Professional organizer Susan Bohenko, a Boston College alumna, has published her first book, Jumbled Joy. The children’s book is based on Bohenko’s daughter, Joy, and her messy room. The mess does not bother Joy until her favorite treasures becomes lost in the clutter and chaos of her bedroom. The book teaches kids to take care of their things and to stay organized. Bohenko was recently interviewed by her hometown paper.
Jumbled Joy
Nouveau literacy
Associate Professor of History Dana Sajdi was recently interviewed about her book The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant (Stanford University Press). Her book looks at the life and work of Shihab al-Din Ahmad Ibn Budayr, a barber in Damascus in the 18th century. The barber wrote a book recording events that took place in the city during his lifetime—part of a new phenomenon, nouveau literacy, or history writing by people outside the learned establishment. Listen to the New Books Network podcast of the interview.
The Americans by Car
Fine Arts Assistant Professor of the Practice Karl Baden has published The Americans by Car, a retrospective of his archival work that pays tribute to two influential photographers, Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander. The photographs in the book were taken by Baden from his car and offer a snapshot of American life. A homage to Robert Frank’s The Americans and Lee Friedlander’s America by Car, Baden’s book “is a personal, more specific answer to the vague question of ‘how are we influenced,'” according to the artist. The cover of The Americans by Car is a photograph of a Boston tourist trolley Baden shot from his car in 2012. Baden discussed his book, the role humor plays in his work, and the impact Frank, Friedlander and other artists had on him in an interview with the photography blogger Elin Spring.
The Jury in America
Enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, a jury trial is an essential right for all Americans. It places citizens at the very heart of the U.S. legal order. And yet at the dawn of the 21st century, juries resolve only a small percentage of legal cases, and concern has arisen that the jury is “vanishing” from both the criminal and civil courts. In The Jury in America: Triumph and Decline (University Press of Kansas, 2016), BC political scientist Dennis Hale contends that a preference for expert judgment has replaced public judgment, giving rise to arbitration, settlements and trials decided by judges only. In his new book, Hale combines legal history and political analysis to traces what the American jury system was, what it has become, and what the ramifications could be of a withering jury system. BC Libraries presents an interview with Hale.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged judicial system, justice, law, Political Science department
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Vaudeville days
For her latest novel, BC alumna Juliette Fay travels back to 1919 to tell the story of the four Turner sisters who, faced with a dire financial situation, try their luck as an acrobatic act in vaudeville. The sisters face unexpected possibilities, love and heartbreak, and the dawn of a new American era. According to Fay, The Tumbling Turner Sisters (Gallery Books, Simon & Schuster, 2016) was inspired by the life of her vaudevillian great-grandfather. A book launch event will be held June 9 at 7 p.m. at the Sandy Burr Country Club in Wayland, Mass. A review from Publishers Weekly states:”With humor, affection, ambition, and a talent for weaving in history, Fay brings the world of 1910s vaudeville vividly to life through the travails of the tenacious Turner family.”
Poetry award for Najarian
Associate Professor of English James Najarian was chosen as the winner of the sixth annual Frost Farm Prize for poetry. He was honored for his blank verse poem “The Dark Ages.” Najarian’s poem is an extended metaphor comparing a mother’s decline due to Alzheimer’s to the aftermath of the Roman departure from Britain. Poetry contest judge David J. Rothman, director of Western State Colorado University’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing, called “The Dark Ages” a “compelling, masterful work, not only technically adroit but also thematically fierce and focused, and emotionally profound: an intense yet also measured depiction of destruction and grief.” Najarian’s poetry has been published in West Branch, Christianity and Literature, Tar River Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, The Literary Imagination, and other journals. Najarian has previously won the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers’ Stephen J. Meringoff Writing Award in Poetry. Najarian will read his poetry at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH on June 17 to kick off the Frost Farm Poetry Conference.
Jesuit Pedagogy, 1540-1616
Jesuit Sources has released its first publication since its relocation from Saint Louis to Boston College’s Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies in 2014. Jesuit Pedagogy, 1540-1616: A Reader, edited by Cristiano Casalini and Claude Pavur, S.J., offers—for the first time in English—a wide selection of relevant materials that shows the development of Jesuit approaches to pedagogy in theory and practice. The anthology brings about a better understanding of why Jesuit schools became such important educational institutions in early modernity. According to the editors, this volume will be both a helpful tool for those researching Jesuit education and a source of inspiration and insight for those directly involved in its practice today. Fr. Pavur is an associate editor at Jesuit Sources and Casalini is a visiting scholar with the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College. Founded in 1961, Jesuit Sources is a publishing house specializing in preserving and making available to scholars around the world important texts in Jesuit history, spirituality, and pedagogy.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, Jesuit
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An escape from a POW camp in Michigan
An article BC alumnus John Smolens read about World War II prisoner-of-war camps in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula planted the seed for his latest novel, Wolf’s Mouth (Michigan State University Press, 2016) . “Like most Americans, I didn’t have a clue that there were POW camps in the states at all,” he told the Lansing State Journal. Wolf’s Mouth tells the story of Italian officer Captain Francesco Verdi, who is captured in 1944 by Allied forces in North Africa and shipped to a POW camp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. His life threatened, Verdi escapes from the camp and meets up with an American woman who helps him elude capture. By 1956 they have become Frank and Claire Green, a young married couple building a new life in postwar Detroit. But when he is tracked down, Frank is faced with hard choices as he strives to escape the ghosts of history. Smolens’ other novels include The Anarchist, The Schoolmaster’s Daughter and The Invisible World. He is a retired professor from Northern Michigan University. Read more.
Book review: Prophecy Without Contempt
In a book review for Commonweal magazine, Libby Professor of Law and Theology Cathleen Kaveny’s Prophecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square (Harvard University Press, 2016) is called “important and path-breaking.” The reviewer goes on to write: “The place of religious discourse in the American public square has received much attention for many years, but the role of prophetic indictment has been largely overlooked. Kaveny’s book not only opens a ‘new front’ in these debates, but starts the conversation with a rich analysis of the history and function of prophetic discourse and a carefully developed normative framework to guide its use. The interdisciplinary work that informs Kaveny’s book is especially impressive. As an ethicist and legal academic, Kaveny draws on resources from these disciplines, and she also integrates sophisticated analyses of American history, biblical scholarship, and literary criticism.”
Mergers and Acquisitions
Law School Associate Professor Brian JM Quinn’s latest textbook Mergers and Acquisitions: Law, Theory, and Practice (West Academic Publishing) is poised to change the way that transactional law is taught in U.S. law schools by immersing students in a deal environment. The textbook, co-authored with Claire Hill and Steven Davidoff Solomon, focuses on a number of recent high profile deals to teach students about the basics of mergers and acquisitions, as well as the tools to negotiate and document the best deal for their clients. “The idea behind this book is that law students and young lawyers not only have to know the law of mergers and acquisitions, but that they also have to understand the practice of law and doing the deal,” Quinn told BC Law magazine. “Being an M&A lawyer requires not only a knowledge of the law—the statutes, cases, and regulations—but it also requires that the lawyer understand the document, how it’s negotiated and, ultimately, how it actually gets litigated.” More from BC Law magazine.
BC Bookmarks 