Graver on National Book Award longlist

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Bookworm

endofthepointCongratulations to Boston College Professor of English Elizabeth Graver who has been named to the longlist for the 2013 National Book Award in Fiction for her novel, The End of the Point (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers). The End of the Point follows three generations of the Porter family from the middle to the end of the 20th century. Graver joins many notable authors on the longlist, including Alice McDermott, Thomas Pynchon, and Jhumpa Lahiri, among others. All together, the longlist includes four National Book Award winners and finalists and a Pulitzer Prize winner and finalist. The longlist was selected from 408 books submitted by publishers for consideration. One of the most prestigious literary prizes, the National Book Awards (fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature) are sponsored by the National Book Foundation, whose mission is to celebrate the best of American literature. The finalists for the 2013 National Book Awards will be announced Oct. 16 and winners will be announced Nov. 20 in New York City. Here are some reviews of The End of the Point and interviews with Graver: New York Times, Boston Globe, NPR affiliate WNYC and Boston College Chronicle.

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The Virgin Mary in Chinese iconography

Posted on September 17, 2013 by Bookworm

Clarke_hb.inddThe Virgin Mary and Catholic Identities in Chinese History (Hong Kong University Press) is a new book forthcoming from Father Jeremy Clarke, SJ, a historian whose expertise is the history of  Catholicism in China. Through a prism of history, theology and art, the book explores how the Virgin Mary has been depicted in Chinese paintings and sculptures and the communities that produced them. Fr. Clarke is an assistant professor in the University’s History Department. For a limited time, it can be ordered from Columbia University Press at a 30% discount using code VIRCLA.

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Honors for Jacobs

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Bookworm

laos bookCongratulations to History Associate Professor Seth Jacobs, winner of the New England Historical Association’s James P. Hanlan Book Award for his work, The Universe Unraveling: American Foreign Policy in Cold War Laos. The NEHA is a professional association of over 700 historians who live and work in New England. Jacobs will receive the award at the NEHA meeting in October. Story

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A story of emigration

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Bookworm

shrayerbookAuthor 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.

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Nurse leadership

Posted on September 5, 2013 by Bookworm

nurse-led careA 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.

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Gustave Courbet

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Bookworm

Winter Landscapev1Visitors 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.

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The Scholar and the Housewife

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Bookworm

scholarIn 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.

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Dante’s Divine Comedy

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Bookworm

DanteBookIn 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


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Dream bigger

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Bookworm

impossibleMembers 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.”

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One of the best: Ingrid Hillinger

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Bookworm

lawteachersA 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.”

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