From the Mast-Head

With this final "Melville at 200" issue, the editors of Leviathan complete the four-issue acknowledgement of Melville's bicentennial: three issues in the anniversary year 2019 and the current issue featuring materials from the "Melville's Origins" conference in New York last June. The "Melville at 200" issues have been longer than is typical for Leviathan (over 250 extra pages across the four issues) and have included two sections of color plates, not to mention an array of special content: articles spanning the range of Melville's career, submitted in response to an anniversary call for papers; a double-length essay by Elizabeth Schultz on "The New Art of Moby-Dick"; reflections on the recently completed Northwestern University Press and Newberry Library edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, offered by those who edited and participated in this monumental project; and a set of essays assessing the resonance of The Confidence-Man for contemporary US politics. In keeping with our effort to publish a journal that is focused on Melville but open to a range of perspectives, including questions about the boundaries of author studies, we published an essay by Adam Fales and Jordan Alexander Stein on Elizabeth Melville and "Rethinking the Field Formation of Melville Studies," the arguments in which Fales and Stein have extended in a recent podcast hosted by C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. In the "Book Reviews" and "Extracts" sections of the journal, we continue to evaluate the presence of Melville's work in and beyond the academy.

This issue includes the two keynote addresses delivered at the bicentennial "Melville's Origins" conference in New York. Wyn Kelley charts how Brazil, especially its nineteenth-century history, figured in Melville's writings and influenced his ideas about nation and empire. Rodrigo Lazo considers issues of migration and transnational labor in Israel Potter and the relevance of Melville's novel for debates about immigration during the Trump era. We also include reflections from five participants on their experiences at the conference and a gallery of "Melville's Origins" photos. In the articles section, we feature two queer studies pieces and a report on art added to the collections of the Melville Society Archive in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Édouard Marsoin argues that Melville, invoking Plato, restages in Billy Budd the classical Greek pederastic relationships between older men (Vere and Claggart) and a handsome young man (Billy), showing how new regimes of sexuality in the late nineteenth-century identified and stigmatized the "homosexual." Matthew Knip discusses and reprints excerpts from the mid-nineteenth-century journal of sailor Philip C. Van Buskirk, explaining how his depictions of working-class male intimacy advance our understanding of Melville's portrayals of nautical sexuality. Robert K. Wallace details the Melville-related art in a variety of media—books, prints, drawings, watercolors, papercuts—acquired by the Melville Society Cultural Project and housed in the Society's Archive at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Wallace's contribution in this final "Melville at 200" issue forms an apt bookend to his frequent collaborator Elizabeth Schultz's essay on "The New Art of Moby-Dick," which was published in the first anniversary issue last March. In other testimony to the Society's expanded programs, the "Extracts" section contains a report from Elizabeth Heinz Swails, the latest holder of the Society's Walter E. Bezanson Fellowship supporting research at the New Bedford Archive.

Immediately following this column, you will find an appeal from the Melville Society's current officers seeking financial support during this bicentennial season. Please consider making a donation to the Society's journal and programs.

With this issue of Leviathan, I step down after six years as Editor and three years as Associate Editor. I will be succeeded by the current Associate Editor, Brian Yothers. Brian's Melville expertise, literary range, and editorial background supremely qualify him to take over the position. It has been an honor to preside over the journal and one of the pleasures of my career to work with its editors: Brian and also Dawn Coleman (Book Review Editor) and Mary K. Bercaw Edwards (Extracts Editor). Brian, Dawn, and Mary...