A story of emigration
Author Maxim D. Shrayer, a Boston College professor of Russian and English, is the subject of a feature story in the Cape Cod Chronicle, which focuses on his emigration from Russia to America–the subject of his memoir Waiting for America.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged immigration, Russia, Slavic and Eastern Languages Dept
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Nurse leadership
A book co-authored by Connell School of Nursing Professor Dorothy A. Jones has been honored with the 2013 Sigma Theta Tau International “Best of Book Author Award.” Fostering Nurse-Led Care: Professional Practice for the Bedside Leader From Massachusetts General Hospital offers a practical model for nurses to translate theory into a professional nursing practice that advances the patient relationship and the quality of care. Jones’ co-authors are Jeanette Ives Erickson and Marianne Ditomassi. In addition to her work at BC, Jones serves as director of the Yvonne L. Munn Center for Nursing Research at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Posted in Awards/Honors, Boston College Authors
Tagged Connell School of Nursing, leadership, nurse
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Gustave Courbet
Visitors to the exclusive exhibition, “Courbet: Mapping Realism” which opens this weekend at BC’s McMullen Museum of Art, can gain additional insights into its subject–realist movement leader Gustave Courbet, one of France’s most prolific and innovative painters–via an accompanying volume of essays by American and Belgian scholars. Courbet: Mapping Realism, a color-illustrated volume, explores Courbet’s art in light of this expanded view of his career and showcases artwork from both the US and Belgium, which are rarely exhibited or published together. The catalogue is edited by Jeffery Howe, a professor of art history at Boston College. Contributors include BC Fine Arts Department professors Claude Cernuschi and Katherine Nahum, as well as Dominique Marechal, curator of 19th century art at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, and Jean-Philippe Huys, a researcher at the Centre international pour l’Étude du XIXe siècle in Brussels. For more about the exhibition, see this Boston Globe story.
Posted in Boston College Authors, Guest Authors
Tagged art, artist, Fine Arts Department, France, McMullen Museum of Art
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The Scholar and the Housewife
In her newly published memoir The Scholar and The Housewife, Boston College alumna Susan (Marren) Whelan recounts the people and events that informed her choices and strengthened her beliefs. Set against the backdrop of Wall Street in the 1980s and ’90s, Whelan, now a legal expert/delegate for the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations, brings her experience as a wife and mother of six, volunteer and lawyer to an honest discussion of the pressures on women, children and families today in America. In her introduction, an open letter to her children, she calls her book the musings of a parent struggling to find truth in the mundane and searching for wisdom and understanding. For more on Whelan, find her on Twitter or facebook.
Dante’s Divine Comedy
In 2000, the Italian section of Boston College Romance Languages and Literatures Department launched the ambitious “Lectura Dantis” series: public readings of Dante’s epic poem, Divine Comedy. Considered one of the world’s great works of literature, the 14th-century narrative poem is divided into three major sections: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, which trace the journey of Dante from the dark circles of Hell to the divine light of heavenly Paradise. BC’s popular canto-by-canto readings reached its conclusion this past semester with the final canto of Paradise. Organized by Associate Professor of Italian Laurie Shepard, “Lectura Dantis” featured nearly 100 presenters who offered critical commentary of the canto under consideration, then read it in the original Italian. Video sampling
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Dante, Italian', poem, poetry, Romance Languages Dept
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Dream bigger
Members of the Class of 2017 have been asked to read Make the Impossible Possible: One Man’s Crusade to Inspire Others to Dream Bigger and Achieve the Extraordinary (Broadway Books). The book recounts the story and vision of Manchester Bidwell President and CEO Bill Strickland, who has transformed the lives of thousands of people through his job training center and community arts program. Strickland will come to Boston College on Sept. 12 to speak to the freshmen class, part of an annual tradition called First Year Academic Convocation. From the publisher: “Bill Strickland shows how each of us, by adopting the attitudes and beliefs he has lived by every day, can reach our fullest potential and achieve the impossible in our lives and careers—and perhaps change the world a little in the process. Through lessons from Strickland’s own life experiences and those of countless others who have overcome challenging circumstances and turned their lives around, Make the Impossible Possible teaches us how to build on our passions and strengths, dream bigger and set the bar higher, achieve meaningful success, and inspire the lives of others.”
One of the best: Ingrid Hillinger
A new book published this month by Harvard University Press takes a look at the strategies and personal traits of 26 of the best law school professors across the country, the culmination of a four-year study that identified extraordinary law teachers who have a significant, positive, and long-term effect on their students. One of the professors featured in What The Best Law Teachers Do is BC Law School Professor Ingrid Hillinger. Hillinger, a recipient of the Boston College Distinguished Teaching Award in 2002, teaches a variety of commercial law/bankruptcy courses, including Contracts, Business Bankruptcy, and Secured Transactions. One of the co-authors, Michael Hunter Schwartz, professor of Law and dean of the William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, had this to say about Hillinger: “I had the great opportunity to study Ingrid’s teaching, and I continue to use, almost every day I teach, things I learned from watching her. There really is no one I saw who is more committed to serving her students than Ingrid is.”
The Late Parade
Boston College alumnus Adam Fitzgerald’s new collection of poetry titled The Late Parade (W.W. Norton/Liveright, 2013) was the recipient of a rave review in the New York Times. “Fitzgerald’s voice is a new and welcome sound in the aviary of contemporary poetry,” writes reviewer David Kirby, who goes on to describe Fitzgerald’s poetry “as lush as any of Keats’s odes, as textured as a corridor in the Louvre.” Fitzgerald is the founding editor of the poetry journal Maggy. His poetry has appeared in Boston Review and the Brooklyn Rail, among other publications. The Late Parade is his first book of poetry.
A look at a medieval “bestseller”
The Book of Hours was the most commonly produced and owned book in medieval and early modern Europe. In her book French Books of Hours: Making an Archive of Prayer, c. 1400-1600 (Cambridge University Press), Boston College Associate Professor of History Virginia Reinburg chronicles how the book of hours shaped religious practice and achieved popularity because it served as a bridge between liturgy and the home. Reinburg explores the book of hours’ prestige and how it was acquired, how it was read to guide prayer and teach literacy, and what it meant to its owners as a personal possession. An expert in early modern European history and religious life in early modern France, Reinburg based her account on the study of over 500 manuscripts and printed books from France. A review has been published in H-France Review, which calls French Books of Hours an “important contribution to the history of late medieval and early modern French history. First and foremost, however, it is a major contribution to the history and anthropology of religion in general.”
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged European history, History Department, prayer
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