“Long Emergency”
Author and social critic James Howard Kunstler will present “The Long Emergency” on Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. Kunstler’s best-selling book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century, explored the sweeping economic, political and social challenges that will result from the end of access to cheap fossil fuels. He followed that book with Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation. His other non-fiction works are The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-made Landscape, Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the Twenty-First Century and The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition. Kunstler also writes for The Atlantic, Slate, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine, among other publications. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series.
Posted in Guest Authors, Lowell Humanities Series
Tagged environmental issues, urban planning
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Honors for Sabbath
BC School of Social Work Assistant Professor Erika Sabbath has been named a recipient of a 2015 Richard Kalish Innovative Publication Award from the Gerontological Society of America. The award honors insightful and innovative publications on aging and life course development in the behavioral and social sciences. Sabbath and her co-authors were recognized in the article category for “Use of Life Course Work-Family Profiles to Predict Mortality Risk among U.S. Women,” which appeared in the American Journal of Public Health. More from the Gerontological Society of America.
Posted in Awards/Honors, Boston College Authors
Tagged aging, research, School of Social Work
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The outlook for religious pluralism in Syria
Veteran journalist Charles Glass will present “The Outlook for Religious Pluralism in Syria” on Oct. 21 at 7 p.m. in the Heights Room of Corcoran Commons. The Syrian civil war has claimed in excess of 200,000 lives, with an estimated 8 million Syrians, more than a third of the country’s population, forced to flee their homes. According to Glass, the nuances of this conflict have never been well-understood in the West, least of all, it seems, by governments in the US and Europe, who, anticipating Assad’s sudden departure, made it a condition of any negotiated settlement. The consequences of that miscalculation, he contends, have contributed greatly to the unfolding disaster and diminishes the possibility that Syria can return to being the religious pluralistic society it was ante bellum. Glass began his career at the ABC News Beirut bureau. He covered the October Arab-Israeli War on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts. He also covered the civil war in Lebanon, where artillery fire wounded him in 1976. He was ABC News Chief Middle East correspondent from 1983 to 1993. He is the author of the new book, Syria Burning: ISIS and the Death of the Arab Spring (OR Books). Sponsors: Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and Christian Solidarity International (CSI).
Review: The BBC’s ‘Irish Troubles’
It is hard to convey to people in the second decade of the twenty-first century, many of whom have no memory of the daily murder and mayhem that was Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s, just how hugely disruptive events in the region were to the national politics of both the UK and the Republic of Ireland in that period, and how vital it was that they were reported and analysed fully and fairly, according to the Dublin Review of Books, which praises Professor of the Practice of History Robert Savage‘s new book, The BBC’s ‘Irish Troubles’: Television, Conflict and Northern Ireland (Manchester University Press, 2015). The review calls the book “meticulously researched.” Read the review. | The Guardian also praises the book in its review.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged History Department, Ireland, Irish Studies, journalism, United Kingdom
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Sowing the Seeds of Faith
Internationally recognized religious education expert Thomas H. Groome will present “Sowing the Seeds of Faith: It is (Almost) All in the Family” on Oct. 22 at 5:30 p.m. in the Heights Room of Corcoran Commons. His presentation will reflect on why the home is so central to faith formation and will offer practical suggestions for how the family can be “the first educator in the ways of faith.” Groome is the author of several books, including Will There Be Faith and What Makes Us Catholic, as well as primary author of the Credo high school theology curriculum. He also is the director of the Church in the 21st Century Center and a professor of theology and religious education in the School of Theology and Ministry. Free registration. Sponsor: School of Theology and Ministry
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the best-selling Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015)–a National Book Award finalist and one of the most talked about books in the United States this year–will speak on Oct. 21 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. An Atlantic national correspondent, Coates wrote an award-winning cover story last year on slavery and race, “The Case for Reparations.” Coates is a former writer for The Village Voice, and a contributor to Time, O, and The New York Times Magazine. He has received the National Magazine Award, the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, the George Polk Award and, most recently, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (“Genius Grant”). He is a Journalist in Residence at the School of Journalism at CUNY. His talk is sponsored by the Lowell Humanities Series in partnership with the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics.
Understanding Israel/Palestine
For many, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems intractable. But in her new book, Understanding Israel/Palestine: Race, Nation, and Human Rights in the Conflict (Sense Publishers, 2015), author Eve Spangler contends that a resolution is a possibility if parties are willing to approach the situation from a human rights platform. Spangler, a professor of sociology, sees her book as both an introduction to the conflict and a call to action for human rights advocates and ordinary citizens to be part of a conversation about finding a resolution. Read an interview with Spangler in which she discusses her book and a seminar class she takes to Israel/Palestine every semester break.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged conflict, human rights, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Sociology Dept
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