Author and journalist Isabel Wilkerson, the first woman of African American heritage to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism, will give a talk on her bestselling book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (Random House, 2020), on September 8 at 7 p.m. (ET). Her presentation will be in webinar format followed by a moderated discussion and audience Q&A. Wilkerson has become a leading figure in narrative nonfiction, bringing the invisible and the marginalized into the light. In Caste, Wilkerson explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. She argues that beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. For her acclaimed debut book, The Warmth of Other Suns, Wilkerson interviewed more than 1,200 people to tell the story of the six million people, among them her parents, who defected from the Jim Crow South as part of the Great Migration. The Warmth of Other Suns was honored with the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Lynton History Prize from Harvard and Columbia universities, and the Stephen Ambrose Oral History Prize, among other awards. Wilkerson’s BC talk is presented by the Lowell Humanities Series and cosponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics, the Jesuit Institute, BC Law School, and the Boston College Forum on Racial Justice in America. Pre-registration is required.
Isabel Wilkerson
Arrupe on the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Pedro Arrupe, S.J., who served as Superior General of the Society of Jesus from 1965 until 1983, frequently refers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in his personal letters and writings. These writings become something of a collection of love letters, letters of a love that is unique but not exclusive, a love that is total and at the same time concrete, a love that is quotidian and defining, which led Fr. Arrupe to give his entire life to Jesus Christ without reservations. Jesuit Sources, housed at the Boston College Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, has released a new edition of In Him Alone is Our Hope: Texts on the Heart of Christ, principal texts by Fr. Arrupe on the Heart of Christ. This new edition features an introduction by Arrupe biographer Pedro Miguel Lamet.
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Tagged Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, Jesuit author, Jesuits
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Perfect Pets Queen
Harmony Humbolt has a colossal collection of stuffed animals, and she hates leaving them home when she goes school. In Harmony Humbolt: The Perfect Pets Queen (Clear Fork Publishing, 2021), a new picture book written by Boston College graduate Jenna Grodzicki and illustrated by Mirka Hokkanen, Harmony figures out how to share her perfect pets with her friends, with the right rules in place to keep them safe. But when her list of rules grows, Harmony’s friends don’t want to play with her perfect pets or her. Harmony must figure out how to enjoy both her stuffed animals and her friends. Grodzicki is the author of several picture books, including Wild Style: Amazing Animal Adornments and I See Sea Food.
Lessons from Alexander the Great
In his new book, Boston College graduate Mukul Sheopory draws business lessons from the life of Alexander the Great, and compares his military strategies and tactics to events from the lives of moguls like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and George Soros. Bucephalus’ Shadow: Ten Business Lessons From the Life of Alexander the Great connects the dots between past and present, military and business, as it attempts to change how the reader thinks about strategy. Sheopory earned an M.B.A. from Boston College, lives in California, and works with technology companies to serve small-business owners.
Magdalene Laundries and the campaign for justice
Between 1922 and 1996, over 10,000 Irish girls and women, specifically unmarried mothers, and those considered promiscuous, sexually abused, and/or a burden to their families or the state, were imprisoned and subjected to forced labor in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries. The Laundries’ initial objective to “protect, reform, and rehabilitate” devolved to a regimen of cruel, psychological, and physical maltreatment of the incarcerated women and young girls. Utilizing the Irish government’s 2013 inquiry, as well as state records and survivors’ witness testimonies, a new book, Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries: A Campaign for Justice (Bloomsbury, 2021), not only provides a detailed account of life behind the asylums’ secluded walls, but explores academic and survivor activism. The volume is co-authored by Boston College Associate Professor of English and Irish Studies James M. Smith; BC alumna Katherine O’Donnell of University College Dublin; Claire McGettrick (University College Dublin); Maeve O’Rourke (National University of Ireland, Galway), and Mari Steed, born in the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in County Cork, whose mother lived in a Magdalene Laundry, and one of more than 2,000 children exported—at age two—from Ireland for adoption in the U.S. Smith is also the author of the 2007 book Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (Notre Dame Press). Read more from BC News.
