Steve Mentz
Biographic Data
| ID | 1003737 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steve Mentz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steve |
| FAMILY NAME | Mentz |
| SIGNATURE | MENTZ S |
| AFFILIATIONS | St. John's University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7118-798X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Blue American Forms
This article explores two canonical American novels, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) and Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon (1997), as explorations of the relationship between American literary culture and oceanic space. The tools and methodologies of the Blue Humanities enable these two novels to reveal how the physical and symbolic structures of the ocean shape the ambitions and efforts of American literature. In specific detail, the contributio…
Above the Water or in It? Episodes in the Global History of Swimming
Humans have been swimming in different modes and techniques since before recorded history, but a distinctive inflection point in the history of global swimming appears in the eighteenth century. Europeans, through their global travels and colonial practices, encountered many human cultures, from Africa to North America to the Caribbean, whose inhabitants were more skilled in the water then they were. The contrast between the American front crawl …
A poetics of planetary water
The blue humanities in the early 2020s appears on the cusp of transformation. What has over the past 20 years or so been primarily scholarship about oceans and transoceanic travel has begun to take stock of other kinds of planetary water, including the water in human bodies, glacial ice, and water vapor. This article returns to the influence of one of the sub-discipline’s important early figures, the late historian John Gillis. Thinking about Gil…
Surfing the Sublime
Surfing the Sublime:Tim Winton's Breath and Eco-Heroism Steve Mentz (bio) The sublime represents an ecological problem. Breathing poses an entangled solution. Surfing, in which a human body stands upright inside a rotating barrel of unbreathable whitewater, provides a way to imagine the connection between these two things. The sublime has represented an elevated category of literary language since the classical writer Longinus's On the Sublime (~…
Shakespeare and the Comedy of Enchantment, written by Cartwright, Kent
Digging the Past
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Neither Letters nor Swimming”
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
A Cultural History of the Sea in the Early Modern Age
For the first time during the Early Modern period, ships regularly traveled between and among all of basins that comprise the World Ocean. During this period European mariners ventured into new waters, where they encountered new trading partners, new environments, and new opportunities. In the Caribbean and Atlantic coast of the Americas, European mariners sought everything from pearls to gold to codfish, and in pursuing these resources they frac…
Learning an Inclusive Blue Humanities
Hollywood films such as Pixar’s Moana (2016) and Warner Brothers’ Aquaman (2018) have drawn on the aesthetics and stories of the island cultures of Oceania to inform their narratives. In doing so, these works have both succeeded and failed to respect and engage with oceanic cultural knowledge, providing a cultural vehicle to expand communication, while also exploiting Oceanic culture for financial gain. Cultural tropes and stereotypes pose a heav…
Is Compassion an Oceanic Feeling
The emotional connections that humans feel with other humans seem quite distinct from the ‘oceanic feeling’ that confronts us when solitary mortals face the great waters. Uniting these discourses requires drawing together the myriad resources of sea poetry, canonical novels, and multiple theoretical traditions from Freudian psychoanalysis to the ‘blue’ (or oceanic) humanities and contemporary environmental studies. Shifting from narrowly human to…
The Routledge Companion to Marine and Maritime Worlds, 1400–1800
Ocean Seeing
We like to see the sea. The glitter of light scattered by waveswell catches our eyes and diverts our imaginations. It's not just high-end real estate developers whose gazes get captured by a water view. There's something about water and sight. Joseph Conrad's The Mirror of the Sea has words for it, as it does for so many watery things: "To see, to see!-this is the craving of the sailor, as of the rest of blind humanity." 1 Like Conrad's sailor, I…
Experience Is Better than Knowledge
The development of early modern marine science brought intellectual innovations into contact with physical encounters in oceanic environments. Many important scientific developments took shape from the decks of ships, or during the disorienting moments when human bodies immersed themselves in salt water. Prolonged physical encounters with the ocean were essential to intellectual history. This essay joins together experiential elements of premoder…
Green Comedy
The marriage-driven and reconciliatory structures of Shakespeare’s comic form resemble traditional ecological understandings of the interconnections in nature. Over the past forty years, literary ecocriticism has explored parallels between the way literary texts are formed and ecological structures. One seminal claim that helped launch the ecocritical movement in the 1970s was biologist Joseph Meeker’s assertion that comedy is the genre of ecolog…
Stone Voices
Stone VoicesGeomaterialism in the Ecohumanities Steve Mentz (bio) Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Stone: An Inhuman Ecology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. Elizabeth Ellsworth and Jamie Kruse, eds. Making the Geologic Now: Responses to the Material Conditions of Everyday Life. Brooklyn: Punctum Books, 2013. Eric Gidal. Ossianic Uncomformities: Bardic Poetry in the Industrial Age. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015. Chris…
Hurricanes, Tempests, and the Meteorological Globe
