At Home in Exile

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Bookworm

exileThe Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life will sponsor a book panel Nov. 12 to mark the launch of its director’s new book, At Home in Exile: Why Diaspora Is Good for the Jews (Random House, 2014). Written by Boston College Professor of Political Science Alan Wolfe, At Home in Exile makes an impassioned and controversial case for Jews to take pride in their Diasporic tradition. While it is true that Jews have experienced discrimination and destruction in exile, Wolfe argues the Diaspora can be good for the Jews no matter where they live, Israel very much included—as well as for the non-Jews with whom they live, Israel once again included. Wolfe will be joined at the event  by Ben Birnbaum, editor of Boston College Magazine; Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College; and BC History Professor Kevin Kenny who all will review and critique At Home in Exile. The event will take place at the Yawkey Center, Murray Room beginning at 5:30 p.m.  An excerpt of At Home in Exile appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education | New York Times Review

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Poet Peter Fallon

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Bookworm

strongmyloveAward-winning  poet Peter Fallon will read from his latest collection of poems, Strong, My Love, on Nov. 12 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. Strong, My Love is a series of prayers for his daughter and son and for their generation. His other works include News of the World: Selected and New Poems and The Company of Horses, among others. He founded The Gallery Press, Ireland’s leading literary publishing company, which has published more than 400 books of poems and plays by Ireland’s finest established and emerging authors. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series

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Symposium in honor of Dinner with Stalin

Posted on November 5, 2014 by Bookworm

dinnerwithstalinA Boston College symposium will mark the translation and publication of the new book Dinner with Stalin and Other Stories, edited and co-translated by Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies Maxim D. Shrayer, and written by his father David Shrayer-Petrov, a celebrated author of contemporary Russian-American fiction.  The event will be held on Nov. 11 at 7 p.m. in Devlin Hall, room 101 and feature selected readings. Dinner with Stalin’s 14 stories feature Soviet Jews, most of them immigrants, grappling with issues of identity, acculturation and assimilation. The symposium, Shrayer says, is “a celebration of the art of literary translation. I was fortunate to work with a remarkable team of translators, among them Margarit Ordykhanyan, Molly Godwin-Jones and Leon Kogan, former Boston College graduate students and graduates of my seminar on literary translation. All of them are gifted translators and great enthusiasts of literary translation, which has the power to bridge countries and identities, and gives hope for the survival of culture against all odds.”  Event sponsors: The Institute for the Liberal Arts, Jewish Studies Program, English Department, and Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures. More from the Boston College Chronicle

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Poetry Days with Laura Kasischke

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Bookworm

laurakBoston College welcomes award-winning poet and novelist Laura Kasischke to campus November 5. She will give a talk at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. Kasischke’s books of poetry include Wild Brides; Fire and Flower; Gardening in the Dark; Lilies Without; Space, in Chains (a National Book Critics Circle Award winner), and, most recently, The Infinitesimals.  She has been honored with the Juniper Prize, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Alice Fay DiCastagnola Award, the Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, and the Rilke Poetry Prize from the University of North Texas. She has also won several Pushcart Prizes, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She has written nine novels, three of which have been made into movies: Suspicious River, White Bird in a Blizzard and The Life Before Her Eyes. Sponsors: Lowell Humanities Series and Poetry Days. Read more about her campus visit, including an informal colloquium planned with BC students and faculty, in the Boston College Chronicle.

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Talk of the town: Richardson’s book on the GOP

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Bookworm

to make men freeTo Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party (Basic Books, 2014) by Professor of History Heather Cox Richardson (cited in BC Bookmarks on 9/17) has received a lot of attention this election season. Here is a sampling of some of the media interviews, opinion pieces and reviews connected to Richardson’s book about the Republican party: Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, C-SPAN Book TV, Los Angeles Times, WBUR Radio Boston, Salon and New York Times. She recently was interviewed about her book by BC Libraries. BC Libraries Video

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Escape from the Soviet Union

