Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole, an award-winning journalist, author, and leading public intellectual, will present “Political Heaney” at Boston College on November 16 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. O’Toole was recently appointed official biographer of the late Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney. His talk will open “Seamus Heaney: Afterlives,” Boston College’s international symposium marking the 10th anniversary of the poet’s death. O’Toole is the author numerous books, including We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland; Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain; and Ship of Fools: How Stupidity And Corruption Sank The Celtic Tiger. A member of the Royal Irish Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a winner of the European Press Prize and the Orwell Prize. O’Toole’s History of Ireland in 100 Objects, which covers 100 highly charged artifacts from the last 10,000 years, is currently the basis for Ireland’s postage stamps. O’Toole’s lecture is presented by the BC Lowell Humanities Lecture Series and is co-sponsored by the BC Irish Studies Program and with the support of an ILA Major Grant.
Political Heaney
In the air and on the sea, pollution goes under the radar
International shipping and aviation stand as two major sources of global greenhouse gas emissions not governed by national inventories and the U.N. Paris Climate agreement. Since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, regulating greenhouse gas emissions from these two industries has been assigned to the International Maritime Organization in London and the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal. Yet, they have not met their mandates in the face of global pressure to act, concludes Boston College Political Science Professor and climate policy expert David Deese in his new book Controlling International Shipping and Aviation Emissions: Governing the Global Climate Crisis (Routledge, 2023). Deese’s book reveals why these two U.N. agencies have largely failed in their efforts and highlights the most promising emerging and feasible technologies to control and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the ships that ply the seas and aircraft that travel the skies. Read more on BC News.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged climate change, policymakers, Political Science department, pollution
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American Roulette
Eight authors have collaborated on a new novel that tells a story about gun violence and its aftermath in a unique way. American Roulette (Milford House/Sunbury Press, 2023) opens on one unremarkable day in an average U.S. town where a stream of people make their way to a mall to shop, work, keep appointments, or catch a movie. At 5:17 p.m., one person’s actions will change the lives of all the others. American Roulette tells the story of eight of the people involved. Each characters was created by one of the book’s authors—one of whom is Boston College graduate Pat LaMarche. LaMarche is an award-winning broadcaster, journalist, author, and former Green Party vice presidential candidate. She is known for her advocacy work on behalf of those experiencing homelessness and poverty. Her previous publications include Still Left Out in America: The State of Homelessness in the United States and Daddy, What’s the Middle Class? Her writings have appeared in the Huffington Post, Bangor Daily News (Maine), and Bucks County Beacon (Pennsylvania).
Lisa Genova
Bestselling author and neuroscientist Lisa Genova will present “How Art and Science Collaborate in Illuminating What It Is Like to Live With Alzheimer’s Disease” on November 2 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. Genova, who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard University, is the author of the novels Still Alice, Left Neglected, Love Anthony, Inside the O’Briens and Every Note Played, and the non-fiction book, . Her extensively researched novels focus on people living with neurological diseases and disorders. Through her fiction, she describes with passion and accuracy the journeys of those affected by brain diseases and conditions, thereby educating, demystifying, destigmatizing, and inspiring. Still Alice, her novel about a woman living with Alzheimer’s, was adapted into a film starring Julianne Moore, who won an Academy Award for her performance. Genova has appeared on Today, CNN, PBS NewsHour, and NPR, among other media outlets. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square, Sargent and Eunice Shriver Profiles in Dignity Award, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Media Award, and Alzheimer’s Association’s Rita Hayworth Award. Her talk is presented by the Park Street Corporation Speaker Series and is co-sponsored by the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.
