BC Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies Maxim D. Shrayer writes about his foray into the labyrinth of Russian bureaucracy in the essay “A Return to Kafka” for Tablet, a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture. He also conducted a Q&A with Cynthia L. Haven about her new book, The Man Who Brought Brodsky into English: Conversations with George L. Kline, via 3 Quarks Daily. Earlier this year, on the occasion of his father David Shrayer-Petrov’s birthday, he published an English translation of Shrayer-Petrov’s short memoir of Russian chansonnier Alexander Vertinsky, in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Shrayer is an author, editor, and translator whose publications include Of Politics and Pandemics: Songs of a Russian Immigrant, Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story, Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, and Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature, among other titles.
Writings from Maxim D. Shrayer
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Eastern/Slavic/German Studies Department, Russia
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Losing touch
In a new book, Charles Seelig Professor of Philosophy Richard Kearney offers a timely, clarion message about importance of the sense of touch, an essential essence of our humanness. Touch: Recovering Our Most Vital Sense (Columbia University Press, 2021) captures Kearney’s meditation on what he calls touch hunger, exacerbated by our digital age. He says that people have forgotten how important touch is, but that tactile communication—to touch and be touched—is absolutely fundamental to our physical and mental well-being. BC News | GBH Radio
The Sun and the Moon
Boston College alumnus Chuck Abdella has published a new young adult fantasy novel titled The Sun and the Moon. From the author: “Centerton seems like a typical suburb with a normal high school, filled with ordinary students, but that’s only half the story. The world is more complicated than anyone at Centerton High might believe. The world is in danger—possibly two worlds.” Abdella is also the author of the four-book fantasy series The Outcasts. He teaches history at a high school in Massachusetts.
Learning to Pray
James Martin, S.J., who received the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry Alumni Distinguished Service Award in 2018, has written a new book that offers a comprehensive guide to prayer for everyone from the doubtful skeptic to the devout believer. Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone (Harper One, 2021) looks at ways to pray, what happens when you pray, and challenges in the life of prayer. Prayer, according to Fr. Martin, is open and accessible to anyone and has the power to transform those who make it a regular practice. Fr. Martin is a bestselling author whose previous works include The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, Jesus: A Pilgrimage, and Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity, among other titles. Fr. Martin talks about his new book in this video.
The rise of segregated churches
In his new book, historian and Boston College alumnus Richard Boles argues that, contrary to the traditional scholarly consensus, a significant portion of northern Protestants in the United States worshipped in interracial contexts during the 18th century. Yet in another 50 years, churches were by-and-large segregated. Dividing the Faith: The Rise of Segregated Churches in the Early American North (New York University Press) breaks new ground and explains the origins and history of racial integration and segregation in northern colonies and states. Boles draws from the records of more than 400 congregations to scrutinize the factors that made different Christian traditions either accessible or inaccessible to African American and American Indian peoples. It also uses patterns of church participation to illuminate broader social histories. Boles earned a bachelor of science degree and a master’s degree in history from Boston College. He is an assistant professor of history at Oklahoma State University.
Radical hospitality
In an era of border anxiety and increased refugees and migrants, a new book co-written by Charles Seelig Professor of Philosophy Richard Kearney and Melissa Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor of the practice in the Carroll School of Management Portico program, seeks to cultivate a willingness to be open and welcoming to new voices and new understandings. In Radical Hospitality: From Thought to Action (Fordham University Press, 2021), Kearney and Fitzpatrick show how radical hospitality happens by crossing borders, literal or figurative, and opening oneself in narrative exchange to someone else, a stranger or perhaps even an enemy. According to the authors, amidst the fears, dogmas, and demands for certainty and security that push us toward hostility, we also desire to wager with the unknown, leap into the unanticipated, and celebrate the new. Radical Hospitality will be formally launched at the Guestbook Project’s April 24 symposium on “Digital Peace Pedagogy: The Risk of Narrative Exchange.” Read more on BC News.
Review of Paul Farmer’s book
Canisius Professor of Theology James Keenan, S.J., vice provost for global engagement at BC, reviewed Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History by Dr. Paul Farmer. In his new book, Farmer, the renowned physician and anthropologist who founded Partners in Health, details his experience in West Africa during the 2014 Ebola epidemic. He relays harrowing stories of Ebola victims while tracing the region’s chronic health failures back to centuries of exploitation and injustice. Fr. Keenan calls Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds “astonishing” and “unforgettable” and writes that “there is much wisdom throughout this magisterial work.” Read Fr. Keenan’s review of Dr. Farmer’s book in America magazine.
Posted in Boston College Book Reviewer
Tagged Africa, ethics, global health, Theology Department
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Poet Martín Espada
Poetry Days presents award-winning poet Martín Espada—whose poetry collections include The Republic of Poetry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Floaters, his most recent collection—at a Lowell Humanities webinar on April 14 at 7 p.m. Floaters is a topical reflection on immigration, bigotry, politics, and love. An English professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Espada has published more than 20 books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His honors include the 2018 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award, and an American Book Award. His reading will be followed by a moderated discussion and audience Q&A. Pre-registration is required and can be found at bc.edu/lowell.
50 years of the Campus School
Since its doors opened in 1970, the Campus School at Boston College has served some 2,500 students with special needs. The school’s vibrant 50-year history and important work has been chronicled in a new book co-authored by two of its former directors. The Boston College Campus School Story, 1970–2020, written by Phil DiMattia and Don Ricciato, highlights the school’s achievements, collaboration with BC faculty, and engagement with BC students. The history also includes many testimonials from parents of students, staff members, student volunteers past and present, and teachers. Read more on BC News.
Book prize for Summers
Cultural historian Martin Summers, a BC professor in the History Department and in the African and African Diaspora Studies Program, has been named a recipient of the 2021 Cheiron Book Prize for his work Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions: A History of Race and Mental Illness in the Nation’s Capital (Oxford University Press). Presented by Cheiron, the International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences, the book prize recognizes an outstanding monograph in the history of the social/behavioral/human sciences. Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions is a study of Saint Elizabeths Hospital, once one of the country’s preeminent research and teaching psychiatric hospitals, and its and its relationship to Washington, D.C.’s African American community. The book traces the hospital from its founding in 1855 to the 1980s and demonstrates how race was central to virtually every aspect of the hospital’s existence. Read more on BC News.
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