Child and adolescent psychotherapist and author Katie Hurley, from the BC Class of 1997, has teamed up with her daughter Riley Hurley on the new children’s book, Fiona McPhee, Please Listen to Me! (PESI Publishing, Inc., 2024). Fiona is a confident, creative, and outspoken girl. She likes to take charge—and she’s good at it! One day she and her friends begin a group project at school, but with Fiona taking the lead every step of the way, her friends don’t feel heard or included. To continue working together, Fiona must learn that everyone has unique talents and something to contribute. Ultimately, the friends learn the best way to succeed is by using their strengths together. Katie Hurley is passionate about empowering girls and young women to lift each other up and work together for a better future together. Her previous publications include No More Mean Girls, The Stress-Buster Workbook for Kids, and The Happy Kid Handbook, among others.
Fiona McPhee
Irish Studies scholarship
Two Boston College Irish Studies Program faculty members contributed chapters to The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Modern Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2024). Sullivan Chair in Irish Studies Guy Beiner’s essay is on “Religion and Memory in Modern Ireland.” Professor of the Practice Robert Savage wrote the chapter on “Religion and Broadcasting in the Two Irelands.” The new handbook, which employs a comprehensive all-island approach to the relationships between religion, society, politics, and everyday life on the island of Ireland, is a collection of essays from 36 experts on topics such as identity, secularization, everyday religion, and gender. Beiner also co-wrote a chapter titled “Racializing Irish Historical Consciousness” in Race in Irish Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2024). He also contributed an article titled “Remembering to Forget: Heaney and 1798 Revisited” to a special issue of the interdisciplinary scholarly journal Éire Ireland. The special issue, edited by Irish Studies’ Vera Kreilkamp, marked the 10th anniversary of the death of Seamus Heaney.
The Heirloom
The Heirloom (G.P. Putnam’s Sons/Penguin Random House, 2024) is a new novel written by 2005 Boston College graduate Jessie Rosen. A marriage proposal with an heirloom engagement ring sets the novel’s action in motion. While Shea Anderson says yes to the proposal, she believes in her grandmother’s warning about heirloom rings—the karma from whoever wore the ring in the past will come back to haunt you. So Shea is compelled to find the ring’s previous owners to ensure it contains forever energy. Along with her sister and a journalist, Shea barks on a journey that takes her from Los Angeles and New York to Italy and Portugal. Booklist writes of The Heirloom: “Rosen’s captivating debut features strong family ties, tons of superstition, and romance.” Rosen, who is based in Los Angeles, is a writer, producer, educator, and speaker. The 20-Nothings blog that she produced from 2007 to 2017 was named a TIME Top 25 Blog and Forbes Top 100 Website for Women & Top 10 Website for Millennials. She has followed that with film and television writing, showrunning, and live storytelling.
Plymouth, MA and Columbia, MO
Stephen Paul Sayers, a 1988 Boston College graduate, pays homage to two of his favorite locations in the United States in the travel books, 100 Things to Do in Columbia, MO Before You Die and 100 Things to Do in Plymouth, Massachusetts Before You Die. Both titles are part of the best-selling 100 Things travel series from Reedy Press. His most recent book, 100 Things to Do in Plymouth, is about the New England coastal town where English pilgrims came ashore 400 years ago. Sayers first encountered Plymouth as a child in the 1970s and has been a seasonal resident since 2003. The book highlights Plymouth’s rich history, beaches, art community, and one-of-a-kind places. In his earlier work, 100 Things to Do in Columbia, Sayers reflects on what he calls “one of the coolest places on any map”—a city midway between St. Louis and Kansas City known for education, culture, history, natural beauty, and its small-town vibe. Sayers is an associate professor at the University of Missouri and has lived in Columbia for 20 years.
