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.
Irish author Angela Bourke
Angela Bourke, author of The Burning of Bridget Cleary and Maeve Brennan: Homesick at the New Yorker, will discuss her research with an undergraduate class that is opening up the presentation to the public. The “Irish Material Culture” class will host Burke on April 7, from 3:00-5:00 p.m., in the Andover Room of Connolly House, 300 Hammond St.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will read from her works on April 7 at 6:00 p.m. in Devlin Hall, room 008, at an event sponsored by African and African Diaspora Studies Program. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, received the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Her latest work is The Thing Around Your Neck.
The immigrant and the War on Terror
How does the war on terror impact the lives of immigrants going about their daily lives? Author Amitava Kumar will discuss this and other questions in a lecture drawn from his book, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb. The event will be held April 6 at 4:30 p.m. in the Cabaret Room of Vanderslice Hall. Sponsor: Institute for the Liberal Arts’ Race and Culture After 9/11 Lecture Series and Symposium.
STM scholars pen book reviews
Two professors from the School of Theology and Ministry have book reviews in April 4 issue of America magazine. New Testament scholar Daniel Harrington, S.J., reviews Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusalem to the Resurrection and Professor of Theology and Religious Education Thomas Groome reviews Why Stay Catholic? Unexpected Answers to a Life-Changing Question by Michael Leach.
Posted in Boston College Book Reviewer
Tagged Catholic, School of Theology & Ministry
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