California State Polytechnic University SLO, Solano Campus

Department of English

200 Maritime Academy Drive

Vallejo, CA 94590

codewey@calpoly.edu 

https://english.calpoly.edu/dr-colin-dewey

Education

• MA & Ph.D., English Language and Literature, Eighteenth Century British Literature, Critical Theory, Cornell University, Ithaca NY 2011.

• B.A., English with Highest Honors in the Major and Highest Distinction in General Scholarship. University of California, Berkeley CA 2003.

Professional Experience

Teaching & Research

• Professor of English, English Department, California Polytechnic State University SLO, Solano campus.  2025 to present

• Professor of English and Chair, Department of Culture and Communication. 2023-2025. Initial appointment 2013.

•  National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies, 2010.

• Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Fellow, Society for the Humanities at Cornell, 2008-09.

Administrative

• Fellow of the Nautical Institute, London, UK. Trustee, Executive Committee 2023-; Governing Council 2017-23. US West Coast Branch Secretary 2018-2021; Branch Chair 2015-18.

• Melville Society, Murray Endowment Trustee 2024-, Executive Secretary 2017-19; Associate Secretary 2014-16; Nominating Committee Chair 2010-12.

Maritime

• USCG Master of Steam and Motor Vessels of not more than 200 gross tons, Mate 1600 GT.

• Able-Bodied Seaman, Unlimited

• USCG Quartermaster enlisted 1982 Honorably discharged 1988.

Grants

Humanities Initiatives, Prof. Margaret Cohen, Stanford University, Project Director (PI), National Endowment for the Humanities, $150,000, June 2025-June 2027, "Developing an Oceanic Humanities Curriculum," Member of the Project Team and outside consultant. Funded (funding withdrawn by DOGE January 2025).

Publications 

“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

Presenter

2025 "Maritime Melville, or: Oceanic Humanities as Craft" Oceanic Melville: the 14th International Herman Melville Conference, Avery Point, Connecticut. June 16-20.

2025 "The Berwind Mutiny and Corrina, Corrina: Critical Oceanic Humanities Today" Oceanic Humanities, American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference. Online, May 30-31.

2025 "Craft in Ocean Studies Pedagogy, or the ‘Work’ of Working Together" Waves of Convergence: Ocean Sciences and Ocean Humanities, Hopkins Marine Station, Pacific Grove, California. Hosted by the Department of English and the Oceans Department, Stanford University, February 6-7.

2024 “#NotAllShips? The Political Unconscious and Seafaring Today”  Center for the Study of the Novel Annual Conference, Stanford University, “Stories and the Seas” 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. 

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.

2004, 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 2004.

Organizer

2022, "MD24: San Francisco’s 24-hour Moby-Dick marathon 2022 Public Lecture Series" presented by San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, San Francisco Maritime National Park Association, Department of Culture and Communication, CSU Maritime Academy. September-October.

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.

Courses Taught (* new courses)

California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo 

Graduate Seminar in British Literature: Romantics (ENGL 5512)

Literary Themes: Literature of the Sea (ENGL 3611)*

California State University, Maritime Academy, Vallejo California 

Literature and the Environment (EGL325)*

British Literatuyre of the Sea (EGL 309)*

Globalization of Culture (HUM325)*

World Literature of the Sea (EGL315) 

Maritime Culture (HUM350) *

Maritime History of the U. S. (HIS300) 

Introduction to Maritime Culture (HUM195) *

Advanced Writing (EGL300)

Introduction to Literature (EGL200) 

Critical Thinking (EGL220) 

Perspectives in Culture: The Ancient World through the Renaissance (HUM101)

English Composition (EGL100) 

Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Country and City: Virtue and Vice in 18th Century English Literature (100) *

Adventures in Nature: American Literature and the Atlantic (100) *

Sea Stories - Exploring Oceanic and Maritime Texts (100) *

Selected Awards and Honors 

2024, Cal Maritime Outstanding Scholar Award.

2018, Cal Maritime Distinguished Service Award.

2017, President’s Cabinet Award for Exemplary Service to Cal Maritime.

2014-17, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant. “Cal Maritime Ocean Initiative.”

2016, CSU Educational Experience Enhancement Award, 2015-16.

2015, Cal Maritime Distinguished Teaching Award.

2015, President’s Mission Achievement Award Grant, “Maritime Film Series.”

2014, President’s Team Achievement Award: Leadership Development Task Force, Cal Maritime.

2014, CSU Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity Grant Award, Cal Maritime.

2011, Gerald E. Morris Prize for Best Maritime Studies Article in 2010, G.W. Blunt White Library. Mystic Seaport

2010, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies.

2009, Society for the Humanities at Cornell Dissertation Research Award.

2008-9, Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Fellow, Society for the Humanities at Cornell. 

2004, Phi Beta Kappa, U. C. Berkeley.

Service to Scholarship and the Profession

Scientific [editorial] Committee, "Maree: Itinerari antropologici" series, edited by Matteo Aria, Prospero Editore, Milan, 2023 ongoing.

Manuscript reviewer & editor, "Maritime Humanities, 1400-1800" series, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2022 ongoing.

The Nautical Institute, Trustee and EB Director, 2023; West Coast US, Honorary Secretary, 2019-2021; West Coast US, Chairman, 2018.

The Melville Society, Executive Secretary 2016-19, Murray Endowment Trustee, 2024.

CSUM General Education Committee, 2016-17

2017, Emerging Leaders Program, American Association of State Colleges and Universities, Georgetown, Washington DC

CSUM School of Letters and Sciences development committee 2016-17, 2017-18

Nautical Institute UK, International Governing Council member 2017-22; Hon. Vice-Chair West Coast U.S. Branch, 2016-17

CSUM Academic Senate Executive Committee, 2015-2017, Vice Chair 2015-16

The Maritime Film Festival at Cal Maritime presented by the Department of Culture and Communication and the Cal Maritime Library, co-founder and organizing committee co-chair, 2013-17.

Culture and Communication “Excellence in Writing” Awards Committee, founder and chair 2014-17 (ongoing).

CSU Maritime Academic Master Plan Concept Task Force, 2014 –2015.

President’s Leadership Development Task Force, California Maritime Academy: Chair, Academic Sub-Committee; Member representing Maritime Policy and Management Faculty, Aug 2013-Sep 2014. 

 “e-Navigation underway,” an International Conference, California Maritime Academy, Chair, Review Committee. April 3-4, 2014.

California Maritime Academy Faculty Senate ad hoc Committee on the Taillories Declaration, Fall 2013.

Selected Professional and Scholarly Affiliations

American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. (2008-)

North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (2000-)

International Conference on Romanticism (2010-)

The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (2010-)

The Friends of Coleridge (2010-)

The Melville Society (1998-)

Modern Language Association (2000-)

Nautical Institute (2012-)

Royal Institute of Navigation (2023-)

Sailors’ Union of the Pacific (1987-)