Rethinking Catholic theology
Harvey D. Egan, S.J., a professor emeritus in the Boston College Theology Department, has published a new book that provides readers with an intelligent, informed, critical grasp of the central truths of the Catholic/Christian tradition. Rethinking Catholic Theology: From the Mystery of Existence to the New Creation (Paulist Press, 2023) aims to help readers to rethink more deeply these essential truths, and in what specific ways the understanding of the Catholic faith has changed and/or remained the same since Vatican II. Fr. Egan’s research areas include Christian mysticism, Catholic theology, and the works of renowned theologian Karl Rahner, S.J. He is the author of several books, including Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life; Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition; Ignatius Loyola the Mystic; Paul: Christianity’s Premier Apostolic Mystic, and Karl Rahner’s Mystical Theology and Christology, among others. Read more in this Q&A from BC News.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Catholicism, Jesuit author, Theology Department
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A Chernobyl guide to the future
Kate Brown, the Thomas M. Siebel Distinguished Professor in the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will present “The Interminable Cycles of Chernobyl’s Catastrophes: War, Accident, and War Again” at Boston College on October 25. Brown is the author of Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future, which won the Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize and Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in history. Manual for Survival was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage. Drawing on a decade of archival research and on-the-ground interviews in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, Brown unveils the full breadth of the devastation of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster and offers a chilling exposé of the international effort to minimize the health and environmental consequences of nuclear radiation in its wake. Her talk, at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall 100, is presented by the BC Lowell Humanities Series and co-sponsored by the History Department and the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.
Linda Villarosa on race, health, and inequality
Journalist and educator Linda Villarosa will present her book, Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation (Doubleday/Penguin Random House, 2022), on October 18 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. An award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine, Villarosa writes about the intersection of health, medicine, and race. In Under the Skin, Villarosa tells the story of racial health disparities in America, revealing the forces in the U.S. health care system and in American society that cause Black people to “live sicker and die quicker” compared to their white counterparts. Under the Skin was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly and NPR, and one of the 10 Best Books of 2022 by the New York Times. It was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize and won the 2023 J. Anthony Lukas Prize for excellence in nonfiction writing from the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and the Lillian Smith Book Award from the University of Georgia. It was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and was a finalist for the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism by the New York Public Library. A graduate of the University of Colorado, Villarosa spent a year at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as a journalism fellow. She also holds a master’s degree in urban journalism/digital storytelling from CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she is now a professor and journalist-in-residence. Villarosa’s appearance is co-sponsored by the Park Street Corporation Speaker Series and the Lowell Humanities Series.
The future of American democracy
In her latest book, author of the popular daily newsletter “Letters from an American,” explains how America, once a beacon of democracy, now teeters on the brink of autocracy—and how it can turn back. Richardson crafts a compelling and original narrative, explaining how, over the decades, a small group of wealthy people have made war on American ideals. By weaponizing language and promoting false history they have led the country into authoritarianism—creating a disaffected population and then promising to recreate an imagined past where those people could feel important again. She argues that taking our country back starts by remembering the elements of the nation’s true history that marginalized Americans have always upheld. Read more in BC News. | Boston Globe Q&A | CBS Mornings | Washington Post book review | WBUR On Point | Boston Globe Books
Poverty, American style
Matthew Desmond, a Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, will give a talk on his latest bestseller, Poverty, by America (Crown/Penguin Random House, 2023). Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor by exploiting the poor and driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He challenges Americans to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and true freedom. Desmond is a professor of sociology at Princeton University whose acclaimed book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City transformed the understanding of inequity and economic exploitation in America. It won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, Carnegie Medal, and PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. Desmond’s talk will take place on October 11 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. The event is presented by the Lowell Humanities Series and co-sponsored by the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics, PULSE Program for Service Learning, and Sociology Department.
Ryan Stovall on how to talk to veterans
Former U.S. Army Green Beret Ryan Stovall will read from his first book, Black Snowflakes Smothering A Torch, at an October 4 event sponsored by BC’s Veteran Programs and Services. Stovall’s collection of poetry explores his service and return to civilian life and serves as a primer for facilitating dialogue between those who have experience with war and those who do not. The event will take place in the Heights Room at Corcoran Commons beginning at 5 p.m. Stovall—who was awarded two decorations for valor and two Purple Hearts—will talk about how soldiers, veterans, and those without military experience can better communicate with each other. An audience Q&A will follow. Stovall’s appearance is part of the “BC Battle Buddies” initiative that Assistant Director for Veteran Programs & Services Mike Lorenz said seeks to bridge the “conversation gap” between veterans and non-veterans and create a more military-inclusive environment on campus. According to Lorenz, there are approximately 170 student veterans and more than 80 employees who served in the armed forces at BC.
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