The case for Lebanon

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Bookworm
A new reading of modern Middle Eastern history is proposed—and alternate solutions to the volatile region’s problems are suggested—by Franck Salameh, an assistant professor in the Boston College Slavic and Eastern Languages Department, in his new book Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East. The author  proposes bringing back to the fore of Middle East Studies the issue of language as a key factor in shaping (and misshaping) the region, with the hope of rediscovering a broader, more honest, and less ideologically tainted discussion on the Middle East. Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East has a special focus on Lebanon, a “Christian homeland,” because Lebanon has traditionally acted as the region’s template for change and a barometer gauging its problems and charting its progress. There is more from Professor Salameh courtesy of the Boston College Libraries.
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Belfast Boys

Posted on October 15, 2010 by Bookworm
Goldsmiths, University of London Professor Richard Grayson will speak on his book, Belfast Boys – How Unionists and Nationalists Fought and Died Together in the First World War, at 4 p.m. on Oct. 18 in the Thompson Room of Burns Library. The book centers on the two battalions with overt West Belfast connections in 1914-18, the 9th Royal Irish Rifles and the 6th Connaught Rangers, but also draws in other units of the army, navy and Royal Flying Corps in which West Belfast men served. It covers the stories of the men who fought in the war, the experiences of those who returned, the work of women and children on the home front, and the controversies which have surrounded remembrance of the war in Belfast. Sponsor: Center for Irish Programs at Boston College.
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Politics & culture

Posted on October 15, 2010 by Bookworm
Wall Street Journal columnist and author Peggy Noonan, speechwriter for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, will speak on campus Oct. 19 at 4:30 p.m. in Robsham Theater. Her appearance is part of the Carroll School’s Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics’ Clough Colloquium.
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Meet Elif Batuman

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Bookworm
Elif Batuman has written about Thai boxing, Russian ice palaces, and comedy traffic school for The New Yorker. She contributes to London Review of Books, n+1, and the Nation. She is the author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them and a recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. She will speak in Devlin, 101, on Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series
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Fr. Neenan’s Dean’s List

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Bookworm
Every year since 1982, William B. Neenan, SJ, one of Boston College’s most beloved Jesuits, issues his Dean’s List of recommended books. Check out the Boston College Chronicle for details about Fr. Neenan’s 2010 Dean’s List, which includes new titles by Jeannette Walls, Mitch Albom, James Martin, SJ, and Uwem Akpan, SJ. The Boston College Libraries maintains a list of every title that has appeared on Fr. Neenan’s Dean’s List.
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After 9/11

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Bookworm
University of California at Davis Professor Sunaina Maira will discuss her book, Missing: Youth, Citizenship, and Empire After 9/11, a study of South Asian Muslim immigrant youth and issues of citizenship and empire after 9/11, on Oct. 6 at 4:30 p.m. in McGuinn Hall, 121. Sponsor: Boston College’s Institute for the Liberal Arts.
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Paging Heidi Montag

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Bookworm
When is the modification of our appearance empowering and when is it a sign of weakness? Sociologist Victoria Pitts-Taylor, author of Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture, offers a ground-breaking analysis of the normalization of cosmetic surgery and the phenomenon of cosmetic surgery “addiction” in contemporary American medicine and popular culture. Oct. 5 at 7:30 p.m.  in McGuinn 121. Sponsored by: Women’s and Gender Studies Program.
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Missing: A grandmother

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Bookworm
A new title to add to your TBR pile. . . Missing Lucile: Memories of the Grandmother I Never Knew, a nonfiction book by Suzanne Berne, who teaches in Boston College’s English Department, will be published in October. The author describes the book: “A daughter tries to give her dying father the mother he never really knew–and about whom little is known. Through a box of trinkets and photographs she begins to reconstruct a woman who has been missing from the family for 75 years. By doing so, she finds the father she has been missing herself.”
Read an excerpt from Boston College Magazine.
Berne is the author of The Ghost at the Table and A Crime in the Neighborhood, which won Great Britain’s Orange Prize.
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What’s your heart calling you to do?

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Bookworm
One of the leading voices on personal vocation, John Neafsey, author of A Sacred Voice is Calling: Personal Vocation and Social Conscience, will discuss what it means to hear a call in the heart and respond to vocation by becoming more just and compassionate as individuals and communities. This event is part of the Church in the 21st Century Center series on vocation. Sept. 30, 5:30 pm, Fulton Hall, Room 511.
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Brilliant

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Bookworm
Award-winning author Jane Brox will talk about her latest book, Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, at the Murray Function Room at 7:00 p.m. on Sept. 28. In Brilliant, Brox traces the fascinating history of human light from the stone lamps of the Pleistocene to LEDs —and reveals that the story of light is also the story of our evolving selves.  Her appearance is sponsored by the Lowell Humanities Series.
Brox also is the author of Clearing Land: Legacies of the American Farm, Five Thousand Days Like This One: An American Family History, a 1999 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction, and Here and Nowhere Else, which won the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. She has received the New England Book Award for nonfiction, and her essays have appeared in anthologies including Best American Essays, The Norton Book of Nature Writing, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology.
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