Why did Shakespeare not name his stormy weather play The Hurricane? The question may seem trivial, but it speaks to the ways that new empirical knowledge entered early modern English culture during the first age of globalization. In choosing the Latinate word ‘tempest,’ with literary connections to poets such as Virgil and etymological links to the French temps (weather) and Latin tempus (time), Shakespeare placed his play squarely within classic…
The Bermuda assemblage
Shipwreck Modernity
Mapping Uncertainty
Research Article| September 01 2014 Mapping Uncertainty: Marine Cartography, the Wright-Molyneaux Map, and Twelfth Night Steve Mentz Steve Mentz St. John's University [email protected] Steve Mentz is professor of English at St. John's University in New York City. He is the author of Romance for Sale in Early Modern England (2004), At the Bottom of Shakespeare's Ocean (2009), two co-edited collections, and many articles on Shakespeare, ecological…
A poetics of nothing
European Erotic Romance
Victor Skretkowicz. European Erotic Romance: Philhellene Protestantism, Renaissance Translation and English Literary Politics. The Manchester Spenser. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. vi +394 pp. £60. ISBN: 978–0–7190–7970–2. - Volume 65 Issue 1
The Fabulous Dark Cloister
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Shakespeare, Authority, Sexuality
Alan Sinfield. Shakespeare, Authority, Sexuality: Unfinished Business in Cultural Materialism. Accents on Shakespeare. London: Routledge, 2006. xxii + 226 pp. index. bibl. $33.95. ISBN: 0-415-40236-0. - Volume 60 Issue 2
Shakespeare's Tragedies
Rogues and Early Modern English Culture
"Those at the periphery of society often figure obsessively for those at its center, and never more so than with the rogues of early modern England. Whether as social fact or literary fiction-or both, simultaneously-the marginal rogue became ideologically central and has remained so for historians, cultural critics, and literary critics alike. In this collection, early modern rogues represent the range, diversity, and tensions within early modern…
A poetics of planetary water
The blue humanities in the early 2020s appears on the cusp of transformation. What has over the past 20 years or so been primarily scholarship about oceans and transoceanic travel has begun to take stock of other kinds of planetary water, including the water in human bodies, glacial ice, and water vapor. This article returns to the influence of one of the sub-discipline’s important early figures, the late historian John Gillis. Thinking about Gil…
The Routledge Companion to Marine and Maritime Worlds, 1400–1800
Experience Is Better than Knowledge
The development of early modern marine science brought intellectual innovations into contact with physical encounters in oceanic environments. Many important scientific developments took shape from the decks of ships, or during the disorienting moments when human bodies immersed themselves in salt water. Prolonged physical encounters with the ocean were essential to intellectual history. This essay joins together experiential elements of premoder…
Surfing the Sublime
Surfing the Sublime:Tim Winton's Breath and Eco-Heroism Steve Mentz (bio) The sublime represents an ecological problem. Breathing poses an entangled solution. Surfing, in which a human body stands upright inside a rotating barrel of unbreathable whitewater, provides a way to imagine the connection between these two things. The sublime has represented an elevated category of literary language since the classical writer Longinus's On the Sublime (~…
A Cultural History of the Sea in the Early Modern Age
For the first time during the Early Modern period, ships regularly traveled between and among all of basins that comprise the World Ocean. During this period European mariners ventured into new waters, where they encountered new trading partners, new environments, and new opportunities. In the Caribbean and Atlantic coast of the Americas, European mariners sought everything from pearls to gold to codfish, and in pursuing these resources they frac…
Green Comedy
The marriage-driven and reconciliatory structures of Shakespeare’s comic form resemble traditional ecological understandings of the interconnections in nature. Over the past forty years, literary ecocriticism has explored parallels between the way literary texts are formed and ecological structures. One seminal claim that helped launch the ecocritical movement in the 1970s was biologist Joseph Meeker’s assertion that comedy is the genre of ecolog…
A poetics of nothing
Rogues and Early Modern English Culture
"Those at the periphery of society often figure obsessively for those at its center, and never more so than with the rogues of early modern England. Whether as social fact or literary fiction-or both, simultaneously-the marginal rogue became ideologically central and has remained so for historians, cultural critics, and literary critics alike. In this collection, early modern rogues represent the range, diversity, and tensions within early modern…
Shakespeare's Tragedies
Shakespeare, Authority, Sexuality
Alan Sinfield. Shakespeare, Authority, Sexuality: Unfinished Business in Cultural Materialism. Accents on Shakespeare. London: Routledge, 2006. xxii + 226 pp. index. bibl. $33.95. ISBN: 0-415-40236-0. - Volume 60 Issue 2
European Erotic Romance
Victor Skretkowicz. European Erotic Romance: Philhellene Protestantism, Renaissance Translation and English Literary Politics. The Manchester Spenser. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. vi +394 pp. £60. ISBN: 978–0–7190–7970–2. - Volume 65 Issue 1
The Fabulous Dark Cloister
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
A poetics of nothing
Mapping Uncertainty
Research Article| September 01 2014 Mapping Uncertainty: Marine Cartography, the Wright-Molyneaux Map, and Twelfth Night Steve Mentz Steve Mentz St. John's University [email protected] Steve Mentz is professor of English at St. John's University in New York City. He is the author of Romance for Sale in Early Modern England (2004), At the Bottom of Shakespeare's Ocean (2009), two co-edited collections, and many articles on Shakespeare, ecological…
Shipwreck Modernity
The Bermuda assemblage
Hurricanes, Tempests, and the Meteorological Globe
