Poet and Boston College alumna Lynne Spigelmire Viti has a new poetry collection that combines free verse and traditional poetry formats to capture moments of the author’s life, from childhood summers in Ocean City to marriage, divorce, and finding love again. Dancing at Lake Montebello (Apprentice House Press, Loyola University Maryland, 2020) begins with Viti’s early years in Baltimore and the turbulent ’60s and ’70s and ends with reflections on illness, death, loss, and grieving, as seen through the eyes of one moving through middle age. Viti’s previous publications include Baltimore Girls and The Glamorganshire Bible.
Dancing at Lake Montebello
Peak performance
As people live longer, many are seeking ways to maintain a level of high performance as they age. A new book from Boston College faculty member Cathy Utzschneider offers universal words of wisdom about maintaining excellence throughout the lifespan from champion runners and others. High Performance in Midlife and Beyond: Champion Masters Women Runners and Other Experts features profiles of 39 champion women runners in their 40s through 80s. Also included are more than 20 articles on topics such as the neurophysiology of high performance, goal setting, and theories of excellence. Utzschneider is a 10-time national champion who has been ranked #4 in the world in the mile. She has coached six world- and American-record holders and 63 national age-group champions. Her other publications are MOVE! How Women Can Achieve Athletic Goals At Any Age and Mastering Running. Utzschneider, who teaches in the BC Woods College of Advancing Studies, says she hopes her new book provides inspiration and knowledge. Listen to Utzschneider discuss her book with National Masters News.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged athletes, motivation, Woods College of Advancing Studies
Leave a comment
Book launch for Burns Visiting Scholar Éilís Ní Dhuibhne
Boston College will present a live virtual book launch on Oct. 28, 3 p.m. ET (Boston), for Little Red and Other Stories (Blackstaff Press, 2020), a collection of short stories by Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies Éilís Ní Dhuibhne. In Little Red, Ní Dhuibhne writes about people visited by change and crisis who are forced to confront the stories that define their sense of themselves and their place in the world. During the event, Ní Dhuibhne will also discuss an upcoming anthology of autobiographical essays by Irish women writers born in the 1950s titled Look! It’s a Woman Writer. BC Associate Professor of English and Irish Studies James Smith will serve as moderator for the virtual event. A Dublin native, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is a writer of short stories and novels, children’s books and young adult fiction, and poems and plays in both English and Irish. Her novel The Dancers Dancing was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and her memoir Twelve Thousand Days: A Memoir of Love and Loss, was shortlisted for the Michel Déon Prize. She has received the Stuart Parker Award for Drama, Butler Award for Prose, and Irish PEN award for outstanding contribution to Irish literature. At BC, Ní Dhuibhne is leading a seminar on fiction writing. To view the book launch visit http://bit.ly/eilisbooklaunch.
Posted in Guest Authors
Tagged book launch, Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies, Ireland, short stories
Leave a comment
Billion Dollar Loser
Launched a decade ago, WeWork promised to reimagine the culture of work with its shared spaces for startups and freelancers alike. Led by unconventional CEO Adam Neumann, WeWork attracted billions of dollars from investors around the world and had ambitious plans for expansion. But last year, shortly before its announced IPO, the WeWork world unraveled. Founder Neumann was ousted and the IPO was cancelled. Boston College alumnus Reeves Wiedeman’s new book chronicles the rise and fall of WeWork. Based on more than 200 interviews, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork (Little, Brown and Company, 2020) traces what happened to WeWork, culminating in a day-by-day account of the five weeks leading up to its spectacular meltdown. Wiedeman is a contributing editor at New York magazine. He has written for publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Harper’s, among others. Read an excerpt from New York magazine.
The World According to Fannie Davis
Writer, filmmaker, and teacher Bridgett M. Davis will offer a presentation on her acclaimed memoir, The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers, on October 21 at 7:00 p.m. The Word According to Fannie Davis tells the story of how Davis’s extraordinary mother used Detroit’s illegal lottery to provide for her family. Davis is also writer/director of the award-winning film Naked Acts, which was screened at a host of festivals in the U.S., Europe, and Africa before having its theatrical and DVD release. A major advocate for promoting and nurturing literary talent by people of color, Davis is co-founder and curator for Words@Weeksville, a monthly reading series held at Weeksville Heritage Center in Central Brooklyn. She is professor of journalism and the writing professions at Baruch College, CUNY. Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Los Angeles Times, Electric Lit, and The Millions. Davis’s webinar is presented by the Lowell Humanities Series and co-sponsored by the African & African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, and Journalism programs. Registration is required.
