Rosemarie 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.
Disability bioethics
Posted in Guest Authors
Tagged disability, ethics, Institute for the Liberal Arts, Park Street Series
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Undocumented and coming of age in America
Roberto 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
Daniel
Professor 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.
Black resistance
The 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.
Sherry Kafka Wagner
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.
The value of Beckett
Boston 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 & Modernism; Samuel Beckett, Endgame, and Tragedy and Irish Literature: Synge, O’Casey, Beckett. Sponsor: Boston College Irish Studies Program. Free registration.
Drone
Kim 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.
Dissidence
In 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.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged government, Philosophy Department, University Libraries
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Medea Benjamin
Noted activist Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women-led peace group Code Pink and the human rights advocacy group Global Exchange, will hold a discussion on her latest book, Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection, on Oct. 20 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 305. With extremism spreading across the globe, a reduced US need for Saudi oil, and a thawing of US relations with Iran, Benjamin contends the time is right for a re-evaluation of America’s close ties with Saudi Arabia. Named “one of the high profile leaders” of the peace movement by the Los Angeles Times, Benjamin has received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation; the Marjorie Kellogg National Peacemaker Award; the Thomas Merton Center Peace Award, the Peace Foundation Memorial Award, and the Gandhi Peace Award from Promoting Enduring Peace. She is the author of several other books, including Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control. Sponsors: Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Islamic Civilization & Societies program, History Department and the Sociology Department. RSVP Requested.
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Poetry reading in honor of Burns Scholar
An event will be held Oct. 18 to celebrate the publication of Leabhar Na hAthghabbhála: Poems of Repossession (2016), an anthology of Gaelic poems and English translations from the past 50 years, edited by Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies Louis de Paor. Poets Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Deirdre Brennan, and Liam Ó Muirthile will join de Paor in reading and discussing selections from the volume. The event will take place in Devlin Hall, Room 101, starting at 5 p.m. Sponsors: The Center for Irish Programs and Boston College Libraries with support from Culture Ireland and Poetry Ireland.
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