Nabokov on the Heights: New Studies from Boston College (Academic Studies Press, 2025), edited by Boston College Professor Maxim D. Shrayer, features essays by BC undergraduate and graduate students who took Shrayer’s seminar on the Russian American writer Vladimir Nabokov. The volume also features contributions from Shrayer and his English Department colleagues Professors Kevin Ohi and Eric Weiskott. The essays cover a broad thematic and intellectual terrain and showcase cutting-edge Nabokov scholarship and criticism. The topics include translingualism, sexuality, Cold War politics, food studies, Nabokov and the visual arts, religion and metaphysics, urban studies, immigration studies, and modernist poetics. The student/alumni contributors are: Nicholas Adler, Megumi DeMond, Jared Hackworth, Nina Khaghany, Matthew Lyberg, Brendan McCourt, Katie Pelkey, Samuel L. Peterson, Ciara Spencer, and Fiona Steacy. More from BC News.
‘Nabokov on the Heights’
Drama and romance in a small town
In a new literary romance novel by Liz O’Neill, expectations set for 19-year-old Sabina McTigue’s future are challenged when the young socialite meets the charming Colin Hatch, a charter pilot with a cloudy history. Set in 1950s coastal New England, Ways of Virtue (She Writes Press/Simon & Schuster, 2025) has been described as Dirty Dancing meets Jane Austen. Kirkus Review called Ways of Virtue “delightful” and “a compelling story of love, dashed expectations, and second chances.” O’Neill is an associate director in the Center for Corporate Citizenship, housed at BC’s Carroll School of Management. She holds a M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged coming-of-age, Massachusetts, New England, romance
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The role of migrant shelters in Mexico
Aside from being one of the most important migration corridors in the world, Mexico is becoming an immigrant destination itself, with more and more migrants deciding or needing to stay in the country after failing to enter the United States. Migrant shelters have emerged as an integral part of Mexico’s humanitarian ecosystem, according to BC School of Social Work Assistant Professor Alejandro Olayo-Méndez, S.J. In his new book, Humanitarianism from Below: Faith, Welfare, and the Role of Casas de Migrantes in Mexico (NYU Press, 2025), he offers a detailed look at the experiences and challenges of these migrant shelters. For his research, Fr. Olayo-Méndez traveled along migrant routes several times in order to gain knowledge about how migrants move and how they interact with the migrant shelters. According to Fr. Olayo-Méndez, migrant shelters have emerged as an informal welfare system providing temporary living quarters, organizing food preparation and water distribution, and offering childcare, legal assistance, and money transfer services, among other services. Read more in BC News.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Jesuit author, Mexico, migration, School of Social Work
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Eric Klinenberg
Bestselling author and public sociologist Eric Klinenberg, the Helen Gould Shepard Professor of Social Science and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University, will present the Jane Jacobs Lecture at Boston College on November 5 at 6 p.m. in 245 Beacon St. (Room 107). Klinenberg is author of the acclaimed book, Palaces for the People, in which he contends that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, childcare centers, churches, and parks where crucial connections are formed. His latest book, 2020, is a meticulously reported, character-driven investigation of a time when nothing was certain and everything was at stake. Klinenberg’s lecture, “Democracy, Equity, Resilience: Holding Communities Together,” is presented by the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics and co-sponsored by the Corcoran Center for Real Estate and Urban Action.
Novelist Emily St. John Mandel
Boston College’s Park Street Corporation Speaker Series, which seeks to engage students in exploring values and ethics related to health and healthcare practices, will host bestselling author Emily St. John Mandel on November 4 at 7 p.m. in the Heights Room. Mandel is the author of several novels, including The Glass Hotel, Sea of Tranquility, and Station Eleven, a story of a troupe of actors and musicians bringing arts and humanity to settlements after a flu pandemic has killed most of the world’s population. Station Eleven was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Toronto Book Award, and was adapted into a limited series for HBO. (Author photo by JiaHao Peng.)
Strauss and Lessing
Assistant Professor of Political Science Hannes Kerber is editor of Leo Strauss, La dottrina essoterica: Saggi su Lessing, published by Edizioni ETS. The volume (translated to The Exoteric Doctorine: Essays on Lessing) is a collection of posthumous writings that shed new light on Leo Strauss’s thought by exploring the decisive moment when the German philosopher, who emigrated to the United States in the late 1930s, rediscovered exoteric writing and made it the cornerstone of his philosophical method. From the publisher: “At the heart of the volume is the figure of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, an Enlightenment thinker who proves to be a constant and subterranean presence in Strauss’s thought, despite his name rarely appearing in the works published during Strauss’s lifetime.” In a concluding essay, Kerber explores the hermeneutic experience of exotericism in Strauss, Lessing, and Schleiermacher, focusing on the practice of philosophically reading Plato’s dialogues. Kerber’s expertise is in 17th and 18th century political thought. He is author of the prize-winning book, Die Aufklärung der Aufklärung: Lessing und die Herausforderung des Christentums.
Journalist Caitlin Dickerson on deportation
Caitlin Dickerson, an award-winning writer for The Atlantic, will speak on “Deported: The Price of Our Prosperity” at Boston College on October 29 at 7 p.m in Gasson 100. Dickerson won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, the Livingston Award for National Reporting, and the Silvers-Dudley Prize. Before joining The Atlantic, she was a reporter at The New York Times and a producer and investigative reporter for NPR. She is the recipient of a Peabody award and an Edward R Murrow award. Dickerson has reported on immigration, history, politics, and race in four continents and dozens of U.S. cities. She is currently writing a book about the systemic impact of deportation on American society. Her appearance is cosponsored by the Lowell Humanities Series and the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
‘The Second Estate’
In her new book, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Boston College Law School Professor Ray Madoff explores what she sees as a central driver of economic inequality in the United States: its tax code. “While the American tax system was designed to serve as a counter to inequality, imposing its greatest burdens on those with the greatest capacity to pay,” Madoff explained, “today, it does just the opposite: imposing its greatest burdens on earners at all income levels, while those with high wealth, get a free pass.” Beyond explaining the current situation, The Second Estate also tells the story of how we got here and what can be done to ensure that all Americans share the carrying costs of government. Madoff is co-founder and director of the Boston College Law School Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good. Read more from BC Law Magazine.
Poetry Days with Philip Metres
Poetry Days presents “An Evening with Philip Metres” at Boston College on October 22 at 7 p.m in Gasson 100. Philip Metres is the author of several works, most recently Fugitive/Refuge, which follows the journey of Metres’s refugee ancestors—from Lebanon to Mexico to the United States—in a vivid exploration of what it means to long for home. His other publications include Shrapnel Maps, The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance, and Sand Opera. His work consists of poetry, translation, essays, fiction, and criticism. He is the recipient of the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Lyric Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. Metres is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. The event, cosponsored with the Lowell Humanities Series, is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Four girls, all named Taylor
Taylor is terrified to start middle school. She wishes she could fade into the background, unnoticed. But on the first day of school, she finds herself in the spotlight when it’s revealed that her homeroom class has four girls all named Taylor. So goes the start of Boston College alumna Jen Calonita’s newest book for middle grade readers, The Taylors (Scholastic, 2025). The four Taylors, all Taylor Swift fans, become friends until a surprise betrayal threatens to change everything. Calonita is the bestselling author of more than 40 books for teen and young adults.
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