Register Here for the Zoom Seminar
Saturday, 5 November 2022
Welcome & Lecture at 11:00 AM ET, Q&A to Follow
Seminars are free to attend, although we hope you will support the Series with a suggested $10 Seminar Guest donation.
You won’t want to miss this special seminar with SUNY Maritime Professor Dr. John Rocco for an overview of one of his most popular courses, Hollywood and the Sea: Maritime Culture and Film. The seminar will explore Hollywood’s depiction of the maritime realms of war, work, law, and discovery, examining important themes and subjects raised by the films—the voyage narrative, American whaling, famous naval battles, slavery, World War II, and maritime crime and punishment. Dr. Rocco will guide us through the history of maritime Hollywood through the work of directors such as Buster Keaton, Michael Curtiz, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Elia Kazan, Edward Dmytryk, John Huston, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg.
For an early look at some of the films Dr. Rocco highlights in his course, see Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), Down to the Sea in Ships (1922), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 and 1962), Two Years Before the Mast (1946), Moby Dick (1930 and 1956), Captain Blood (1935), The Long Voyage Home (1940), Mister Roberts (1955), The Battle of Midway (1942), They Were Expendable (1945), Action in the North Atlantic (1943), The African Queen (1951), The Caine Mutiny (1954), On the Waterfront (1954), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Breaking Point (1950), Jaws (1975), Amistad (1997), and Apocalypse Now (1979).
About the Speaker
In addition to being a well-loved professor of composition, literature, film, and other graduate studies, Dr. Rocco is also an author and the coordinator of the Maritime and Naval Studies (MNST) master’s program at SUNY Maritime. He has long been involved with digitizing years of records from Sailors’ Snug Harbor and received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.