The Constitutional Bind
The United States Constitution occupies a quasi-mythical status in American political culture, according to Boston College Law Professor Aziz Rana, whose new book argues that this reverence is a 20th-century phenomenon and has led Americans to idolize a flawed document. The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them (University of Chicago Press, 2024) explores how the Constitution came to be so glorified and how this has impacted American life. Rana connects this widespread idolization to the rise of U.S. global dominance. According to the author, such veneration has had far-reaching consequences: despite offering a unifying language of reform, it has also unleashed an interventionist national security state abroad while undermining the possibility of deeper change at home. Rana’s research and teaching center on American constitutional law and political development. In particular, his work focuses on how shifting notions of race, citizenship, and empire have shaped legal and political identity since the founding of the country. Rana is also author of the book The Two Faces of American Freedom. He talks about his new book, the Constitution, and comparative constitutions in this Q&A from BC Law magazine.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Boston College Law School, constitution, law
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Latinx Leadership Initiative highlighted
The Boston College School of Social Work’s Latinx Leadership Initiative, which marked its 10th anniversary this spring, is featured in a new publication, Advancing What Works to Intentionally Serve Latino Students: Opportunities for Action – 2024. For 20 years, Excelencia in Education has been dedicated to accelerating Latino student success in higher education. Its Examples of Excelencia is a data-driven initiative that identifies and promotes best practices. LLI was recognized as an Example of Excelencia in 2020 and is one of 35 programs highlighted in Advancing What Works to Intentionally Serve Latino Students. The featured programs emphasize cultural responsiveness and take asset-based approaches to intentionally serving Latinos, as well as other post-traditional students, in five key areas. LLI appears in the section on Bilingualism Enhancing Academic and Career Connections. Founded in 2013, LLI has prepared almost 240 bilingual and bicultural social workers to accompany Latinx communities in developing sustainable solutions to complex problems in health, education, housing, and other areas.
The Irish Revival, reconsidered
Boston College Associate Professor of English and Irish Studies Marjorie Howes and Joseph Valente (University of Buffalo) have co-edited Irish Revival: A Complex Vision (Syracuse University Press, 2023), a collection of essays offering a nuanced reinterpretation of the Irish Revival utilizing the theoretical concept of “complexity,” recently developed in the information and biological sciences. From the publisher: “Taken as a whole, these essays show that the Revival’s various components operated as parts of a network but without any overarching aim or authority. [The volume’s] contributors examine how relationships among the Revival’s individual parts involved conflict and cooperation, difference and similarity, continuity and disruption. It is this combination of convergence without unifying purpose and divergence within a broad but flexible coherence that Valente and Howes capture by reinterpreting the Revival through complexity theory.” Howes is the author of Yeats’s Nation: Gender, Class, and Irishness and Colonial Crossings: Figures in Irish Literary History.
The enduring Jesuits
Historian and researcher Claudio Ferlan explores the rich tapestry of the Society of Jesus in the new book The Jesuits: A Thematic History. From roots of education to global missions and social activism, Ferlan weaves together the threads of Jesuit identity, revealing the spirit that has animated the Jesuit order. This comprehensive volume, spanning continents and epochs, offers a scholarly perspective accessible to both the seasoned academic and casual reader. The book is a product of the Institute of Jesuit Sources and its imprint, IJS Studies – Research on Jesuits and the Society of Jesus. IJS is housed at Boston College’s Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies. Ferlan discusses his book in this interview.
Posted in Guest Authors
Tagged history, Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, Jesuits, Society of Jesus
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Trey’s adventures continue
Boston College graduate Tyrese Rice, a star point guard during his years on the Heights (2005-2009), has published two more titles in his children’s book series: Trey and the German Voyage and Trey’s Spanish Extravaganza. According to Rice, his book series is “for every kid who has big dreams and a strong will to turn them into reality. These books also show children how understanding and using their experiences, good and bad, can guide them into great heights.” After graduation, Rice played professional basketball in Europe for more than 10 years. He is now CEO and founder of Trusted Legacy, which offers programs centered on empowerment, development, and performance with the aim of improving mental and physical well-being.
Risen from the Ashes
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, a human rights atrocity that left approximately one million Tutsi dead over the course of about 100 days. Marcel Uwineza, a Jesuit priest and Boston College graduate, was a young teen in Rwanda in 1994. He “illustrates the profound and enduring dynamics between the goodness and mercy of God on one hand, and the proclivity of sinful human nature to rebel against the divine call to Love God and neighbor on the other” in his memoir, Risen from the Ashes: Theology as Autobiography in Post-Genocide Rwanda (Paulines Publications Africa). During the genocide, he was beaten and his home and all his family’s belongings were burned. His two brothers and a sister were killed. In Risen from the Ashes, Fr. Uwineza reviews the history that led to the genocide against the Tutsi and recounts the painful experience of being a witness to the horrors. He also writes of his journey to the priesthood and the liberating power of forgiveness—specifically, the moment when he forgave the man who killed his siblings. Fr. Uwineza is also co-editor of Reinventing Theology in Post-Genocide Rwanda: Challenges and Hopes (Georgetown University Press, 2023), a scholarly examination of the Catholic Church’s role in the genocide against the Tutsi and its attempts at reconciliation that was drawn from a conference Fr. Uwineza co-organized in Rwanda. Fr. Uwineza graduated from Boston College with a licentiate in systematic theology, master’s in theology, and Ph.D. in systematic theology. He currently serves as principal (president) of Hekima University College in Kenya. Read more in BC News.
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