Approaches to Teaching Melville's Moby-Dick

Marty Bickman's progressive, activist approach to education was forged in the reform movements of the 1960s and 70s. After working in a residential high school for gifted disadvantaged students in Kentucky, he went on to receive his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. Since coming to CU, he has continued to focus on educational reform, both in his own classroom and working with our graduate student teachers. He has received the Boulder Faculty Assembly Teaching Award and a Creating Community Award; in 1984 he delivered The Best Should Teach lecture. He has been active as a President's Teaching Scholar since 1988. Much of his writing and research has been concerned with pedagogy and with making literature more accessible for students and general readers. His most recent book, Minding American Education: Reclaiming the Tradition of Active Learning [Teachers College Press, 1983] won the Outstanding Book Award from the American Research Association. After writing this book, he decided to put its situated learning and democratic ideas into practice beyond his own classroom by becoming Director of Service Learning at CU Boulder.

The essays are lively and informative and cheerfully promote interpretations and 'structures for teaching' which others can 'adapt, modify, or completely reverse.' The collection will be helpful primarily to those who are new or relatively new to teaching Moby-Dick, but even old Melville hands are likely to come across ideas they will want to incorporate into their teaching.--American Literary Scholarship