Dybek: Ecstatic Cahoots
Award-winning writer Stuart Dybek will give a talk at Boston College on Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. Dybek’s most recent books are Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern. He has been honored with many literary awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award, a Lannan Award, the Academy Institute Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writer’s Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and four O. Henry Prizes. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant. His other works of fiction are Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, The Coast of Chicago, and I Sailed with Magellan. He has also published two volumes of poetry, Brass Knuckles and Streets In Their Own Ink. His fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have been translated into French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Polish, Czech, Dutch, Italian, and Arabic. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series
Posted in Guest Authors, Lowell Humanities Series
Tagged fiction, Lowell Humanities Series, short stories
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Book award for Min Song
Boston College Professor of English Min Hyoung Song has been honored by Alpha Sigma Nu, the honor society for Jesuit higher education institutions, with a 2014 Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award for his book, The Children of 1965: On Writing, and Not Writing, as an Asian American (Duke University Press, 2013). Song’s publication is one of only four winners, representing the 31 Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States, Canada and South Korea. In The Children of 1965, Song sought to discover how being Asian-American affected the writing of an emerging cohort of Asian-American authors. The title of the book is connected to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ushered in an immigration wave from Asia. Based on an analysis of more than 100 works and interviews with several Asian-American writers, Song concludes that race is a factor in much of the writing, but so are other themes, such as income inequality, the role of technology, life post 9/11 and sustainability. Read more from BC News
Yes Please
Yes Please (Harper Collins/Dey Street Books, 2014) is the new book by award-winning actress and former “SNL” cast member Amy Poehler, a Boston College alumna. Poehler, star of the NBC show “Parks and Recreation,” is a writer, director, producer and cofounder of the Upright Citizens’ Brigade. Yes Please is a collection of Poehler’s thoughts on everything from her “too safe” childhood outside of Boston to her early days in New York City, her ideas about Hollywood and “the biz,” the demon that looks back at all of us in the mirror, and her joy at being told she has a “face for wigs.”
Why Football Matters
Acclaimed writer Mark Edmundson will present “Why Football Matters: What’s Gained (and Lost) from a Gridiron Education” on Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. Edmundson, author of the new book Why Football Matter: My Education in the Game (Penguin Press, 2014), will talk about the paradoxical game that transformed him as a young man, teaching self-discipline and teamwork but also celebrating violence. Football showcases athletic beauty and physical excellence, but it also damages young bodies and minds. It instills confidence and purpose, and also cockiness and an inflated sense of superiority. The Washington Post calls Edmundson’s book a “richly textured look at football as a vital part of American culture.” Edmundson, a professor of English at the University of Virginia, is also the author of the books Why Read?, Why Teach?, Kings of Rock and Roll, The Death of Sigmund Freud, and Nightmare on Main Street. His essays have appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The American Scholar and Raritan, to which he is a contributing editor. Listen to an interview with Edmundson on PRI’s “The Takeaway.” Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series.
Posted in Guest Authors, Lowell Humanities Series
Tagged Lowell Humanities Series, sports
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Ottoman Facebook
Award-winning literary translator and editor Peter Constantine will present a lecture on “Ottoman Facebook: The Private and Public Personas of the Last Ottoman Sultans” on Oct. 9 in Higgins Hall, room 300 at 5 p.m. His recent translations include Sophocles’s Theban Trilogy, The Essential Writings of Machiavelli, and works by Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Voltaire. He co-edited A Century of Greek Poetry: 1900-2000 and the anthology The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present. Constantine was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for Six Early Stories by Thomas Mann and the National Translation Award for The Undiscovered Chekhov: Thirty-Eight New Stories. His translation of The Complete Works of Isaac Babel received a Koret Jewish Book Award and a National Jewish Book Award citation. His translation of the modern Greek poet Stylianos Harkianakis’s poetry book Mother received the 2004/2005 Hellenic Association of Translators of Literature Prize. In addition, Constantine was the recipient of the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his translation of Benjamin Lebert’s novel The Bird is a Raven. Sponsors: Institute for the Liberal Arts, the Islamic Civilization and Societies Program and the History Department.
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Conversation with Sister Helen Prejean
A free campus event featuring advocate and prison minister Sister Helen Prejean, author of the national bestseller Dead Man Walking, will be held in Robsham Theater from 6-9 p.m on October 9 . The evening will begin with a screening of the film “Dead Man Walking” –starring Oscar winners Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon–followed by a conversation with Sr. Helen. She will talk about her life’s work ministering to offenders and their families, and explore ways that the Catholic Church does and can reach out to the marginalized in our society. Seating will be first-come, first-served, with doors opening at 5:30 p.m. Co-sponsors: The Church in the 21st Century Center and the School of Theology and Ministry.
Bill Neenan’s final Dean’s List
Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson. One Summer – America, 1927 by Bill Bryson. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. Someone by Alice McDermott. These are the new titles on the 2014 Dean’s List of Recommended Reading, compiled by William B. Neenan, SJ shortly before his death in June. The beloved Boston College Jesuit priest had produced his list of reading suggestions every year since 1982. The annual list of 27 titles included fiction and non-fiction works, some of them well-known historical, literary or popular titles, others somewhat more obscure. “I loved the Dean’s List,” says Professor of English Elizabeth Graver. “The books he was drawn to were often at once poetic and probing, interested in inner life and the human condition, alert to pain but also beauty.” Like many readers of the Dean’s List, College of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean Clare Dunsford found Fr. Neenan’s recommendations an outstanding resource. “One book I would never have known of or read without seeing it on the list was Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter. Several years ago I got the flu, a really bad case that put me out of work for 10 days or so. As I began to recover but was still weak, I started to read that book and was enchanted. It took me from my sickbed to medieval Norway in an almost physical way. I went on to read the whole trilogy.” Read more about this year’s Dean’s List in the Boston College Chronicle | A cumulative list of Dean’s List selections is available from the BC Libraries.
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Tagged BC Libraries, Dean's List, English Department, Jesuit
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