My Journey to the Heights: A Memoir of Boston College (1951-2015) is a new book that captures the story of James P. McIntyre ’57, M.Ed.’61, D.Ed.’67, H’11, from his humble beginnings in Malden to a student in BC’s Evening College in the 1950s through his unprecedented 56-year career as a beloved and respected Boston College administrator. The memoir also, in turn, tells the story of the evolution of Boston College from a commuter school for local Catholics to one of the nation’s preeminent national universities. During a professional career that ran from 1959 until his death in 2015, McIntyre served under four Boston College presidents and there were few major University issues in which he was not personally involved. McIntyre had a hand in establishing BC’s financial aid program, creating its centralized student affairs office as BC’s first lay vice president, directing its first capital campaign as its newly appointed vice president for University Affairs, and hosting international finance conferences and other events as senior vice president. In addition, the Newton Campus, Flynn Recreation Complex, Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Library, Silvio O. Conte Forum, Robsham Theater Arts Center, renovated Alumni Stadium, and Merkert Chemistry Center were all the fruits of McIntyre’s efforts, as were many of the University’s largest contributions that he procured from his unique ability to cultivate deep, personal relationships with BC alumni. Undertaken at the request of University President William P. Leahy, S.J., My Journey to the Heights was produced by Executive Director of Marketing Communications and Boston College Magazine Editor Ben Birnbaum and edited by Senior Writer William Bole, and is available for purchase from the Boston College Bookstore. More from BC News.
My Journey to the Heights
Edgar & Brigitte
When Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, there were 525,000 Jews living in Germany. By the end of that year 37,000 had left the country—including Edgar Bodenheimer and Brigitte Levy. Using an extraordinary archive of their personal journals, letters, speeches, and published writings, Edgar and Brigitte’s daughter, Boston College Professor of English Emerita Rosemarie Bodenheimer, traces her parents’ story of assimilation, emigration, and reassimilation in the new book, Edgar and Brigitte: A German Jewish Passage to America (University Alabama Press, 2016). The Bodenheimer and the Levy families embodied many of the qualities of their generation of German Jews in pre-World War II Germany: more German than Jewish, highly educated, and immersed in the German cultural ideal of Bildung. Their story is both an intimate biography of family and a wider account of the struggles faced by many immigrants with deep German roots. Rosemarie Bodenheimer is also the author of Knowing Dickens and The Real Life of Mary Ann Evans: George Elliot, Her Letters and Fiction, which was chosen as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged biography, English Department, European Jewish diaspora, Germany, Jewish
Leave a comment
Hip-Hop generation’s activism
Andreana Clay will examine the response of hip-hop communities to current movements like Black Lives Matter in her talk “‘Hell You Talmbout?’: Black Lives, Black Resistance and Hip-Hop.” Her lecture will be held on Sept. 27 at 4:30 p.m. in Devlin Hall, Room 101. An associate professor of sociology at San Francisco State University, Clay is the author of the book The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back: Youth Activism and Post-Civil Rights Politics. Her articles have been published in Home Girls Make Some Noise!: A Hip-Hop Feminist Anthology, the American Behavioral Scientist, and Meridians: A Journal of Race, Feminism, and Transnationalism. Sponsor: The African and African Diaspora Studies Program.The Other Air Force
As it seeks to win the hearts and minds of citizens in the Muslim world, the United States has poured millions of dollars into local television and radio programming, hoping to generate pro-American currents on Middle Eastern airwaves. In his new book, The Other Air Force: U.S. Efforts to Reshape Middle Eastern Media Since 9/11 (Rutgers University Press, 2016), Communication Assistant Professor Matt Sienkiewicz shows that the Middle Eastern media producers who rely on these funds are hardly puppets on an American string, but instead contribute their own political and creative agendas while working within U.S. restrictions. Drawing from years of field research and interviews, Sienkiewicz gives readers a unique inside look at television and radio production in Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, an interplay of U.S. military and economic might and local ingenuity and resistance. A review in the New Arab.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Communication Department, foreign policy, media, Middle East
1 Comment
Engaging Islam
Gerhard Böwering, a professor of Islamic Studies at Yale University and Editor-in-Chief of The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, will deliver a lecture on “Finding Roots in Scripture and Tradition” as part of the Gasson Lecture Series: Engaging Islam, presented by the Jesuit Institute and the Office of the Provost. The lecture will take place on Sept. 21 at 4:30 p.m in Stokes Hall, Room S195. Bowering is a recipient of fellowships from the Mellon and Guggenheim foundations, as well as the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton.
