Isolation and justice

resnikJudith Resnik, the Arthur Liman Professor of Law at Yale Law School, will present “Not Isolating Isolation: Whippings, Solitary Confinement, Prisoner Disenfranchisement, and the Bounding of Licit Punishment” on Nov. 3 at 5 p.m. in Barat House on the BC’s Newton Campus. Resnik is an award-winning scholar and author who teaches federalism, procedure, courts, prisons, equality, citizenship, feminism, and local and global interventions to diminish inequalities and subordination. Her publications include Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms (with Dennis Curtis); Federal Courts Stories (co-edited with Vicki C. Jackson), and Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender (co-edited with Seyla Benhabib). Resnik is the founding director of the Arthur Liman Program, which joined with the Association of State Correctional Administrators in publishing Time-in- Cell: The Liman-ASCA 2014 National Survey of Administrative Segregation in Prison, a report on both the numbers of people and the conditions in solitary confinement nationwide. Resnik is a recipient of the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the Commission on Women of the American Bar Association; the Outstanding Scholar of the Year Award from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation; the Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Prize, awarded to outstanding faculty in higher education in the fields of psychology or law, and the Arabella Babb Mansfield Award, the highest honor presented by the National Association of Women Lawyers. Sponsor: Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy.

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Roots of Gothic fiction

Jim Shanahan of Dublin City University will present “Suffering Rebellion: Ireland and the Roots of Gothic Fiction” on Nov. 2 at 4:00 p.m. in Connolly House on Hammond Street. Shanahan has published widely on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction, with particular emphasis on Irish historical fiction relating to the 1798 rebellion, and the novels of Charles Lever. He has also contributed articles to the Literary Encyclopedia Online and more than 120 articles to the Dictionary of Irish Biography. Sponsor: Center for Irish Programs. RSVP requested.

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Disability bioethics

disabilitybookRosemarie Garland-Thomson, co-director of the Disability Studies Initiative at Emory University, will present “Disability Bioethics: Toward Theory and Practice” on Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. in the Murray Room of Yawkey Center. Garland-Thomson, who is a professor of English at Emory, is an expert in the fields of disability studies, American literature and culture, bioethics, and women’s studies. Her work develops the field of critical disability studies in the health humanities, broadly understood, to bring forward disability access, inclusion and identity to communities inside and outside of the academy. She is the author of Staring: How We Look and Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature, and editor of Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. Her current book project is “Habitable Worlds: Toward a Disability Bioethics.” Sponsor: Park Street Corporation Speaker Series.

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Undocumented and coming of age in America

limboRoberto Gonzales, author of Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America, will give a lecture as part of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice’s conversation series “After Obama: What is the future of our ‘Nation of Immigrants’?” Gonzales’ talk will be on Nov. 3 at noon in Campion Hall, room 139.  His book is the result of a 12-year project following 150 teens and young adults in the Los Angeles area and detailing how their lives are shaped and stunted by their lack of legal status. RSVP Required. | NBC News interview with Gonzales

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Daniel

danielProfessor of German Studies Michael Resler has published Daniel Von Dem Blühenden Tal, a critical edition of Daniel, one of the earliest post-classical Arthurian romances. His volume includes the normalized Middle High German text with an introduction, selected bibliography, index of proper names, and a reproduction of the first verse of the original manuscript. Resler spoke about the story of Daniel with Jonas Barciauskas of BC Libraries.

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Black resistance

tamura-lomaxThe African and African Diaspora Studies Program will present “Imagining Black Resistance in the House that Slavery Built,” a lecture and Q&A featuring Tamura Lomax, co-founder of the Feminist Wire. Her talk will explore the possibilities of black resistance in the neo-colonial, neo-liberalist digital age where the market, ranking, strangeness, expendability, orphanage, loss, discipline, and commodification are not solely problems “out there” in the world but “in here” in academic institutions. Lomax is co-editor of Womanist and Black Feminist Responses to Tyler Perry’s Productions and author of the upcoming book Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Black Religion and Black Popular Culture. Her talk will take place on Oct. 27 at 6 p.m. in Stokes Hall 195S.

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Sherry Kafka Wagner

Sherry Kafka Wagner stands amid her book collection in the Hotel Emma library.  Photo by Scott Ball.Nationally renowned urban planner, exhibition designer, and author Sherry Kafka Wagner will present “What the Best College Students Do: Reading, Writing, Creating. A Personal Account” on Oct. 27 at 5:30 p.m. in Higgins Hall, room 300. Wagner is the author of the novel, Hannah Jackson, which won the Friends of American Writers Award in Chicago and the Texas Writers Roundup award. Her play, The Man Who Loved God, is included in the collection Best Short Plays of 1968. She also penned two children’s books: Big Enough and I Need a Friend. Her life story is one of the vignettes in the acclaimed book by Ken Bain, What the Best College Students Do. Since the late 1960s, Wagner has been involved in urban design and exhibitions, working extensively with museums, aquariums, and visitor centers throughout the world.She is perhaps most known as one of the co-creators of the “River Walk” system in San Antonio, Texas. She recently donated her extensive private library of  3,700 volumes to the Hotel Emma in San Antonio, to serve as a house library for guests and interested readers. Sponsor: Heinz Bluhm Memorial Lecture Series. Co-sponsors: Institute for Liberal Arts, the Office of the Associate Dean for the Core, and the Dept. of Romance Languages and Literatures.

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The value of Beckett

beckettBoston College holds a major archive of the work of Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. On Oct. 27, Professor Ronan McDonald of the University of New South Wales, Australia, a leading authority on the works of Beckett and the literature of his time, will lecture on “The Value of Beckett.” His talk will take place at 5 p.m. in Devlin Hall, Room 008. McDonald’s publications include: Flann O’Brien & ModernismSamuel Beckett, Endgame, and Tragedy and Irish Literature: Synge, O’Casey, Beckett. Sponsor: Boston College Irish Studies Program. Free registration.

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Drone

drone-poemsKim Garcia, who teaches in the English Department, has published a new book of poetry that is a meditation on modern warfare in a technological age. Drone (The Backwaters Press, 2016) explores the human, animal, personal, and domestic aspects of wars being fought by the US. Garcia is the author of The Brighter House, winner of the 2015 White Pine Press Poetry Prize, and Madonna Magdalene. Her chapbook Tales of the Sisters won the 2015 Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Mississippi Review, Nimrod and Subtropics.

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Dissidence

dissidenceIn her new book, Philosophy and Dissidence in Cold War Europe (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016), Assistant Professor of Philosophy Aspen E. Brinton examines the ways Cold War dissidents in Central and Eastern Europe turned to the past for inspiration in order to change and transcend their present entrapment, contributing to a more general narrative about how to change one’s way of acting by altering one’s way of thinking. Brinton argues for a view of dissent as an existential search for mutual understanding and recognition, showing how dissidents’ ideas contribute to current conversations in political theory and philosophy about thinking and action. She was recently interviewed by Jonas Barciauskas of BC Libraries.

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