Teaching writing to young students
A full understanding of language development is necessary to teach writing in a successful, meaningful way. In Language in Writing Instruction: Enhancing Literacy in Grades 3-8 (Routledge, 2020), Lynch School of Education and Human Development Professor Emeritus María Estela Brisk addresses topics necessary for the successful language instruction for all students, including bilingual and English language learners. Moving from theory to practice, Language in Writing Instruction is a vital resource for courses in language education programs, in-service teacher-training seminars, and for pre-service and practicing English Language Arts teachers who want to expand their teaching abilities and knowledge bases. Ultimately, Brisk demonstrates how teachers can help students express their ideas and create cohesive texts. Brisk is award-winning educator who is a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Educational Research Association’s Bilingual Research Special Interest Group and the AERA’s Scholars of Color Distinguished Career Contribution Award.
Migration Narratives
A new book co-authored by Stanton E.F. Wortham, the Lynch School of Education and Human Development Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Dean, traces a Mexican migrant community’s growth in an American town and the complex relationships that follow. Migration Narratives: Diverging Stories in Schools, Churches and Civic Institutions (Bloomsbury, 2020), the result of 11 years of field research, presents the voices and views of three groups of residents—Irish and Italian American, African American, and Mexican immigrant—who collectively tell a story of how interethnic relations played a central role in newcomers’ pathways, drawing links between the town’s earlier cycles of migration. Co-authored with Briana Nichols, Katherine Clonan-Roy, and Catherine Rhodes, this ethnographic study documents the complexities that migrants and hosts experience and counters the oversimplified picture of migration that can exist in today’s world. Read more in BC News.
In honor of Lisa Sowle Cahill
A new book has been published to mark Monan Professor of Theology Lisa Sowle Cahill’s remarkable 45-year career as a teacher, research scholar, and leading voice in the field of Christian theological ethics. Reimagining the Moral Life: On Lisa Sowle Cahill’s Contributions to Christian Ethics (Orbis Books, 2020) is a collection of original essays by Cahill’s former doctoral students, written in tribute to their mentor. Reimagining the Moral Life provides an interpretive overview of Cahill’s specific contributions to Christian ethics and the impact her work has had. The book is edited by Ki Joo Choi (Seton Hall University), Sarah M. Moses (University of Mississippi), and Michael P. Walsh Professor of Bioethics at Boston College Andrea Vicini, S.J. Fr. Vicini writes in the book’s introduction: “The contributions of this volume…exemplify [Cahill’s] mentorship and passion for a type of justice that is informed by equality, mutuality, reciprocity, and solidarity with the poor, and which aims at promoting concretely the common good in our world today. With passion, insight, dedication, and ingenuity, Cahill has influenced the field of theological ethics and empowered women and men, lay and religious, Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox to find their own theological voices and join in transforming our world.”
Posted in Boston College Authors, Guest Authors
Tagged Christian ethics, moral theology, Theology Department
Leave a comment
The Secret Lives of Glaciers
Geographer and glaciologist M Jackson will discuss her book, The Secret Lives of Glaciers, at a webinar on October 7 at 7 p.m. In The Secret Lives of Glaciers, Jackson explores the profound impacts of glacier change on the human and physical geography of Iceland. Currently an Arctic Expert for the National Geographic Society, Jackson has worked for more than a decade in the Arctic chronicling climate change and communities. Her memoir While Glaciers Slept: Being Human in a Time of Climate Change weaves together the parallel stories of what happens when the climates of a family and a planet change. Jackson’s appearance is presented by the Lowell Humanities Series and co-sponsored by the Earth & Environmental Sciences Department and the Environmental Studies Program. Pre-registration is required.
Intellectual property and racial bias
In her new book, The Color of Creatorship: Intellectual Property, Race, and the Making of Americans (Stanford University Press, 2020), Associate Professor of Communication and African and African Diaspora Studies Anjali Vats describes how narratives of “good” and “bad” intellectual property citizenship reproduce racial and colonial exclusion in U.S. copyright, patent, and trademark law. From the publisher: “Vats historicizes the figure of the citizen-creator, the white male maker who was incorporated into the national ideology as a key contributor to the nation’s moral and economic development. She also traces the emergence of racial panics around infringement, arguing that the post-racial creator exists in opposition to the figure of the hyper-racial infringer, a national enemy who is the opposite of the hardworking, innovative American creator. Vats argues that once anti-racist activists grapple with the underlying racial structures of intellectual property law, they can better advocate for strategies that resist the underlying drivers of racially disparate copyright, patent, and trademark policy.” Vats also holds a courtesy faculty appointment in the Boston College Law School.
BC Bookmarks 