Campus Directory
Professor
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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Before entering academia, I spent nearly two decades at sea, serving in the U.S. Coast Guard, working on tankers, container ships, and tugboats, and eventually becoming captain of the California, the offshore pilot vessel for the San Francisco Bar Pilots. I hold U.S. Coast Guard licenses as Master (200 tons) and Mate (1600 tons), and I’m still an active full book member of the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific.
My academic path began at Laney Community College while working full time and led to a BA from UC Berkeley and a PhD in English from Cornell University. My research focuses on British literature, critical theory, maritime culture and the oceanic humanities, with recent work on maritime autonomy, the infrastructure of global shipping, and the cultural history of seafaring. I collaborate internationally with scholars in literature, anthropology, legal studies, and history, and I’m currently developing a project on “reading the ocean” in Romantic and modern literature.
At Cal Maritime, I teach both lower- and upper-division courses, including Intro to Literature, Critical Thinking, British Literature of the Sea, and Globalization of Culture. My courses are designed to be rigorous yet responsive and adaptable to student needs and interests. Our shared inquiry shapes the curriculum in real time and I've never taught exactly the same syllabus twice. I strive for relevance in my institutional environment, by which I mean my pedagogy is shaped by the Cal Maritime student experience and grounded in intellectual curiosity, historical awareness, and respect for ambiguity. I encourage students to explore complexity, honor their own voices, and stay with questions that resist simple answers. I believe that the classroom should be a place where we ask hard questions -- not hoping for definitive answers, but to find deeper, more complex questions, where discovery is shared, and enlightenment comes through participatory dialogue.
I’ve been honored with Cal Maritime’s Outstanding Scholarship, Teaching, and Service Awards, as well as recognition as CSU Outstanding Faculty from the Chancellor's Office. I currently serve as a trustee of the Nautical Institute and on the Murray Endowment Committee of the Melville Society.
I’m always happy to talk about literature, maritime life, or our programs at Cal Maritime. Please feel free to reach out or stop 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.