Why did Shakespeare not name his stormy weather play The Hurricane? The question may seem trivial, but it speaks to the ways that new empirical knowledge entered early modern English culture during the first age of globalization. In choosing the Latinate word ‘tempest,’ with literary connections to poets such as Virgil and etymological links to the French temps (weather) and Latin tempus (time), Shakespeare placed his play squarely within classic…
Green Comedy
The marriage-driven and reconciliatory structures of Shakespeare’s comic form resemble traditional ecological understandings of the interconnections in nature. Over the past forty years, literary ecocriticism has explored parallels between the way literary texts are formed and ecological structures. One seminal claim that helped launch the ecocritical movement in the 1970s was biologist Joseph Meeker’s assertion that comedy is the genre of ecolog…
Stone Voices
Stone VoicesGeomaterialism in the Ecohumanities Steve Mentz (bio) Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Stone: An Inhuman Ecology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. Elizabeth Ellsworth and Jamie Kruse, eds. Making the Geologic Now: Responses to the Material Conditions of Everyday Life. Brooklyn: Punctum Books, 2013. Eric Gidal. Ossianic Uncomformities: Bardic Poetry in the Industrial Age. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015. Chris…
Ocean Seeing
We like to see the sea. The glitter of light scattered by waveswell catches our eyes and diverts our imaginations. It's not just high-end real estate developers whose gazes get captured by a water view. There's something about water and sight. Joseph Conrad's The Mirror of the Sea has words for it, as it does for so many watery things: "To see, to see!-this is the craving of the sailor, as of the rest of blind humanity." 1 Like Conrad's sailor, I…
Experience Is Better than Knowledge
The development of early modern marine science brought intellectual innovations into contact with physical encounters in oceanic environments. Many important scientific developments took shape from the decks of ships, or during the disorienting moments when human bodies immersed themselves in salt water. Prolonged physical encounters with the ocean were essential to intellectual history. This essay joins together experiential elements of premoder…
Learning an Inclusive Blue Humanities
Hollywood films such as Pixar’s Moana (2016) and Warner Brothers’ Aquaman (2018) have drawn on the aesthetics and stories of the island cultures of Oceania to inform their narratives. In doing so, these works have both succeeded and failed to respect and engage with oceanic cultural knowledge, providing a cultural vehicle to expand communication, while also exploiting Oceanic culture for financial gain. Cultural tropes and stereotypes pose a heav…
Is Compassion an Oceanic Feeling
The emotional connections that humans feel with other humans seem quite distinct from the ‘oceanic feeling’ that confronts us when solitary mortals face the great waters. Uniting these discourses requires drawing together the myriad resources of sea poetry, canonical novels, and multiple theoretical traditions from Freudian psychoanalysis to the ‘blue’ (or oceanic) humanities and contemporary environmental studies. Shifting from narrowly human to…
The Routledge Companion to Marine and Maritime Worlds, 1400–1800
A Cultural History of the Sea in the Early Modern Age
For the first time during the Early Modern period, ships regularly traveled between and among all of basins that comprise the World Ocean. During this period European mariners ventured into new waters, where they encountered new trading partners, new environments, and new opportunities. In the Caribbean and Atlantic coast of the Americas, European mariners sought everything from pearls to gold to codfish, and in pursuing these resources they frac…
Shakespeare and the Comedy of Enchantment, written by Cartwright, Kent
Digging the Past
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Neither Letters nor Swimming”
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
A poetics of planetary water
The blue humanities in the early 2020s appears on the cusp of transformation. What has over the past 20 years or so been primarily scholarship about oceans and transoceanic travel has begun to take stock of other kinds of planetary water, including the water in human bodies, glacial ice, and water vapor. This article returns to the influence of one of the sub-discipline’s important early figures, the late historian John Gillis. Thinking about Gil…
Surfing the Sublime
Surfing the Sublime:Tim Winton's Breath and Eco-Heroism Steve Mentz (bio) The sublime represents an ecological problem. Breathing poses an entangled solution. Surfing, in which a human body stands upright inside a rotating barrel of unbreathable whitewater, provides a way to imagine the connection between these two things. The sublime has represented an elevated category of literary language since the classical writer Longinus's On the Sublime (~…
Blue American Forms
This article explores two canonical American novels, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) and Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon (1997), as explorations of the relationship between American literary culture and oceanic space. The tools and methodologies of the Blue Humanities enable these two novels to reveal how the physical and symbolic structures of the ocean shape the ambitions and efforts of American literature. In specific detail, the contributio…
Above the Water or in It? Episodes in the Global History of Swimming
Humans have been swimming in different modes and techniques since before recorded history, but a distinctive inflection point in the history of global swimming appears in the eighteenth century. Europeans, through their global travels and colonial practices, encountered many human cultures, from Africa to North America to the Caribbean, whose inhabitants were more skilled in the water then they were. The contrast between the American front crawl …
Art (17 works) · History (13 works) · Literature (12 works) · History (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Art history (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works)