“A child’s home should be the safest place for them, but it’s not when you live with an erratic, active alcoholic,” writes Timothy Burke, whose new memoir, Milk and Whiskey On Logan Way, recounts his traumatic coming of age in a public housing project in South Boston. A graduate of the BC School of Social Work, Burke writes about the anger, shame, and unbearable loneliness of growing up with an alcoholic father. Despite his resolute determination not to repeat his father’s behavior, Burke became addicted to alcohol. His story, however, is ultimately one of redemption. Through a 12-step program, he found recovery and has been sober for more than 30 years. Burke hopes Milk and Whiskey on Logan Way can offer hope and support to other survivors of trauma and abuse. Read more on BC News.
Trapped in the dysfunction of another’s addiction
Posted in Alumni Authors
Tagged addiction, alcoholism, memoir, School of Social Work
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Candlemas Lecture
Priest, theologian, and author James Alison will present the annual Candlemas Lecture at Boston College on February 7 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall 100. His talk, titled “Catholicity, Sacrifice, and Shame: Subverting Polarization in Our Contemporary Ecclesial and Political Cultures,” is presented by the BC Lowell Humanities and co-sponsored by the BC Theology Department. Seating can be reserved here. Fr. Alison is known for his expertise on the great French thinker René Girard and for his writings and pastoral outreach on LGBTQ issues. He is the author of several books, including Jesus the Forgiving Victim: Listening for the Unheard Voice; Raising Abel; The Joy of Being Wrong; Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay; On Being Liked; and Undergoing God, among others.
Posted in Guest Authors, Lowell Humanities Series
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Academic excellence initiatives in higher ed
Academic Star Wars: Excellence Initiatives in Global Perspective (MIT Press, 2023) is a new book of case studies on the global phenomenon of academic excellence initiatives and how they shape the performance of research universities. Academic excellence initiatives (AEIs)—special government-sponsored programs to improve research universities—have provided billions of dollars to top universities and represent perhaps the most significant effort in the past half-century to jump-start academic research. The contributors to Academic Star Wars analyze AEIs in nine European and Asian countries (China, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Denmark, France, Germany, and Russia), and seek to understand the impact of these programs on national higher ed systems. The contributors also offer policy recommendations for national decision-makers and university leaders. Academic Star Wars was edited by Maria Yudkevich, Philip G. Altbach, and Jamil Salmi, all of whom are affiliated with BC’s Center for International Higher Education.
Roya Hakakian
Roya Hakakian, a writer whose work often deals with the topics of exile, displacement, political and religious persecution, and the struggle of people—especially women—against authoritarianism, will present “The Plight of Women in Israel and Iran, and the Silence of Feminists” at Boston College on January 31. Her address will be held in Gasson Hall, room 100, at 7 p.m. Free, reserved seating found here. Hakakian is the founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. She was born and raised in a family of Jewish educators in Tehran, and arrived in the U.S. as a refugee in 1985. Her acclaimed memoir, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran, details the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution. She also is the author of Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, an account of the 1992 murders of four Iranian-Kurdish leaders in Berlin, Germany, and her most recent book, A Beginner’s Guide to America for the Immigrant and the Curious, which has been called a “love letter” to America and its democracy. She has also written essays and opinion pieces for New York Times, New York Review of the Books, and the Atlantic, among other outlets. Her lecture is presented by the BC Lowell Humanities Series and is co-sponsored by the International Studies Program, Islamic Civilization and Societies Program, and with the support of an Institute for the Liberal Arts Major Grant.
Auschwitz and Absolution
In the face of his 1947 execution, Rudolf Höss, the notorious commandant of Auschwitz, met with Polish Jesuit priest Wladyslaw Lohn, S.J. Höss made a confession to Fr. Lohn for approximately four hours, and received absolution. The new book, Auschwitz and Absolution: The Case of the Commandant and the Confessor (Orbis Books, 2023), offers a compelling account of the secret and sacramental meeting, and reflections from 17 Jewish and Christian commentators that represent a critical challenge to contemporary notions of forgiveness. Auschwitz and Absolution is edited by BC Kraft Family Professor of Philosophy Emeritus James Bernauer, S.J., former director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College. BC faculty members who contributed to the book are Professor Ruth Langer and Professor Marina Berzins McCoy.
Is Hemingway her father?
