The BBC and “The Troubles”

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Bookworm

bbc bookIn his new book, Associate Professor of the Practice of History Robert Savage explores how chronicling 30 years of violence and turmoil in Northern Ireland tested the integrity and independence of the BBC, one of the most trusted and respected media outlets in the world. The BBC’s Irish Troubles: Television, Conflict and Northern Ireland (Manchester University Press, 2015) focuses on the challenges the public service provider faced  in accurately informing citizens of important events taking place within the United Kingdom. As violence continued, the BBC was attacked, threatened and bullied, by a variety of actors but did its best to stand its ground and maintain editorial independence and journalistic credibility.

 

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Literature & science

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Bookworm

losing touchIn her book Losing Touch with Nature: Literature and the New Science in Sixteenth-Century England (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), Rattigan Professor of English Mary Crane looks at the works of English writers such as Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare to determine how 16th-century writers grappled with the scientific revolution. During this time, the dominant Aristotelian picture of nature, which aligned with intuition and ordinary perceptual experience, was falling away due to the discoveries of modern science. Crane breaks new ground by arguing that 16th-century ideas about the universe were actually much more sophisticated, rational and observation-based than many literary critics have assumed. Crane talks about her book with Brendan Rapple of BC Libraries, which she credits for providing her with online access to early English books. Crane is the director of the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Boston College.

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“Yeats & The Irish Revolutionary Era”

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Bookworm

yeatsThe Boston College 2015 Flatley Lecturer John Kelly will present “Yeats & The Irish Revolutionary Era, 1912-1923” on Apr. 23 at 4:30 p.m. in the Thompson Room of Burns Library. A leading expert on W.B. Yeats, Kelly is a longtime professor of English at Oxford University and an emeritus research fellow at St. John’s College at Oxford. The author of numerous scholarly articles, Kelly is the general editor of The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats.  He co-edited, with BC Associate Professor Marjorie Howes, The Cambridge Companion to W.B. Yeats. Sponsor: The Center for Irish Programs.

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Poetry Festival

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Bookworm

poetryfestBoston College will once again host the Greater Boston Intercollegiate Undergraduate Poetry Festival, an annual showcase of student verse. The event features original work by students from some 20 area colleges and universities.  Boston College will be represented by Carroll School of Management senior Christine Degenaars, who says her poem, “Borderline,” focuses on “the complicated relationship between people’s internal lives — their emotions and memories — and the external world in which they live.” The festival will feature a keynote address by Jill McDonough, a three-time Pushcart prizewinner whose books  include Habeas Corpus; Oh, James, and Where You Live. Sponsors: Poetry Days and Boston College Magazine.

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Scanlan named an author of the month

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Bookworm

diverseschoolsLynch School of Education Associate Professor Martin Scanlan, who works out of the Roche Center for Catholic Education, and his co-editor have been named “Authors of the Month” for April by Routledge publishing for their book Leadership for Increasingly Diverse Schools. The book provides both practicing and aspiring leaders with strategies for working with students of all socioeconomic statuses, races, religions, sexual orientations, languages and special needs to reverse long-standing trends of educational inequities, exclusion and disparate school outcomes. Scanlan’s research explores how to strengthen the communities of practice in schools to promote inclusion of students across multiple dimensions of diversity. His scholarship – which has focused primarily on reform in special education service delivery, bilingual education and school-community collaboration – has been published in dozens of articles in peer-reviewed journals. He has spent more than a decade as a teacher and administrator in elementary and middle schools in Washington, D.C., Berkeley, CA, and Madison, WI.

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Coates event postponed

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Bookworm

EVENT CHANGE: The Boston College Office of the Provost has announced that the Apr. 13 talk by Ta-Nehisi Coates has been postponed until next fall.

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What makes Gatsby great?

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Bookworm

gatsbyArt historian and author Charles Scribner III — the fourth generation of Scribners to oversee F. Scott Fitzgerald’s works at the family publishing house — will present “From Paradise to Party Lights: Fitzgerald and Gatsby” on Apr. 15 at 5:30 p.m. in Devlin Hall, room 101. Scribner will offer both a personal and professional perspective on the legendary Jazz Age writer, the “Last of the Romantics,” and his iconic novel that still defines the magic of American self-invention. An expert in Baroque art, Scribner is the author The Shadow of God: A Journey Through Memory, Art and Faith and The Triumph of the Eucharist: Tapestries Designed by Rubens, among other titles. He was awarded the Yorktown Certificate by the US Department of Treasury for his successful undercover role with US Customs special agents in recovering a Rubens stolen from a museum in Spain, later the subject of the television documentary “The Rubens Robbers.” Sponsor: The Heinz Bluhm Memorial Lecture Series.

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BC Strong

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Bookworm

bostonstrongwedgebookAuthor Dave Wedge, a Boston College alumnus, will participate in the panel “BC Strong: Boston College Alumni Share Their Stories of the Marathon Bombings” taking place at Robsham Theater on Apr. 14 at 7 p.m. Wedge, a former reporter for the Boston Herald, is co-author of the new book Boston Strong: A City’s Triumph over Tragedy. Other panelists include Patrick Downes and Brittany Loring, both of whom were injured in the blast. The panel will be moderated by award-winning journalist and BC alumna Paula Ebben of CBS Boston. Based on months of intensive interviews, Boston Strong: A City’s Triumph over Tragedy tells the story of the marathon bombings from the perspectives of the cop first on the scene to the detectives assigned to the manhunt to the victims. Wedge will be available to sign copies of book after the event. Read more about the event in the Boston College Chronicle

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Sheri Fink

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Bookworm

five daysPulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink will talk about her best-selling book, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Random House/Crown, 2013), at Boston College on Apr. 13 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. The culmination of six years of reporting, Five Days at Memorial recounts the life and death choices made at a New Orleans hospital in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The book was honored with the National Book Critics Circle Award, Ridenhour Book Prize, J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, Los Angeles TimesBook Prize, among others. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series. A former relief worker in disaster and conflict zones, Fink is also the author of War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival, which is about medical professionals under siege during the genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Fink holds a PhD and a medical degree from Stanford University. She is a correspondent for the New York Times. Reviews of Five Days: The Guardian | Entertainment Weekly | New York Times

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The Case for Reparations

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Bookworm

coatesWriter Ta-Nehisi Coates will present “The Case for Reparations” at Boston College on Apr. 13 at 7 p.m. in the Murray Room of the Yawkey Center. Coates outlined his thesis in a 2014 cover story for The Atlantic. His piece reignited the long-dormant national conversation of just how to repay African Americans for a system of institutional racism. A national correspondent for The Atlantic, Coates is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood.  He has also written for The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, Time, The Washington Post, the Washington Monthly and O magazine. Sponsor: Office of the Provost and Dean of Faculties.

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