Fr. Robert Imbelli, associate professor of theology emeritus, offers a review of Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge for Commonweal magazine. He calls her volume “remarkable.”
Book review by Fr. Imbelli
Historian Linda Colley
Award-winning historian Linda Colley will present “Publishing the Word: Constitutions, Print, and War in the Age of Revolutions” on Mar. 30 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. Colley, who specializes in Britain, empire and nationalism, is the author of the acclaimed Acts of Union and Disunion, which examines what has held the United Kingdom together—and what might drive it apart. Her other titles include The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History, which was named by The New York Times as one of the ten best books of 2007, and Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, which won the Wolfson History Prize. She also writes regularly on history, politics and art for such publications as The Guardian, London Review of Books, New York Review of Books and New Republic. Colley is the Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series
Bancroft Prize
Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention by Professor of Law and Michael and Helen Lee Distinguished Scholar Mary Sarah Bilder has been named one of the winners of the 2016 Bancroft Prize, considered to be among the most prestigious awards in the field of American history writing. Bilder’s book uses digital technology and textual analysis to study how James Madison revised his notes on the event, thereby challenging the belief that Madison’s version of the 1787 Constitutional Convention was an objective contemporaneous account. The annual Bancroft Prize was established at Columbia University in 1948 .Winners are judged in terms of the scope, significance, depth of research, and richness of interpretation they present in the areas of American history and/or diplomacy. Read more in the New York Times and Boston Globe.
Posted in Awards/Honors, Boston College Authors
Tagged American history, Boston College Law School
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Bill Clinton’s presidency
Professor of History Patrick Maney offers an in-depth perspective on the 42nd president of the United States and the transformative era over which he presided in his new book, Bill Clinton: New Gilded Age President (University Press of Kansas, 2016). Maney examines Bill Clinton in all his guises: the first baby boomer to reach the White House; the gifted politician with an inexplicably careless and self-destructive streak; the “Comeback Kid” survivor; and, with Hillary Rodham Clinton, part of the most controversial First Couple since Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. But Maney goes beyond personality and politics to also examine the critical issues of the day: economic and fiscal policy, business and financial deregulation, healthcare and welfare reform, and foreign affairs in a post-Cold War world. Maney was interviewed about his book for the Boston College Chronicle.
Book award for Hunt
Assistant Professor of English Aeron Hunt’s book, Personal Business: Character and Commerce in Victorian Literature and Culture (University of Virginia Press, 2014), was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2015. Among Hunt’s areas of expertise are Victorian literature and culture, with particular interest in the relationship of literature and economic life. In Personal Business, Hunt argues that an emphasis on abstraction and impersonality as the crucial features of the Victorian economic experience has led to a partial and ultimately misleading vision of Victorian business culture. She asserts that the key to understanding the relationship of literary writing to economic experience is what she calls “personal business” — the social and interpersonal relationships of Victorian commercial life in which character was a central mediating concept. Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, a publication of the Association of College & Research Libraries, is the premier source for reviews of academic books and digital resources of interest to scholars and students in higher education.
How to teach about slavery
How can teachers get students to understand the racist underpinnings of slavery—and to acknowledge its legacies in contemporary America? Understanding and Teaching American Slavery (University of Wisconsin Press, 2016), co-edited by Associate Professor of History Cynthia Lynn Lyerly and Bethany Jay of Salem State University, offers college and high school teachers guidance on explaining the insidious institution of slavery and its continuing ramifications within American culture. The book address topics such as, slavery and the nation’s founders, the diverse experiences of the enslaved, slavery’s role in the Civil War and the relationship between slavery and the northern economy. Contributors offer ideas for teaching through slave narratives, runaway ads, spirituals, films and material culture.
Poet Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens worked most of his professional life as an insurance executive, yet is considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, winning a Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Awards. In a new biography, The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens (Simon & Schuster, 2016), University Professor of English Paul Mariani shows how, through his poetry, Stevens sought out the ineffable and spiritual in human existence in his search for the sublime. “Wallace Stevens was a poet of the imagination. And for him, the imagination was the ultimate reality,” said Mariani, who has been called the “biographer of poets” for his previous volumes on Hart Crane, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell and John Berryman. More from the Boston College Chronicle.
Colm Tóibín
Writer Colm Tóibín will present “The Knowledge and the Power: Writing and Violence” at Boston College Mar. 16 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. Tóibín is author of the acclaimed novel Brooklyn, about a young Irish immigrant in 1950s New York. The novel was adapted into an Oscar-nominated feature film in 2015. His other novels include Nora Webster, The Blackwater Lightship and The Master, among others. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize three times and his play, “The Testament of Mary,” was nominated for a Tony Award in 2013. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages. Tóibín is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of Humanities at Columbia University and a contributing editor at the London Review of Books. Sponsors: Lowell Humanities Series and Culture Ireland.
Career Courage
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” That question persists long after childhood. Finding one’s true calling takes courage. It means conquering fears, shedding misguided ideas, and mustering the strength to let go of a safe job and stage your next act. In her new book, Career Courage: Discover Your Passion, Step Out of Your Comfort Zone, and Create the Success You Want, alumna Katie C. Kelley, a former psychotherapist and executive coach, guides readers through the soul-searching and planning process.
Adoption, secrecy and love
Journalist and BC alumna Caitríona Palmer was born in Dublin in 1972 to an unwed mother. Raised by loving adoptive parents, she still was eager to track down her birth mother. When she was in her late 20s, she connected with her birth mother and they developed a strong attachment. But her birth mother had one painful condition, she wished to keep Caitríona secret from her family, from her friends, from everyone. In her new memoir, An Affair with My Mother: A Story of Adoption, Secrecy and Love (Penguin Random House, 2016), Palmer writes of the social and familial forces that left her birth mother–and so many other unwed Irish mothers of her generation– frightened, traumatized and bereft.The author calls out the false shame of her origins and describes how it feels to be – in the interests of Catholic “respectability” – excluded from the facts of your own life. Palmer writes for the Irish Independent and, previously, for the Irish Times. Read more in the Irish Times | Daily Mail.
BC Bookmarks 