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Bookworm

vodkaBoston College alumnus Lev Golinkin has published A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka (Doubleday, 2014), about his Jewish family fleeing the Soviet Union in the waning years of the Cold War, with only 10 suitcases, six hundred dollars, and the vague promise of help awaiting in Vienna. Years later, Golinkin would return to Austria and Eastern Europe to track down the strangers who made his escape possible and say thank you. According to the publisher, Golinkin’s debut is a thrilling tale of escape and survival, a deeply personal look at the life of a Jewish child caught in the last gasp of the Soviet Union, and a provocative investigation into the power of hatred and the search for belonging. Kirkus Reviews calls Golinkin’s memoir “a mordantly affecting chronicle of a journey to discover that ‘you can’t have a future if you don’t have a past.'”

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Book art by Barbara Adams Hebard

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Bookworm

showcaseTwo book bindings by Burns Library Conservator Barbara Adams Hebard are on display at 23 Sandy Gallery, a fine art gallery in Portland, Oregon. Hebard’s work is part of Showcase 16, an exhibition of members of the Northwest Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers. This exhibition showcases the diversity in the art and craft of the book: historical, traditional, experimental and fine bindings, conservation work, sculptural artists’ books and book objects, miniatures, pop-ups, blank books, and letterpress and digital editions. One of Hebard’s contribution is a book binding she made for Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Hebard says the vellum bindings in the Jesuitica collection at Burns Library served as an inspiration. Her other piece is a re-binding of Meditations with a Pencil, a book of illustrations created by artist Diana Orpen during World War II.

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The public life of love

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Bookworm

davidkimIs it possible to recuperate love as a public value in the United States? How would it function in an era characterized by so much antagonism, even hatred? At the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, David Kyuman Kim will talk about his current book project, The Public Life of Love, an examination of the status of love in politics, public life, religion and the arts. His talk will take place Oct. 28 from noon to 1:15 p.m.  Kim is the editor-at-large of “The Immanent Frame,” a blog on secularism, religion and public life run by the Social Science Research Council, and is the author of Melancholic Freedom: Agency and the Spirit of Politics. He is an associate professor of religious studies and American studies at Connecticut College, where he served as the college’s inaugural director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity. Sponsor: The Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life.

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Five College Dialogues

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Bookworm

college dialogBoston College alumnus Ian Thomas Malone has recently published, Five College Dialogues (TouchPoint Press, 2014), a book that is a philosophic comedic treatise on college life. According to the publisher: George Tecce, a graduate student working as a teaching assistant in the English department, his students, and his mentor examine the state of post-millennial academia. Malone was interviewed last month by the Greenwich Free Press. According to Malone, a sequel to Five College Dialogues is already in the works and scheduled for publication in Spring 2015. 

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Writing about religion in a polarized age

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Bookworm

panelistsBoston College will host a panel of writers who will discuss their insights regarding contemporary discourse on religion, including the challenges that exist for those who desire to engage in thoughtful reflection on provocative topics. “Writing about Religion in a Polarized Age” will take place Oct. 23 in Devlin 101 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Panelists will be: Rod Dreher, Mark Oppenheimer, Sarah Posner and Alan Wolfe. Dreher, who writes a blog for The American Conservative, is the author of two books: The Little Way of Ruthie Leming and Crunchy Cons, about a growing “conservative counterculture” movement that stands outside the GOP mainstream. Oppenheimer, the 2014-2015 Corcoran Visiting Chair in Christian-Jewish Relations at Boston College, is a journalist known for writing the biweekly “Beliefs” column for the New York Times. His books include Knocking on Heaven’s Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture and Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah across America. Posner is a regular contributor on religion to Al Jazeera America and Religion Dispatches.  She is the author of God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, which investigated the unholy alliance between politicians and televangelists. Wolfe is the author and editor of more than 20 books, including At Home in Exile: Why Diaspora Is Good for the Jews, Political Evil: What It Is and How to Combat It, and The Transformation of American Religion: How We actually Practice our Faith. Interested, but can’t make the event? Follow along via live broadcast or twitter (#WritingAboutReligion). Sponsor: The Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life.

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