Louise Imogen Guiney (1861-1920), an American poet and essayist with ties to 19th-century Boston literary circles, is the subject of a retrospective exhibition at John J. Burns Library, on display through May 29. “Devoted Catholic & Determined Writer: Louise Imogen Guiney in Boston” focuses on Guiney’s relationships with Catholic religious leaders, fellow writers, and publishers in Boston. She wrote poetry, and later, stories and biographical essays. Her choice of subjects was informed by her Catholic beliefs, admiration for Jesuits, and sojourns in Ireland and England. Guiney may have faded from the canon, yet she continues to offer a unique window into the multifaceted literary establishment of late 19th-century Boston, according to exhibition curator Barbara Adams Hebard, conservator at Burns Library, who notes that Guiney is one of only two women represented in Bapst Library’s stained glass portraits of American authors.
Louise Imogen Guiney
Pilgrim shrines in France
In her book, historian Virginia Reinburg looks at pilgrim shrines—Sainte-Reine, Notre-Dame du Puy, Notre-Dame de Garaison, and Notre-Dame de Betharram—and the way they served as places of healing, holiness, and truth in early modern France. In Storied Places: Pilgrim Shrines, Nature, and History in Early Modern France (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Reinburg shows the important role these shrines played in the Catholic revival in France following the religious wars. But what sets Reinburg’s work apart from other studies of shrines is her focus on the sense of place and the creation of the shrines, their particular stories and legends and environment and natural surroundings. The Reformation Research Consortium (RefoRC), an international network of research institutions focusing on early modern Christianity, has named Storied Places to a longlist for its annual book award. Reinburg is an associate professor in BC’s History Department and author of French Books of Hours: Making an Archive of Prayer, c. 1400-1600.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Catholicism, European history, France, History Department
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Ellen Winner
BC Professor Ellen Winner is the featured speaker in the Art, Art History, and Film Department’s lecture/discussion series, Currents, taking place Feb. 13 at 12:10 p.m. in Devlin Hall, Room 425. The series highlights local thinkers and makers. Winner directs the Arts and Mind Lab, which focuses on cognition in the arts in typical and gifted children as well as adults. She is author/co-author of several books, including How Art Works: A Psychological Exploration.
Amitav Ghosh on climate change
Writer Amitav Ghosh, whose non-fiction work, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (University of Chicago Press, 2016), highlighted the failure of writers, politicians, and others to address climate change, will give a talk on Feb. 12 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. An award-winning novelist, Ghosh is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and the Ibis trilogy. His most recent novel is Gun Island. Ghosh’s work has been translated into more than 30 languages and his essays have appeared in the New Yorker, New Republic, and New York Times. He is a recipient of the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honors, the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honor, and several honorary degrees. Ghosh’s lecture, titled “Embattled Earth: Commodities, Conflict, and Climate Change in the Indian Ocean,” is presented by the Lowell Humanities Series and co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Program, the History Department, and the English Department, and with the support of an Institute for the Liberal Arts Major Grant Award. Ghosh wrote an essay about climate and contemporary literary fiction for the Guardian.
John Paul II Lecture in Christian-Jewish Relations
Alon Confino, Pen Tishkach Chair of Holocaust Studies and professor of history and Jewish Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, will deliver the annual John Paul II Lecture in Christian-Jewish Relations on Feb. 9 at 4 p.m. in Stokes S195 Auditorium. Confino’s talk is titled “Between the Holocaust and the Nakba: When Genya and Henryk Kowalski Challenged History, Jaffa 1949.” In his remarks, Confino will address why Genya and Henryk Kowalski, Holocaust survivors, refused to receive an abandoned house in Jaffa in 1949 after the Nakba, and what can be learned from it. Confino is the director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies and has written on modern German history, nationhood, memory, and Palestine and Israel. He is the author of A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide. Sponsor: Center for Christian-Jewish Learning.
1950s Korean cinema
South Korea in the 1950s was home to a burgeoning film culture. In Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema (University of California Press, 2020) author Christina Klein offers a transnational cultural history of South Korean film style from this era, with particular focus on the directorial and period style of Han Hyung-mo and his popular movie “Madame Freedom.” Klein shows how the films were affected by the legacies of Japanese colonialism, the presence of the U.S. military bases, Cold War cultural diplomacy efforts by America, and the import of popular cultures from around the world. Klein is an associate professor in the English Department and director of the American Studies program at BC. Read more about Klein and her new book in this interview with The Korea Times.
Insights for new and aspiring school principals
In Navigating the Principalship: Key Insights for New and Aspiring School Leaders (ASCD, 2019), co-authors James P. Spillane and Rebecca Lowenhaupt examine how new principals adapt to the challenging role, set an instructional agenda, and build cooperation and collaboration. Their volume is based on original research conducted with new elementary and middle school principals in Chicago, who lend authentic voices to the discussion of proven strategies and pragmatic ways to manage the most difficult parts of the job, such as answering to the demands of internal and external stakeholders, creating a safe space for teaching and learning, accomplishing seemingly limitless tasks in limited time, and balancing work and home. Lowenhaupt is an associate professor in the BC Lynch School of Education and Human Development. Read more from BC News.
Candlemas Lecture
Sarah Coakley, honorary professor at St Andrews University and a visiting professorial fellow at the Australian Catholic University, will deliver the Candlemas Lecture on Feb. 5 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. Her talk is titled “‘For Mine Eyes have Seen Thy Salvation’: Spiritual Perception and the Works of Justice in Christian Tradition.” Coakely, a theologian and philosopher of religion, is the author of several works, including Sacrifice Regained: Evolution, Cooperation and God; The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God, and God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’. Sponsors: Lowell Humanities Series and the Theology Department.
Posted in Guest Authors, Lowell Humanities Series
Tagged theologian, Theology Department
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Dalsimer Memorial Lecture
Kate Costello-Sullivan, a BC alumna and president of the American Conference for Irish Studies, will present the Dalsimer Memorial Lecture on Feb. 4 at 5 p.m. in Connolly House. Her talk is titled “‘Fully Made She Will be Strong’: Embodiment, Parenthood, and Healing in the Contemporary Irish Novel.” She plans to explore the narratives of healing and recovery in 21st century Irish novels such as The Gathering and The Green Road by Anne Enright, Belinda McKeon’s Solace, and Anna Burns’s The Milkman. Costello-Sullivan is a professor of modern Irish literature at Le Moyne College and author of Mother/Country: Politics of the Personal in the Fiction of Colm Tóibín and Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-first-Century Irish Novel. Sponsor: Irish Studies Program.
Poetry prize for Adair
Allison Adair, an associate professor of the practice in the English Department, has won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, which honors the work of outstanding emerging poets. Her manuscript “The Clearing” was selected for its “wise, mineral-like poems.” The award includes a cash prize and publication with Milkweed Editions. Adair’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, and Kenyon Review Online, among other journals. She has been honored with the Pushcart Prize, Florida Review Editors’ Award and Orlando Prize; she also took first place in Mid-American Review’s Fineline Competition.“The Clearing” will be published this June. Read an interview with Adair from BC News.
Posted in Awards/Honors, Boston College Authors
Tagged English Department, poet, poetry
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