Women and post-war Bosnia
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Bosnia, Slavic and Eastern Languages Dept, women
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Review of The Case for Lebanon
Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East: The Case for Lebanon by Boston College Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Arabic, and Hebrew Franck Salameh was reviewed by Professor Mordechai Nisan of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Spring 2011 issue of the Middle East Quarterly (Volume 18, Number 2). Here is an excerpt: “The essence of Salameh’s thesis is that langauge–one rooted in the distant past and leavened with a multiplicity of more contemporary influences–continues to leave its imprint both on how the Lebanese communicate in the popular domain but also on what makes Lebanon the extraordinary human venture it is. […] Salameh’s meticulous research makes for a most worthy book that makes a significant contribution to the literature. His study elucidates a core aspect of national identity with repercussions for all the Arabic-speaking countries. The author questions a conventional and sanctified concept of an Arab world which, battered and bruised by internecine political rivalries and animosities, is as desiccated as a Middle Eastern desert in the heat of summer.” Read the full review.
Lucky Grossman
Vasily Grossman had been one of the principal voices of anti-Nazi resistance, a legendary journalist who spent 1000 days at the front during World War II. When he died in 1964, a month before the removal of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, he had already been devastated by the efforts of the Soviet regime to delete him from history. The Road, a new collection of Grossman’s shorter prose that presents a retrospective of the writer’s career, is reviewed by BC Professor of Russian and English Maxim D. Shrayer in the Spring 2011 issue of the Jewish Review of Books Review (click on “Lucky Grossman” headline to see text).
Baseball stories
Author Lenny Cassuto will deliver a lecture on “Baseball and the Business of American Innocence” to mark the publication of his new co-edited (with Stephen Partridge) book, The Cambridge Companion to Baseball, on Apr. 19 from 4:30 – 6:00 p.m. in Connolly House, 300 Hammond Street, Chestnut Hill. Cassuto is also the author of Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories, which was nominated for the Edgar and Macavity Awards and named one of the Ten Best Books of 2008 in the crime and mystery category by the Los Angeles Times. His articles about American crime fiction have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, the Minnesota Review, and other publications. His other books include The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque In American Literature and Culture and three edited volumes. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Irish Studies and American Studies programs.
Privatize This?
In Privatize This? Assessing the Opportunities and Costs of Privatization, Boston College Adjunct Associate Professor of Economics Richard McGowan, SJ examines the ideology and motives behind the privatization or nationalization of an industry. Based on real-world case studies, ranging from Spain’s privatization of its cigarette industry to Pennsylvania’s “state store system” for selling liquor, the book focuses on the central issues of privatization—profit versus public good, protection from fraud and waste—and shows how the recent economic upheaval has changed public opinion and public policy on privatization. Fr. McGowan, the author of six books on the interactions of business and government, contends that privatization—championed by the Bush Administration–continues to be a controversial concept, and is as synonymous with waste, cronyism, and fraud as it is with efficiency and competition.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Economics Dept, Jesuit author, privatization
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Cherishing the souls of Black folk
Michael Eric Dyson, a renowned scholar and cultural critic on issues of race, religion, popular culture, and contemporary issues in the African-American community, will give deliver an address on “Cherishing the Souls of Black Folk” on April 16. Dyson is the author of 16 books, including April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Death and How it Changed America, Holler if You Hear Me, and Is Bill Cosby Right? He is an American Book Award recipient and two-time NAACP Image Award winner. His talk at Bapst Library will start at 5:30 p.m.
Writer Colm Toibin
Award-winning author Colm Tóibín, considered one of the foremost Irish novelists of his generation, will speak on Apr. 14 at 7 p.m. in Devlin Hall, room 008. He is the author of six novels (Brooklyn, The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night, The Blackwater Lightship, and The Master), two collections of short stories (Mothers and Sons and The Empty Family), as well as collections of literary and cultural criticism, travel writing, journalism, and a play. His writing appears regularly in The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, and The Dublin Review. He has won numerous awards, including The Dublin IMPAC Prize, The Priz Du Meileur Livre, the LA Times Novels of the Year, The Ferro-Grumley Prize, the Edge Hill Prize, as well as being twice short listed for the Man Booker Prize. His appearance is part of the Irish Studies program’s Irish Writers Series.
Soldier-poet
Brian Turner is a soldier-poet whose debut book of poems, Here, Bullet, won the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Pen Center USA “Best in the West” award, the Poets Prize, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection. He will speak Apr. 12 at 7:30 p.m. in Higgins Hall, room 300. Turner’s second book of poetry, Phantom Noise, was published last year.
Turner served seven years in the US Army, including one year as an infantry team leader in Mosul, Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Before that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina with the 10th Mountain Division. Selected one of 50 United States Artists Fellows for 2009, Turner is a contributor to “Home Fires,” a New York Times Opinionator blog that features the writing of men and women who have returned from wartime service in the United States military. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series.
Donnelly Prize
Boston College History Department faculty member Robert Savage, who also teaches in the University’s Irish Studies Program, was recently awarded the 2010 James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize for Best Book in History and Social Sciences for his book A Loss of Innocence?: Television and Irish Society, 1960-72 (Manchester, 2010). The award was presented by the American Conference for Irish Studies during its international meeting held March 30-April 2.
A Loss of Innocence? explores how television helped facilitate a process of modernization that slowly transformed Irish society during the 1960s. Television introduced into Irish homes an unrelenting popular culture that helped undermine the conservative political, cultural and social consensus that dominated Ireland. Read more about the award and the author.
BC Bookmarks 