Publications

Books

• The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville. Ed. with an Introduction and notes. Modern Library. Random House, 2003. [Includes a fluid text edition of selected manuscripts.]
  
• The Fluid Text: A Theory of Revision and Editing for Book and Screen. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. 312 pp.
  
• Melville's Tales, Poems, and Other Writings. Modern Library. Random House, 2001. 622 pp. [Anthology of Melville's writing, with introduction, head notes, innovative “fluid text” sections on Melville’s creative process, and annotations.]
  
• Melville’s Evermoving Dawn: Centennial Essays. Ed. John Bryant and Robert Milder. Kent State University Press, 1997. 419 pp.
  
• Typee, by Herman Melville. Ed. John Bryant. New York: Penguin American Classics, 1996; rev. 2005. 328 pp. including introduction, note on text, annotations, lists of expurgations and emendations, and a reading text of the Typee manuscript fragment.
  
• Melville and Repose: The Rhetoric of Humor in the American Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. 313 pp.
  
• A Companion to Melville Studies. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986. 906 pp. Indices.
  
• Melville Dissertations, 1924-1980: An Annotated Bibliography and Subject Index. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983. 167 pp. Indices.

Electronic Edition

• Herman Melville’s Typee: An Electronic Fluid Text Edition. Rotunda Electronic Imprint. University of Virginia Press, 2006.

Editorship

• Longman Critical Editions. General Editor. A series of American and British critical editions based on authorial, editorial, and cultural revision, for classroom and critical use. [To be launched 2006.]
  
• Pearson Custom Library of American Literature. General Editor. An innovative "print-on-demand" anthology drawing upon a database of over 1700 reliably edited texts (from 1500 to 2000) to be selected by instructors and delivered to classrooms through state of the art custom publishing technologies. Includes period introductions, author head notes, bibliographies, annotations, and pedagogical features. With David Shields (associate editor), Jacquelyn McLendon, Cristanne Miller, Robin Schulze, and myself as period editors. Pearson Custom Publishing, 2003.
  
• Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies. Established by the Melville Society in 1999, this journal features essays, notes, creative writing, and reviews related to Melville and his circle. Along with the newsletter Melville Society Extracts, it provides updates on Melville scholarship, is included in both MLA and ALS bibliographies, and is distributed to 700 individuals and 100 research libraries. I created Leviathan and currently perform all editorial functions under the auspices of the Melville Society. Member, Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ).
  
• Ishmail. As editor of the Melville Society, I managed the society’s on-line discussion group, under the auspices of Hofstra University (1994-2005). The group has about 500 international subscribers.
  
• Melville Electronic Library [Forthcoming]. I am directing the initiative to establish reliable electronic texts of Melville’s works and a series of innovative programs to access and manipulate those texts.
  

Chapters in Books

• Preface by John Bryant. In Melville and Milton, ed. Robin Grey. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2004. [Updated reprinting of the “Melville and Milton” issue of Leviathan 4:1 and 2 (March and October 2002), which includes a transcription of Melville’s annotations of his copy of Milton’s works and five critical essays.]
  
• “The Native Gazes: Sexuality and Self-Colonization in Melville’s Typee.” In Melville Among the Nations, ed. Sanford E. Marovitz. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2001.
  
• “Moby-Dick as Revolution.” In The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville. Ed. Robert S. Levine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. 65-90.
  
• “The Persistence of Melville: Representative Writer for a Multicultural Age.” In Melville’s Evermoving Dawn: Centennial Essays. Ed. John Bryant and Robert Milder. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997. Pp. 3-28.
  
• “Manuscript, Revision, Edition: Reading Typee with Trifocals.” In Melville’s Evermoving Dawn: Centennial Essays. Ed. John Bryant and Robert Milder. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997. Pp. 297-306.
  
• “Prospects for the Study of Herman Melville.” In Prospects for the Study of American Literature. Ed. Richard Kopley. New York: New York University Press, 1997. Pp. 58-90.
  
• "Toning Down the Green: Melville's Picturesque." In Savage Eye: Melville and the Visual Arts. Ed. Christopher Sten. Kent State University Press, 1991. Pp. 145-61.
  
• “The Confidence-Man: Melville’s Problem Novel.” In A Companion to Melville Studies. Ed. John Bryant. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986. Pp. 315-74.
  
  

Articles

• “Versions of Moby-Dick: Plagiarism, Censorship, and Some Notes toward an Ethics of the Fluid Text,” Variants 4 (2005): 1-27.
  
• “Melville’s Rose Poems: As They Fell,” Arizona Quarterly 53.1 (Spring 1997): 49-84.
  
• “Politics, Imagination, and the Fluid Text.” Special Issue: Editing and the Imagination. Studies in the Literary Imagination 29.2 (Fall, 1996): 89-107.
  
