Tag Archives: blue humanities

Extra Credit: Close Reading Canals

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Thinking about which body of water feels the most personal to me was an interesting exercise. I come from the middle of the desert; Imperial Valley, CA, one of the hottest places on Earth, and the bodies of water in my immediacy are not naturally occurring. In my county, the largest bodies of water I see on a daily basis are canals running through our desert land. Despite being one of the hottest regions in the world, we do not experience water shortages because these canals, supplied by the Colorado River, feed our agricultural community with potable water year round. This, to me, exemplifies the blend of nature and man’s intervention in the creation of life: both factors had to be combined to sustain the life we lead today. I grew up watching these canals through my car window as we rode through town. It was when I started entering my teenage years that I realized I also had water to cherish in my own home, and I was lucky enough to not just be able to use it everyday, but also see it with my own eyes as I drive through my desert town. The flat, open landscape is the perfect backdrop to appreciate the contrast running water makes on dry land. It is difficult not to appreciate the ordinary beauty of these canals under the sun. The powerful rays bounce off the surface on a clear day and they sparkle in your vision. The water is constantly clear and mesmerizing, and perfectly reflects the deep blue sky. The edges of the water are framed by tangled vegetation that grows through the cracks of the concrete and it reminds you that life always finds a way.

And yet, these givers of life also bring death. One of the most shocking sights to me has always been at the edge of these canals, where you can often find a cross sticking out from the ground. The crosses are often simple; just two pieces of wood nailed together, with maybe an inscription of the name. Sometimes they are decorated with small fairy lights or artificial flowers, and sometimes they might even include a picture of a person. These are shrines to people that have suffered accidents, maybe gone swimming in the canal or tried crossing them for another reason, and have died by drowning as a result. Ever since I was a kid, this has been a constant motif in my landscape (in my hometown particularly, which is a border town), a reminder never to get in the canals, and of the fragility of life. We are an overwhelmingly Hispanic population, and these colorful shrines are just one more example of how Mexicans culturally deal with and process death. And yet that which can kill us also constantly gives us abundant life and prosperity as a community. Life and death coexist together in the running water of the canals. I was privileged enough to have grown up occasionally travelling to the beach on summer break, sometimes over here to San Diego or to beaches in Ensenada and Rosarito, or having access to a pool to play in once in a while. The people who played and died in the canals might have done so because they lacked this privilege, so their experience with water was tainted with considerably more danger than mine. It is in these situations that we can see how access to water recreationally (and otherwise) is not only a geographical question, but an economical one, and sometimes it means the difference between life and death. It isn’t something to be taken for granted.

In my hometown, we have a bridge that goes over one of these canals, and every time I cross it, I look over my shoulder to admire the calm surface of the water, even if for a second. Something I got from my mom, it has become a habit to always check the water level, see how we are doing. When the water is high, I always take a moment to mutter a quiet prayer: “Thank you, God,” for the blessing of water.

Final Project Proposal

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Final Project Proposal: I really want to elaborate on my second essay about illumination and how Melville uses whale oil and whalers to reflect on the actual cost of what humans are doing. The contradictions between whalers bringing the light to society while living and acting in the darkness. The whalemen are shown to be both creators and destroyers, and Melville shows quite clearly (ironically enough) that the line between these two is often quite blurry and hard to distinguish.

My thesis is going to argue that a whaleman’s very “life of light” is both his glory and his doom, always tied closely together. I will show this not only through the actual content of the novel but also through the physical grammar and syntax that Melville chooses to use through its structure and rhythm. “What begins as just a factual observation about whale oil, which happens to be the literal “food of light,” expands into a moral and metaphysical reflection on the cost of illumination itself. Melville’s language transforms physical light into a spiritual metaphor, complicating the whaleman’s apparent purity by revealing the violence and destruction that make such light possible in the first place.” 

Through this creative project I will be demonstrating this argument in an expanded essay of at least 6-8 pages with multiple sources such as Steve Mentz’ articles on the study of blue humanities. I chose this format because it gives me enough space to trace Melville’s symbolic patterns and connect them to broader environmental and ethical questions.

Flow > Fields: Fluid Mindset of the Ocean

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When I read Steve Mentz’s Ocean, the line that stuck with me the most was: “We need flow to know Ocean.” (xvi) That short sentence on page 2, to me, captures the whole spirit of the blue humanities. Flow isn’t just about water moving; it’s about how we think, how we connect, and how we let go of the old land-based metaphors that have shaped cultures for so long.

