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.
Poverty, American style
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.
Social media influencers
Emily Hund, author of the book, The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media (Princeton University Press, 2023), will offer a history of the rise to prominence of social media influencers at a campus talk on October 4. Hund is a research affiliate at the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. The Influencer Industry tells the story of how early digital creators scrambling for work amid the Great Recession gave rise to the multibillion-dollar influencer industry that has fundamentally reshaped culture, the flow of information, and the way we relate to ourselves and each other. Drawing on in-depth interviews with leading social media influencers, brand executives, marketers, talent managers, trend forecasters, and others, Hund shows how the creating, monetizing, and marketing of social media content has permeated our lives and untangles the unforeseen cultural and economic costs. Hund’s talk will be held in Gasson Hall, room 202, beginning at 5:30 p.m.
Mickey Rowe: Fearlessly different
Boston College’s DeVoy Perspectives on Theatre Series will present a conversation with groundbreaking performer Mickey Rowe on October 4 beginning at 7 p.m. The event, free and open to the public, will take place at the Robsham Theater Arts Center. Autistic and legally blind, Rowe has had a prolific and varied career as an actor, director, consultant, and public speaker. He is the author of the book Fearlessly Different: An Autistic Actor’s Journey to Broadway’s Biggest Stage. Rowe was the first autistic actor to play the lead role in the Tony Award-winning play “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” which will be staged next month at the Robsham Theater. He also performed the title role in the Tony Award-winning play “Amadeus,” and founded the National Disability Theatre.
Confronting racism in testing and assessment
Systemic Racism and Educational Measurement: Confronting Injustice in Testing, Assessment, and Beyond (Routledge, 2023), a new book written by BC Lynch School of Education and Human Development Professor Michael Russell, provides a theoretical and historical reckoning with racism and oppression in the research and practice of testing, educational measurement, and assessment. Russell’s book is the first to posit that the theory of the White Racial Frame was, and continues to be, applied to the foundations, process, dissemination, and use of educational measurement, leading to instruments, findings, and decisions that perpetuate the racialized social structure of our nation. Russell is an expert in measurement, evaluation, statistics, and assessment and currently serves on the Technical Advisory Committees for several state assessment and accountability programs. Read more on BC News.
Forest ecologist Suzanne Simard
University of British Columbia Professor of Forest Ecology Suzanne Simard, author of the highly acclaimed book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (Vintage/Penguin Random House), will give a talk on September 27 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. A pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence, Simard is known for her work on how trees interact and communicate using below-ground fungal networks, which has led to the recognition that forests have hub trees, or Mother Trees. These Mother Trees are large, highly connected trees that play an important role in the flow of information and resources in a forest. Her current research investigates how these complex relationships contribute to forest resiliency, adaptability, and recovery and has far-reaching implications for how to manage and heal forests from human impacts, including climate change. Simard’s TED Talk, “How trees talk to one another,” has more than 5 million views. The event is presented by the Lowell Humanities Series and co-sponsored by the Environmental Studies Program, Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, Biology Department, and the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.
Trey and the Streets of Israel
Boston College graduate and basketball star Tyrese Rice has published a second children’s book featuring his characters Trey and Marcus. In Trey and the Streets of Israel, Trey learns about different people and their culture through his new friend, Kyle. While Trey is excited to learn about Kyle and Israel, he is more excited to tell his other friends about their journey. According to the publisher, the book series is for every kid who has big dreams and a strong will to turn them into reality. The books show children how understanding and using their experiences, good and bad, can guide them to great heights. Rice released his first book about Trey, Trey and the Great Greece Adventure, last year.
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Poems from Eric Weiskott
Professor of English Eric Weiskott, a scholar of poetry and poetics, has a new poetry chapbook, Chanties: An American Dream (Bottlecap Press, 2023). From the publisher: “His work is a shipboard reverie about the American boat we’re all in. Prose poems, lists, and lyrics find their sea legs while musing on a photograph of a lover left on shore. In a contemporary moment when the deep reaches of the forest already belong to IKEA, the ocean beckons. ‘The depths turn electric.’ Responding to the impasse of subjective expression in contemporary lyric theory, these poems are scored in a national ‘first-person choral.’ Inspiration comes from past and present voyagers on these waters: Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Willis, Claudia Rankine, Ben Lerner, and Solmaz Sharif.” Weiskott is the author of Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350–1650 and English Alliterative Verse: Poetic Tradition and Literary History, which won the 2018 English Association Beatrice White Prize. He co-edits the Yearbook of Langland Studies and his writing on literature, politics, and higher education has appeared in The Atlantic, Vox, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere.
Writing True Crime: Mark O’Connell
Award-winning author Mark O’Connell will discuss writing true crime and his latest book, A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder (Penguin Random House, 2023), at Boston College on September 13. The event, which is free and open to the public, takes place at 5 p.m. It is sponsored by BC’s Irish Studies Program and will be held in Connolly House at 300 Hammond St. For A Thread of Violence, O’Connell spent countless hours in conversation with Malcolm Macarthur—a well-known Dublin socialite who, when faced with financial ruin, decided to commit bank robbery. But Macarthur’s plan spun out of control, and he killed two innocent civilians. The ensuing manhunt, arrest, and conviction amounted to one of the most infamous political scandals in modern Irish history. O’Connell is the author of Notes from an Apocalypse and To Be a Machine, which was awarded the 2019 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He is a contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and The Guardian.
‘His Name Is George Floyd’
Robert Samuels, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Viking/Penguin Random House, 2022), will deliver the first Lowell Humanities Series lecture of the semester on September 13 in Robsham Theater at 7 p.m. His Name is George Floyd is a landmark biography by Samuels and co-author Toluse Olorunnipa that is a poignant exploration of how one man’s tragic experience brought about a global movement for change. Drawn on more than 400 interviews, His Name is George Floyd reveals how systemic racism shaped Floyd’s life and legacy—from his family’s roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing. His Name is George Floyd was a finalist for a National Book Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. Samuels is a staff writer for the New Yorker. He previously spent 12 years as a reporter for The Washington Post, traveling to 41 states and three countries, chronicling how political discussions in the nation’s capital affect the lives of everyday Americans. Samuels’ lecture is co-sponsored by the Boston College Forum on Racial Justice in America and the African and African Diaspora Studies Program. Please RSVP at bit.ly/lhs-robertsamuels to reserve seating.
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