The Wildest Sun (Dutton/Penguin Random House, 2023), a new novel from bestselling author Asha Lemmie, follows the story of Delphine Auber, an aspiring writer on the cusp of adulthood, who embarks on a journey to find the father she has never known. She believes her father is larger-than-life literary figure Ernest Hemingway and her quest takes her from Paris to New York’s Harlem, to Havana and Key West. She desperately yearns for his approval, as both a daughter and a writer, convinced that he holds the key to who she’s truly meant to be. Lemmie is a 2015 Boston College graduate whose debut novel, Fifty Words for Rain, was a New York Times bestseller and a “Good Morning America” Book Club pick.
A father and son above the fire
Above the Fire (Blackstone Publishing, 2023), the debut novel from Boston College Law School graduate Michael O’Donnell, tells the story of Doug, a widower, and his 7-year-old son, Tim, who find themselves tested by nature and the unknown in an unexpected challenge to survive. It’s October and father and son are backpacking through the White Mountains in New Hampshire when chaos of an unclear nature takes out electricity and electronic communications, forcing the duo to remain in the mountains throughout the winter. They must endure the elements, solitude, and threat of outsiders. As their isolation intensifies, and the nature of the country’s catastrophe becomes more unsettling, their bond with each other grows more fierce. O’Donnell, an avid hiker, told the Boston Globe that the novel is a “love letter” to his son, whom he spent many intensive months with during Covid lockdown. O’Donnell’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and other publications. Read a review in the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Posted in Alumni Authors
Tagged Boston College Law School, debut, father, nature, novel
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Women, vengeance, and justice
Emmy-winning journalist and author Elizabeth Flock examines how three women used violence and lethal force to gain power, safety, and freedom when the institutions meant to protect them—government, police, courts—failed to do so. Flock’s new book The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice (Harper, 2024) follows Brittany Smith, a woman from Alabama, who killed a man she said raped her but was denied the protection of the Stand-Your-Ground law; Angoori Dahariya, leader of a gang in Uttar Pradesh, India, dedicated to avenging victims of domestic abuse; and Cicek Mustafa Zibo, a fighter in an all-female militia that battled ISIS in Syria. From the publisher: “Through Flock’s propulsive prose and remarkable research on the ground—embedded with families, communities, and organizations in America, India, and Syria—The Furies examines, with exquisite nuance, whether the fight for women’s safety is fully possible without force. Do these women’s acts of vengeance help or hurt them, and ultimately, all women? Did they create lasting change in entrenched misogynistic and paternalistic systems?” Flock is 2008 graduate of Boston College. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and The Atlantic, and on PBS NewsHour and Netflix, among other outlets. She is the host of the podcast Blind Plea and author of The Heart is a Shifting Sea, an examination of love and marriage in India.
Ronald Reagan, for kids
A new picture book by Boston College graduate Lisa Rogers introduces young readers to Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States. Ronald Reagan: A Little Golden Book Biography (Penguin Random House, 2023), illustrated by Catherine Pape, tells the life story of the actor-turned-president who loved horses and jellybeans. It is part of the illustrious Little Golden Book Series, which has been publishing books for children for more than 75 years. Rogers’ other publications include Hound Won’t Go, Beautiful Noise, and 16 Words: William Carlos Williams and “The Red Wheelbarrow.”
Curriculum by Design
In Curriculum by Design: Innovation and the Liberal Arts Core (Fordham University Press, 2023), authors from Boston College describe how the University’s journey to a new Core Curriculum—aided by consultation with a firm specializing in design thinking—energized faculty, administrators, and students to view liberal arts education as an ongoing process of innovation. The book was edited by Carroll School of Management Powers Family Dean Andrew Boynton, Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley, and Rattigan Professor of English Mary Crane, director of BC’s Institute for the Liberal Arts, all of whom contributed to the volume. Many at BC who have been teaching the new courses in the revitalized curriculum wrote essays for Curriculum by Design. They are: Allison Adair, Lynne Anderson, Robert Bartlett, William Bole, Toby Bottorf, John Butler, Daniel Callahan, Hanne Eisenfeld, Thomas Epstein, Brian Gareau, Tara Gareau, Elizabeth Graver, Stacy Grooters, Régine Michelle Jean-Charles, Gregory Kalscheur, S.J., Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace, Prasannan Parthasarathi, Brian Robinette, Juliet Schor, Sylvia Sellers-García, Elizabeth H. Shlala, Min Hyoung Song, Jenna Tonn, Holly VandeWall and Dunwei Wang. The essays offer practical advice on the initial challenges of interdisciplinary and team teaching, problem- or project-based learning, intentional reflection, and other innovative structures and methods of teaching enacted for the first time. Read more on BC News.
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