Mentz challenges us to stop thinking of “fields,” which sound fixed, solid, and agricultural, and instead to think in “currents,” which are always in motion. As we should be. That shift feels important because the ocean itself is never still. Knowledge about the ocean, and probably knowledge in general, cannot stay locked into stable and fixed categories. It has to move, to bend, to circulate around us. Flow becomes not only a method but also a mindset.

What I found powerful about this idea is that it kind of resists the comfort of any type of certainty. Fields produce neat harvests on a sort of schedule, whereas flows of the ocean can carry you into the unknown. Flow makes history “messier, more confusing, and less familiar” (Mentz xvi), and that’s a good thing. It reminds me that learning, like the sea, isn’t about arriving at a final, solid truth but more about engaging with change, turbulence, and unpredictability. That’s when we learn.

Thinking this way also changes how I picture the climate crisis. Rising seas aren’t just a threat but also a reminder of interconnection. Flow shows us that humans aren’t separate from the ocean but are caught up in its movements. To “know Ocean” is to accept that we live in fluidity, that stability is more of an illusion, and that survival might mean learning to move with the currents instead of trying to anchor ourselves against them.

Ment’s simple phrase has made me rethink how I will approach literature, history, and even my own writing. Maybe instead of looking for the solid ground in every text, I should be searching for the flow, the connections, the shifts, the messy but vital movements that carry meaning forward.

Extra Credit – Steve Mentz Questions

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  1. What first drew you to the ocean as a central focus, and how did that interest evolve into what is now the “blue humanities”?
  2. How do you think studying the ocean through literature can help us think differently about challenges such as climate change today?
  3. Are there any particular books or authors that you think students should read if they want to get a better sense of how literature connects to the ocean?
  4. What advice would you give to students who want to bring environmental or ocean-focused perspectives into their own writing?
  5. When you first started writing about the blue humanities, did you expect it to grow into the field it is now?

Extra Credit Questions For Mentz!

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I can’t wait to ask these questions in class! Maybe these will spark more questions people might have in the room!

  1. What other words/phrases would you say or use to describe blue humanities?
  2. As we see our world changing due to climate change, how can we relate this back to blue humanities and what can we do oursleves to educate people on what is happening in our world?
  3. Is there an art peice or anything that you would show to others to inspire them to learn more on blue humanities?
  4. Are there other poems that you would point to that you also enjoyed that are about the ocean besides Dickinson or Whitman’s?
  5. Where did your love of the ocean stem from to then bring you to study and write on this subject matter?

“Blue Humanities” and Modern Day Obsession with the Ocean

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This week while reading “The Blue Humanities”, this particular tidbit stood out to me: “A shift in attention from land to sea is under way in several fields simultaneously.” The piece goes on to explain how differing scientific fields have now shifted to an oceanic point of view, this quotation in particular got me thinking about how the ocean and all it offers, both real and imagined, are portrayed in popular culture.

Now, I’m going to be honest here. I grew up without cable, so I didn’t grow up with many popular “oceanic” tv shows, except for shows that talked about all kinds of animals, such as “Wild Kratts”. But in middle school, I began to have an obsession over mermaids. I was always binging “H2O” and “Mako Mermaids”, not to mention reading books with mermaids at the forefront, such as “Siren” by Kira Cass. And, as I look back at my pre-teen self, I realized how I romanticized the creatures. Because, in reality, the mythology behind them is so much more interesting than the “dumbed down” version of them in popular culture. Am I saying that these pieces are bad? Not by any means! But they do not portray mermaids at their core. Classically speaking, mermaids lured sailors to their deaths. And, while these pieces do portray mermaids as having extraordinary singing ability, they don’t portray the true deadliness of that power. (Which does make sense, as most of these are for kids. And who wants their child to watch sailors drown?)

That’s why nowadays I am more drawn into media that portrays mermaids more like the “monster” they are in old mythology, such as in ” Into the Drowning Deep” by Mira Grant. When you really get more in depth on the creatures, I find said media to be much more interesting, and feel much more real.

But it’s not only mermaids that have become main stream pop culture, but marine veterinarians as well. My best friend growing up’s favorite movie was “Dolphin Tale”. And now she’s studying to become a Wildlife Vet! This pop culture phenomenon is inspiring thousands of people to take an interest in oceans. While the more “dumbed-down” versions of ocean mythology are what have gained popularity, at least in main stream media, they have and will inspire future scientists and artists.

