Cristina Richie, who earned a master’s degree in 2012 and will graduate this month with a doctorate in theological ethics, has been honored with the 2016 Evangelical Press Association, Higher Goals in Christian Journalism First Place Student Writer of the Year Award for her article “Diet and Cross-Religious Witness,” Africanus Journal 7, no. 1 (2015): 25-33. Richie is slated to take a position as the Arny and Anne Porath Clinical Ethics Fellow at the UCLA Health Ethics Center this summer.
Honor for alumna
Ethics of Discernment
A new book by Professor of Philosophy Patrick H. Byrne has been called the first detailed exposition of an ethical theory based on eminent 20th century philosopher Bernard Lonergan, S.J.’s method of self-appropriation. In The Ethics of Discernment: Lonergan’s Foundation for Ethics (University of Toronto Press, 2016), Byrne argues that self-appropriation can be used to come to objective judgments of value. According to the publisher, The Ethics of Discernment is an introspective analysis of that process, in which sustained ethical inquiry and attentiveness to feelings as “intentions of value” leads to a rich conception of the good. Byrne is director of BC’s Lonergan Center, which houses a wide-ranging collection of Lonergan’s published and unpublished works, together with monographs, dissertations, and articles about Lonergan, as well as books and periodicals relevant to his scholarship.
Moscow memories
Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies Maxim D. Shrayer, who came to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1987, recalls a spring day in Moscow more than 30 years ago, a friendship, and a longing to be somewhere else, in “Memories of Our Lost Soviet Youth,” an essay for Tablet magazine. A bilingual writer and translator, Shrayer is the author of Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration, Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story and Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, among other titles.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Slavic and Eastern Languages Dept, Soviet Union
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Review for Understanding and Teaching American Slavery
In a review for Education Week, contributor Kate Shuster writes that the new book Understanding and Teaching American Slavery, co-edited by Associate Professor of History Lynn Lyerly and BC alumna Bethany Jay “has the potential to change the way that slavery is taught in American schools.” The volume takes a comprehensive look at slavery across American history, offering dozens of concrete suggestions for teaching strategies and learning objects that could be used in all K-12 social studies classrooms. Shuster goes on to write, “In a world where the divide between historians and educators is often both vast and vague, it’s refreshing to see a book that takes seriously the bridge between understanding and teaching. Teachers with serious content knowledge are more likely to be effective, but we all know that content knowledge isn’t enough in the classroom. I hope we’ll see more resources like this stellar book to help move our society closer to understanding slavery in all of its dimensions.” Read the full review.
Posted in Alumni Authors, Boston College Authors
Tagged American history, History Department, slavery
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Honors for Bowles
Assistant Professor of German Studies Daniel Bowles was named winner of the 2016 Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his translation of Christian Kracht’s Imperium: A Fiction of the South Seas (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). Established in 1996, the annual prize is awarded each spring to honor an outstanding literary translation from German into English published in the United States the previous year. This year’s prize will be awarded at the Goethe-Institut in New York on June 9. | Bowles recently spoke with BC Libraries about this translation.
Honors for Martínez Alemán
Lynch School of Education Professor Ana Martínez Alemán was honored with the 2016 Outstanding Publication Award in Division J (Postsecondary Education) for Critical Approaches to the Study of Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), a book she co-edited with Estela Mara Bensimon of the University of Southern California and Brian Pusser of the University of Virginia. The award was presented by the American Educational Research Association at their annual meeting. It recognizes scholars for specific publications judged as making substantial contributions to the literature and/or practice of higher education.
Posted in Awards/Honors, Boston College Authors
Tagged higher education, Lynch School of Education
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“I have been forever changed…”
In “Take and Read,” a blog from National Catholic Reporter that features a different contributor’s reflections on a specific book that changed their lives, Canisius Professor James F. Keenan, S.J. shares his thoughts on Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church by Jean Zizioulas. Fr. Keenan took a course at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome taught by Zizioulas. In his essay, Fr. Keenan describes that though he and Zizioulas at the opposite ends of the spectrum of theology, Zizioulas’ writings let him imagine the vastness of theology and stimulate his imagination. Today, Fr. Keenan is director of the Jesuit Institute at BC and the University’s Gabelli Scholars Program.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Catholic, Jesuit author, theology, Theology Department
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Reviews for The Whole Harmonium
The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens, a new book by University Professor of English and “biographer of poets” Paul Mariani, has been rated the number one best seller on Amazon in American Literary Criticism and Hot New Sellers. It also has been the subject of several book reviews by media outlets such as the New Yorker, Economist, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal (subscriber only), Atlantic and Buffalo News. For more about The Whole Harmonium, read this article from Boston College Chronicle.
Violence, Politics and Catholicism in Ireland
Violence, Politics and Catholicism in Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2016) is a collection of essays that looks at the interrelated themes of Catholicism, violence and politics in the Irish context in the 19th and 20th centuries. Authored by Director of Irish Programs Oliver P. Rafferty, SJ, a professor of modern Irish and ecclesiastical history, the volume covers topics such as religious perceptions of the Famine, Cardinal Cullen’s role in shaping the ethos of Irish Catholicism and the role of memory—including religious memory—in Irish violence. Fr. Rafferty also turns his attention to the largely unsuccessful efforts expended by institutional Catholicism in trying to curb the violent propensities of the Fenians in the 19th century and the IRA in the 20th. Ironically, he contends, Catholicism had greater achievements to boast of in its influence in the British Empire as a whole than over its wayward flock in Ireland. Fr. Rafferty’s previous books include The Catholic Church and the Protestant State: Nineteenth-century Irish realities and George Tyrrell and Catholic Modernism.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Center for Irish Programs, Ireland, politics
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Unfreedom in Boston
In his new book, Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston (New York University Press, 2016), BC alumnus Jared Ross Hardesty argues that slavery in Boston was part of a continuum of unfreedom. In this context, African slavery existed alongside many other forms of oppression, including Native American slavery, indentured servitude, apprenticeship, and pauper apprenticeship. Enslaved Bostonians were more concerned with their everyday treatment and honor than with emancipation, as they pushed for autonomy, protected their families and communities, and demanded a place in society. Drawing on exhaustive research in colonial legal records – including wills, court documents, and minutes of governmental bodies – as well as newspapers, church records, and other contemporaneous sources, Hardesty reconstructs an 18th-century Atlantic world of unfreedom that stretched from Europe to Africa to America. Hardesty is on the faculty of Western Washington University.
BC Bookmarks 