceanic History of the Novel,” Criticism, Vol. 56: Iss. 4 (Fall 2014): 861-870.
“Annus Mirabilis to The Ancient Mariner: Oceanic Environments and the Romantic Literary Imagination,” Coriolis: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Maritime Studies, 1.2 (2010): 4-22.
“The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea, by Philip Hoare,” Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 12.3 (2010): 111-116.
“‘The Hint of Style’: Byron, John Hookham Frere, and Melville’s Marginalia in William Tennant’s Anster Fair,” Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, 9.2 (2007): 25-42.
“Clarel in the Pacific,” Melville Society Extracts, (Supplement) (2003): 12-13.
Presentations and Lectures
As presenter
2024 “#NotAllShips? The Political Unconscious and Seafaring Today” at “Stories and the Seas” Center for the Study of the Novel Annual Conference, Stanford University, April 5.
2021 "Surviving Mastery" presentation as part of "Radicalismo marittimo e antropologia dei mari," a round table discussion organized by Sapienza University of Rome Dipartimento di Storia, Antropologia, Religioni, Aret, Spettacolo, September 22. Online.
2021 "A Sailor Looks at Maritime Lit" invited public lecture as part of the Maritime Education for Students of the Sea series hosted by the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association. July 29. https://vimeo.com/579638506
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. https://youtu.be/R7MUCE2G-jU
2019, "Amnesia Sea: Aquatic Remembering and the (post) human Sea" part of the panel "Romantic Ocean Now and Then" at the International Conference on Romanticism, Manchester, UK. August 2, 2019.
2019, "Smoke on the Water, Aeolian and Oceanic Media in the Posthuman Sea" part of the panel "Deep Waters I" at the 13th Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment conference, Davis, California, June 27, 2019.
2018, “Possibilities of the Public Humanities,” a panel organized by the Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Profession, Modern Language Association annual convention, New York, New York, January 6, 2018.
2017, “Fayaway: Melville, Fantasy, and Fame” Blue Room Lecture at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, San Francisco, California, September 23, 2017.
2017, “High Tech on the High Seas: the Evolution of Maritime Culture and Technology,” a panel organized by the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, Festival of the Sea 2017, San Francisco CA, August 19, 2017.
2017, “The Feeling that Sticks: Moby-Dick and/as Maritime Georgic” part of “Maritime Labors: -- Melville, Work, and the Sea” at “Melville’s Crossings: the 11th International Melville Society Conference,” London , UK, June 28, 2017.
2017, “ 'It's a Mutual, Joint-Stock World': Maritime Trade and the Circuits of Capitalism,” part of "Financial Capitalism and the Global Eighteenth Century," American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual meeting, Minneapolis, MN, March 30, 2017.
2016, “Circulation and its Discontents: Romantic Writers and the ‘British Ocean’,” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Annual Conference, Berkeley, California, August 11, 2016.
2015, “Tall Tales: Litquake on the Water” Public forum celebrating recent maritime literature; Co-presented by San Francisco National Maritime Historical Park and Cal Maritime. October 17, 2015.
2015, “‘By Guess or by God’ A discussion of Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea.” The 2015 Common Reading Lecture presented by the Cal Maritime Library, September 15, 2015.
2015, “Educating the ‘Complete Mariner’ in an Age of Technology,” Nautical Institute (UK) Annual General Meeting and Command Seminar, San Francisco, California, May 11-13, 2015.
2015, “Ocean Literacy at California Maritime Academy: Ballast Water and Environmental Protection,” with Parker, A., and Runyon, S., Pearls of Power Conference, Vallejo, CA, February 2015.
2014, “‘Why and How?’ Teaching the Ocean in the Literature Classroom,” Maritime Education Summit, Maine Maritime Academy, Castine, Maine, Oct. 17-19, 2014.
2010, “Conquest, Conflict, Transformation: Oceanic Environments and the Trans-Atlantic Literary Imagination,” North American Society for Oceanic History / National Maritime Historical Society Annual Conference,” University of Connecticut, Avery Point and Mystic Seaport, May 2010.
2009, “History at Sea: Maritime Methods” at “Water: A Workshop Across the Disciplines,” Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, April
2009, “Literary Theology: Paradise Lost and the Meaning of Canonical Texts,” Department of Theology, University of Scranton, Scranton, Pennsylvania. April 2009.
2008, “‘The Peopled Ocean’: Dryden's Poetics of Circulation and Enclosure in Annus Mirabilis,” conference paper presented at “Restoring Dryden: Music, Translation, Print,” University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, November 2008.
2008, “Byron in America: Melville’s Marginalia and English Literary Criticism in the New York Circle, 1860-75.” Paper presented at “The Transatlantic Nineteenth Century,” Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, April 2008.
2008, “The “British Ocean” Unmanned: Coleridge, the Traffic and Pure Imagination,” Paper presented at the Cornell University English Department Roundtable, Ithaca, New York, March 2008.
2007, Invited Panel Chair, “Merchants, Fishermen and Privateers,” Annual Conference of the North American Society for Oceanic History / National Maritime Historical Society, King’s Point, New York, May 2007.
2006, “Farther from Shore: The Mermaid and the Madness that Makes Things Happen,” “Our Watery World: Humans and the Sea,” College English Association, Caribbean Chapter Fall Conference, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, November 2006.
2005, Panel Moderator, “Aesthetics, Technics, Mimesis,” at “The Force of Events: Futures of Aesthetics, Politics, and Metaphysics,” Graduate student conference, Cornell University, April 2005.
2003, Invited speaker and panelist, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” a public panel and film screening organized by the Berkshire Historical Society to commemorate the centenary of the first publication of “Bartleby,” Pittsfield, Massachusetts, February 2003.
As organizer
2017, 2018, “Blue Room Lectures,” annual series of public lectures featuring Cal Maritime and neighboring faculty, delivered at the San Francisco Maritime Museum, S.F. CA. January – September.
2017, “Maritime Labors: -- Melville, Work, and the Sea” at “Melville’s Crossings: the 11th International Melville Society Conference,” London, UK, June 28, 2017.
2015, “Oceans of Education” 2015 Joseph P. Rizza Lecture and panel discussion, CSU Maritime Academy, March 10, 2015.
2010, “Sea Stories: Narrative Experiences Within The Oceanic Realm” at “‘Maritime Environments’: North American Society for Oceanic History, University of Connecticut, Avery Point and Mystic Seaport, May 2010.
2009, “Water: A Workshop Across the Disciplines,” an interdisciplinary symposium presented by the 2008-2009 Andrew W. Mellon Fellows at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, April 2009.
July 31, 2021 "Native Son" feature by Carl Nolte. San Francisco Chronicle
MESS Lecture: A Sailor Looks at Maritime Lit/ Professor Colin Dewey from SF Maritime Association on Vimeo.
"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.
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.