Fish tales coming to WestConn
Danbury to get a taste of the sea from Melville expert
DANBURY, CONN. — Dr. Mary Bercaw Edwards, accomplished professor, author and researcher of the 19th century American author, Herman Melville, will speak at Western Connecticut State University in the first of the English department’s Faculty Lecture Series.
Bercaw Edwards’ lecture, “Sailor Talk, Cannibal Talk and Missionary Talk in the Early Works of Herman Melville,” will be at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, April 9, on the first floor of Warner Hall on the university’s Midtown campus, 181 White St. in Danbury. The event will be free and the public is invited.
At the University of Connecticut’s Maritime Studies program in Avery Point on the Long Island Sound, Bercaw Edwards has blended her knowledge of English with her passion for the sea as a professor of Literature of the Sea.
Bercaw Edwards is the executive secretary of The Melville Society, one of the largest international societies of its kind with more than 700 members. She also is a demonstration squad foreman at Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea and holds a United States Coast Guard master’s license.
Of the many publications she has authored and co-authored, Bercaw Edward’s books include “Melville’s Sources,” “Herman Melville’s Whaling Years” and “Cannibal Old Me: Spoken Sources in Melville’s Early Works.”
Before earning her bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate in English from Northwestern University, Bercaw Edwards circumnavigated the globe from 1971 to 1975 aboard a 38-foot ketch.
For more information, call Cigdem Usekes, chairperson of the English department, at (203) 837-9329 or the WCSU Office of University Relations at (203) 837-8486.