• “Poe’s Ape of Unreason: Humor, Ritual and Culture.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 51 (June 1996): 16-52.
  
• “Clifford Ross on Melville and Modern Art: An Interview.” Melville Society Extracts No. 102 (September 1995): 1-8.
  
• “Melville, Twain, and Quixote: Variations on the Comic Debate.” Studies in American Humor ns 3.1 (1994): 1-27.
  
• "Melville's Typee Manuscript and the Limits of Historicism." Modern Language Studies 21 (Spring 1991): 3-10.
  
• "Melville's L-Word: First Intentions and Final Readings in Typee," New England Quarterly 63 (March 1990): 120-31.
  
• "Situation Comedy of the Sixties: The Evolution of a Popular Genre," Studies in American Humor 7 [n.s.] (January 1989): 118-39.
  
• "Melville's Comic Debate: Geniality and the Aesthetics of Repose." Rpt. in On Melville: The Best from American Literature. Ed. Louis J. Budd and Edwin Cady. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988. Pp. 254-73.
  
• "Citizens of a World to Come: Melville and the Millennial Cosmopolite," American Literature 59 (March 1987): 20-36.
  
• "Melville, "Little Henry," and the Process of Composition: A Peep at the Typee Manuscript," Melville Society Extracts No. 67 (September 1986):1-4.
  
• "Allegory and Breakdown in The Confidence-Man: Melville's Comedy of Doubt, Philological Quarterly 65 (Winter 1986):113-30.
  
• "Melville and Charles F. Briggs: Working a Passage to Billy Budd," English Language Notes 22 (June 1985):48-54.
  
• "Comedy and Argument: A Humanistic Approach to Composition," Jour nal of General Education 36.2 (1984):126-140.
  
• "'Nowhere a Stranger': Melville and Cosmopolitanism," Nineteenth Century Fiction 39 (December 1984):275-91.
  
• "Herman Melville: His Real and Stamped Face," Melville Society Extracts No. 58 (September 1984):4-5.
  
• "Argument and Word Play: The Uses of Simile," Freshman English News 13 (Winter 1984):22-24.
  
• "Melville's Comic Debate: Geniality and the Aesthetics of Repose," American Literature 55 (May 1983):151-170.
  
• "Trends in Melville Scholarship," Melville Society Extracts No. 50 (May 1982):12-4.
  
• "Stamp and Coin Collecting." In Handbook of American Popular Cul ture, vol. III, ed. M. Thomas Inge (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood, 1981). Pp. 459-496. Rpt. in Concise Histories of American Popular Culture, (Greenwood, 1982). Pp. 389-98.
  
• "Radio and Television Situation Comedies: An Annotated Checklist," American Humor: An Interdisciplinary Newsletter, (Spring 1979):14-31.
  
• "Emma, Lucy, and the American Situation Comedy of Manners," Journal of Popular Culture 13 (Fall 1979):248-56.
  
• "A Usable Pastoralism: Leo Marx's Method in The Machine in the Garden," American Studies 16 (Spring 1975):63-72.

 

Review Essays

• “Pierre and Pierre: Editing and Illustrating Melville. Review essay of Pierre; or, The Ambiguities. The Kraken Edition. Ed. Hershel Parker. Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. College English 60.3 (March 1998): 336-41.
  
• “Democracy, Being, and the Art of Becoming America.” Review essay of The Errant Art of Moby-Dick: The Canon, the Cold War, and the Struggle for American Studies by William V. Spanos and Our America: Nativism, Modernism, and Pluralism by Walter Benn Michaels. College English 59.6 (October 1997): 705-11.
  
• “Israel Potter Old and New: The Discourse Between Facsimile and Critical Edition," Resources for American Literary Study 21.2 (1995): 261-73.
  
• "Texts and Discourse: The New Moby-Dick," Resources for American Literary Study 18.2 (1992): 179-193.

 

Reviews

• Purloined Letters: Originality and Repetition in American Literature by Joseph N. Riddel. American Literature (March 1997): 209-10.
  
• Melville's Later Novels by William B. Dillingham. Studies in American Fiction 16 (Spring 1988):121-24.
  
• Flush Times and Fast Talk by William E. Lenz, American Literature 57 (December 1985):674-5.
  
• "'The Ways of Creativity': Pursuing Melville's Imagination," Rev. essay of Pursuing Melville by Merton M. Sealts, Jr. and Melville's Confidence-Man by Tom Quirk, Modern Language Studies (1984):84-90.
  
• Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Herman Melville by Michael Paul Rogin, American Literature 56 (May 1984):278-80.
  
• Stove by a Whale by Thomas F. Heffernan, Journal of the Early Republic 3 (Spring 1983):97-8.

Interviews

http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2001/12/20011227_b_main.asp