“Blackfish” also comes to mind. A group of activists fighting for the Ocean animals within the Sea World parks to be released into the wild, or, at the very least, gain better living conditions. We now value ocean life more than ever!

And what’s even more amazing is how the re-emergence of “Moby Dick” really started all of it! Scholars critiquing the whaling industry took center stage, pointing out it’s brutality. Because the process is described so in depth within the novel, we, as readers, are able to truly understand it. It shows how far we have come with how we treat our sea-faring friends, both within the real world, and with how we portray them within the pages of a book.

Returning to Our Beginnings – John Gillis’s article “The Blue Humanities”

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In his 2013 essay The Blue Humanities, John Gillis writes about the seemingly profound connection between modern Western culture and the sea. He writes, “The sea lurks in the imaginations of millions, if not billions, of people who will never test its waters. It is forever in our dreams and nightmares…” This line resonates with me on many levels. It broadly captures a paradox that speaks deeply: as our direct interaction with the sea becomes rarer, fewer people make their living from it; it gains a symbolic presence instead. For me, this mirrors how we often romanticize or maybe mythologize experiences that we have grown disconnected from.

I think that Gillis’s observations throughout his article perfectly capture the transition many of us have made: the more removed we become from it, the more the sea inhabits our dreams, our art, and our sense of wonder and curiosity. There’s also a psychological aspect to this: the more we lose direct contact with something, the more room there is for our imagination to fill in. The sea becomes less a physical place and more a canvas for freedom, or danger, depth, and mystery. Gillis points out that for much of Western history, writers and artists hardly looked at the water at all. Instead, it was just the gap between coasts. A space one had to cross in order to reach land. Artists painted the boats or animals within the waters, but not the waters themselves. Only when people no longer had to live on or by the ocean daily did it seem to become visible in new ways.

Another passage that struck me comes when Gillis writes: “Pristine nature, now in short supply in industrialized heartlands, found refuge in the oceans, while the mystery once associated with terra incognita relocated to the deeps. Simultaneously, the sublime, previously associated with mountains and forests, came to be associated with wild water.” This moment helped me to see how cultural ideas about beauty, wilderness, and awe are not fixed; they actually do shift as our environments change. Once people had cut down forests, climbed mountains, and mapped the land, the mystery they so desperately wanted was no longer available, so it had to be sought elsewhere: the sea.

I find this meaningful because it speaks to the way humans seem to always be searching for spaces that remind us of our smallness. I have the same feeling when standing next to the ocean—that feeling of insignificance but amazement. Gillis’s point helped me see that the sea is not just a physical reality but also a vessel for what we may have lost on land. The need for untouched beauty and mystery seems to stay with the ocean.

The Modern West: The Vast Sea

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I have always viewed the ocean with such hesitancy, afraid of what the water might contain—but why exactly is that?  That humans as a collective, have such a compelling fear towards this part of our world?

Perhaps because the ocean acts much like a beast as it roars recklessly—too close for comfort. Unlike the stars which are only a glimpse into the heavens, untouching in nature, unless we reach out to it, the ocean is willing and wanting to drag you into the depths of its underworld. 

However, despite this fear, I have an unrelenting urge to understand its dark beauty as a reflection of my own. I’ve learned now that the fear that I’ve come to associate the ocean with is imaginative at most, a product of projected emotions towards something I can’t fully comprehend, so my own mind chooses to fill in the gaps. 

“The human mind delights in grand visions of supernatural beings. And the sea is their very best medium, the only environment in which such giants . . . can be produced and developed.” (Jules Verne). 

This monstrous scale of how big the ocean is, is quite terrifying. However, looking at the ocean from the lens of modern western culture, we can draw similarities to these collective feelings, that help us explain why we feel this way while simultaneously learning more about the ocean and ourselves.  

The Western Front was initially characterized as dangerous, unfit for civilized life, and full of the unknown both good and bad–much like how people view the ocean. It wasn’t until man took that step into the wild that he was able to see the enriching qualities of what the land had to offer in terms of what we can extract from it and what we can extract from within ourselves by understanding the nature around us. 

However, that’s not to say that we don’t have our own monsters inside us that the water reflects quite clearly back at us. Monsters that drive us to pursue and kill wonderful creatures to exchange for profit. Much like the west, the ocean is a wilderness of its own right—having been subjected to the same cruelties of the effects of industrialization.

 Shifting the view of thinking about the land by understanding it as a part of us, humanizes it, and propels us away from that fear of the unknown.