Massachusetts Maritime Academy is pleased to host a second maritime conference in the humanities at its campus on the Cape Cod Canal in Buzzards Bay, on April 12-14, 2012. The theme of the conference is sea-changes. The OED defines a sea-change as one “wrought by the sea,” an “alteration or metamorphosis, a radical change.” Shakespeare made the term famous in Ariel’s song from The Tempest: “Full fathom five thy father lies; / Of his bones are coral made; / Those were pearls that were his eyes: / Nothing of him that doth fade, / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange” (1.2.397-402). Proposals for single papers or panels of three speakers are invited on any aspect of the sea as a transformative power in literature, history, or culture, and in the lives of landsmen, mariners, writers, poets, and artists. The deadline for proposals is November 15, 2011. Please send proposals and brief vitae by that date to nautilus@maritime.edu. Selected papers presented at the conference will be published in The Nautilus: A Maritime Journal of Literature, History, and Culture.

The main conference venue will be the Academy’s new American Bureau of Shipping Information Commons, with state-of-the-art conference facilities and a full-mission bridge simulator. The tentative conference schedule includes an opening evening reception on April 12, 2012; a full day of plenary and panel sessions, luncheon, and conference dinner on April 13, 2012; and morning panel sessions and closing luncheon on April 14, 2012. When conference details are finalized in early 2012, registration for the event will be available both online via credit card and by mail-in registration form for those who wish to pay by check or money order. Please see the new Web site of The Nautilus, http://nautilus.maritime.edu, for conference details as they develop.