Posted in Alumni Authors, Boston College Authors
Tagged adoption, human rights, Ireland, social justice
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From Beirut to Belfast
Czar Alexei Sepe, a 2021 Boston College graduate who majored in political science and history, has turned his senior thesis into a book, From Beirut to Belfast: How Power-Sharing Arrangements affect Ethnic Tensions in Post-Conflict Societies. Sepe uses Northern Ireland and Lebanon to illustrate a theory of sites of social interaction (SSI) and strategies of social cohesion in power-sharing institutions. Sepe writes that SSIs and cohesion strategies that increase tensions will cause power-sharing failure in the long run, and vice versa. He contends that there is a causal link between power-sharing and ethnic tensions in divided societies, through mechanisms of SSIs and cohesion strategies. For this work, Sepe won the University’s Donald S. Carlisle Award for academic excellence in political science. Sepe studied in Beirut via BC’s Omar A. Aggad Travel and Research Fellowship. He also studied abroad in Ireland. His thesis advisor was Political Science Associate Professor Peter Krause.
Posted in Alumni Authors
Tagged Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Political Science department
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Meet Millie Gogarty
In her debut novel, Boston College alumna Rebecca Hardiman introduces readers to the quirky but lovable Gogarty clan: Kevin, who is unemployed and overwhelmed, his sulky teenaged daughter Aideen, and his 83-year-old mother Millie, who has just been caught shoplifting—again. Good Eggs (Simon & Schuster/Atria Books, 2021) is a warmhearted and humorous look at three generations of a spirited Irish family. In an interview about Good Eggs, Hardiman, a former magazine editor, said, “I wanted to show that family isn’t always easy and personalities will clash, conflicts will arise, but in the end there’s a lot of love there as well.” According to Publishers Weekly, “Hardiman’s endearing novel stands out for its brilliant insight into the mixed blessings of family bonds.”
The librarian with a secret
Belle da Costa Greene was hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. She became a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world. But the more her reputation grew, the tighter Belle held onto a secret: She was passing for white. In the new book The Personal Librarian (Berkley/Penguin Random House, 2021), co-authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray tell the story of a remarkable woman, and the lengths to which she went to keep her secret. Benedict is a Boston College graduate and a bestselling author. Her previous titles include The Only Woman in the Room, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, and Lady Clementine, among others. The Personal Librarian was chosen as the July GMA Book Club pick. Benedict and Murray talked about their collaboration with the Washington Post. Exhortation and advice
Francesco Sacchini (1570–1625) was a much-respected rhetorician, biographer, and official historian of the Society of Jesus. At his death, he left behind two essays—The Protrepticon (“exhortation”) and the Paraenesis (“advice”)—valuable, ever-ready resources for those assigned to teach the younger students in the literary courses in the Society’s schools. Generations of teachers through the golden age of Jesuit education in the 17th century profited from Sacchini’s wisdom, and much remains quite relevant and useful today. Cristiano Casalini, Endowed Chair of Jesuit Pedagogy and Educational History at Lynch School of Education and Human Development, and Claude Pavur, S.J., associate editor of Jesuit Sources, have edited a new text based on Fr. Sacchini’s words. Exhortation and Advice for the Teachers of Young Students in Jesuit Schools, a publication from the Boston College Institute of Advanced Jesuit Studies’ Jesuit Sources, provides a window into a Jesuit spirituality of teaching. This annotated bilingual edition presents the first English translation of the pedagogical classic and is considered a great contribution to the study of Jesuit pedagogy and what it means to be a Jesuit educator. The co-editors discussed this volume in an Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies video.
Key to student engagement
Education experts Dennis Shirley and Andy Hargreaves have written a new book aimed at educators looking to promote active engagement in the classroom and improve student learning. Based on examples from seven years of research, Five Paths of Student Engagement: Blazing the Trail to Learning and Success (Solution Tree, 2021) integrates psychological and sociological perspectives and delves deeply into the what, why, and how of student engagement. Teachers will learn who and what the true enemies of student engagement are and how to implement practices that lead directly to students’ well-being, learning, and success. Five Paths of Student Engagement is featured by TES Research Review. | Shirley is a Duganne Faculty Fellow and professor at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. He is the author/co-author of several books, including The Mindful Teacher. Hargreaves is professor emeritus at the BC Lynch School and author/co-author of Collaborative Professionalism and the memoir Moving, among other titles. Shirley and Hargreaves have previously collaborated on the books The Fourth Way and The Global Fourth Way.
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