Evicted
Matthew Desmond, author of the New York Times bestseller, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Penguin/Random House, 2016), will give a talk on Sept. 21 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. Drawn on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, Evicted takes readers into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge of poverty and eviction. Desmond is also the author of the award-winning book, On the Fireline. A MacArthur “Genius” grant winner, Desmond is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and co-director of the Justice and Poverty Project. His writing has appeared in The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series.
Vorenberg at Clough Center
Historian Michael Vorenberg will give a talk on “The Fourteenth Amendment as an Act of War” on Sept. 20 at 5 p.m. at Barat House, Newton Campus. Vorenberg, an associate professor of history at Brown University, is the author of Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment, which was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize, and The Emancipation Proclamation: A Brief History with Documents. One of his current book projects deals with the impact of the Civil War on American citizenship. Sponsors: The Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy and Boston College Law School Legal History Roundtable.
Success at any cost
Life for Legacy, the debut novel from Boston College alumnus Ninos Hanna, tells the story of Aiden Blair, who has his sights set on becoming a legend in Hollywood. His uncanny talent and determination takes him to the top of the movie industry. When Aiden makes a highly charged Oscar acceptance speech, where he criticizes Hollywood’s insulated snobbery and urges viewers to recognize the genocide of Assyrians in the Middle East, he finds himself an outcast from the town he once ruled. He hits the road and embarks on a journey of self-reflection, self-discovery, and self-renewal. Hanna’s book tackles the reality of a celebrity-obsessed culture that focuses on unimportant minutiae rather than on the more important things in life. Hanna serves as a community activist, philanthropist, and member of various non-profit organizations including the Assyrian American Association of Massachusetts and Watertown Historical Society. In this video, Hanna talks about how a chance encounter with a bestselling author on the BC campus gave him the push to continue working on his novel.
Reporting on gender inequities and global health
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn will present “A Path Appears: Reporting on Gender Inequities and Global Health” on Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. in the Murray Function Room of the Yawkey Athletic Center. Kristof and WuDunn combine journalism and activism in their unique brand of reporting centered on human rights abuses and advocacy. The first married couple to win a Pulitzer in journalism, they covered the Tiananmen Square democracy movement for the New York Times and later co-wrote the book China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power. They are also authors of the national bestseller Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Addressing worldwide maltreatment and marginalization towards women, Half the Sky draws a compelling picture of women struggling for opportunity and equality and inspired a PBS documentary of the same name. Their latest book is A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity. It was the basis of a PBS documentary that followed Kristof and WuDunn and a group of actor/advocates to Colombia, Haiti, Kenya, and throughout the United States where they uncover the harshest forms of gender inequality, the devastating impact of poverty and the ripple effects that follow: including sex trafficking, teen-pregnancy, gender-based violence, child slavery, as well as the effective solutions being forged to combat them. Co-sponsors: The Park Street Corporation Speaker Series at BC and the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics.
Christianity and the Culture Machine
Vincent F. Rocchio, a faculty member in the Communication Department, incorporates theories of media and cultural studies in his new book to examine why both Hollywood and the institutional Church have such difficulty speaking about, and promoting, egalitarianism, non-materialism, and pacifism in compelling ways. In Christianity and the Culture Machine: Media and Theology in the Age of Late Secularism (Cascade Books, 2016), Rocchio argues that a new aesthetic–a new way of understanding Christianity–is forming itself in the margins of mainstream media, and the institutional Church could and should learn from it. Rocchio is also the author of Cinema of Anxiety: A Psychoanalysis of Italian Neorealism and Reel Racism: Confronting Hollywood’s Construction of Afro-American Culture. Rochhio was inteviewed by the Dorchester Reporter.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Catholic Church, Communication Department, media
Leave a comment
BC Bookmarks 