Canonization may be fundamentally about holiness, but it is never only about holiness. In the U.S., it was often about the ways in which Catholics defined, defended, and celebrated their identities as Americans. On Oct. 11, Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, will present “Superpower Saints: Canonization in America, 1939-1963.” Cummings will discuss how the story of the people who championed, challenged, and invoked canonization candidate Elizabeth Ann Seton between 1939 and 1963 is a case study of how personality and power intersected to shape the afterlife of an American saint. Cummings is the author of New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era and co-editor of Catholics and the American Century: Recasting Narratives of U.S. History. Her current book project is Citizen Saints: Catholics and Canonization in America. Her talk will take place in Gasson Hall, room 100, starting at 4 p.m. Sponsors: Catholic Studies and the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life.
Canonization in America
From novel to movie screen
The film “Call Me by Your Name” was one of the most successful films of 2017, garnering an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The movie was based on the best-selling novel of the same name written by André Aciman, who will deliver the Heinz Bluhm Lecture on Oct. 4 at 5 p.m. in Higgins Hall, room 300. Aciman will discuss the process by which a novel is transformed into a movie script. Aciman is also the author of Harvard Square and Eight White Nights, the memoir Out of Egypt, and the essay collections False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory and Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New Republic, Granta, and the Paris Review, as well as in several volumes of The Best American Essays. He is the Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and French at the Graduate Center of City University of New York.
Marlon James
Marlon James, winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, will talk about his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, on Oct. 3 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. A Brief History of Seven Killings explores Jamaican history through the perspectives of multiple narrators and genres: the political thriller, the oral biography, and the classic whodunit. James is also the author of the novels, John Crow’s Devil and The Book of Night Women (winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award), and “From Jamaica to Minnesota to Myself,” a widely read essay that appeared in the New York Times Magazine. His book Black Leopard, Red Wolf is forthcoming in 2019. He teaches English and creative writing at Macalester College. Sponsors: Lowell Humanities Series and African and African Diaspora Studies.
Feore Family Lecture on Jesuit Studies
University of Toronto Professor Emeritus of History Paul F. Grendler will deliver the annual Feore Family Lecture on Jesuit Studies on Oct. 2 in the Heights Room of Corcoran Commons. The event will begin with a 4 p.m. reception, followed by his lecture, “A Historian’s Journey to Jesuit Education,” at 5 p.m. Grendler has published 10 books, including The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press 1540-1605 (winner of the Marraro Prize from the American Catholic Historical Association) and Schooling in Renaissance Italy and The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, both winners of the Marraro Prize from the American Historical Association. An internationally renowned historian, Grendler is a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the Renaissance Society of America and the Society for Italian Historical Studies. In 2014 he received the Galileo Galilei International Prize presented annually to a non-Italian who has made major contributions to Italian scholarship. The event is sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College, which will present Grendler with the George E. Ganss, S.J., Award in Jesuit Studies to recognize his significant scholarly contributions to the field.
Posted in Awards/Honors, Guest Authors
Tagged history, Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, Jesuit
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Dalsimer Lecture & Book Launch
Boston College alumnus Mark Doyle, an associate professor at Middle Tennessee State University, will present the fall Dalsimer Lecture: “Black and Brown Amidst the Orange and Green: Toward a Multiracial History of Ireland” on Sept. 27 at 5 p.m. Doyle’s lecture will explore the deep history of Asian and African immigrants and visitors to Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries. He argues for a new history of Ireland that not only incorporates the experiences of nonwhite people but also uses those experiences to understand Irish attitudes toward race, immigration, and empire in the modern era. Doyle is the author of Communal Violence in the British Empire: Disturbing the Pax and Fighting like the Devil for the Sake of God: Protestants, Catholics, and the Origins of Violence in Victorian Belfast, and editor of The British Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia. The lecture will be followed by the launch of the book Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-First-Century Irish Novel (Syracuse University Press), by BC alumna Kathleen Costello-Sullivan, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of modern Irish literature at Le Moyne College, and vice president of the American Conference for Irish Studies. In Trauma and Recovery, Costello-Sullivan uses the work of Colm Tóibín, John Banville, Anne Enright, Emma Donohue, Colum McCann, and Sebastian Barry to highligh the power of narrative to amend and address memory and trauma and the possibility of recovery. Her previous publications include Mother/Country: Politics of the Personal in the Fiction of Colm Tóibín. Events take place in Devlin Hall, room 101. Sponsor: Center for Irish Programs.
Posted in Alumni Authors
Tagged book launch, Ireland, Irish history, Irish literature
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Doris Kearns Goodwin
Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin will present “Where Do We Go From Here: Leadership in Turbulent Times” on September 27 at 4:00 p.m. in the Heights Room of Corcoran Commons. Leadership in Turbulent Times (Simon & Schuster, 2018), Goodwin’s most recent book, is a seminal work based on her five decades of studying the presidential leadership of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. Goodwin is also the author of several acclaimed books, including The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys; No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, winner of the Carnegie Medal. Her book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, was the basis for Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated film “Lincoln.” A graduate of Colby College and Harvard University, Goodwin has been honored with the Charles Frankel Prize, Sarah Josepha Hale Medal, New England Book Award, Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and Ohioana Book Award. Sponsor: The Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics’ Clough Colloquium.
Book event for Poverty: Responding Like Jesus
Professor of Theology Ken Himes, O.F.M. and BC alumnus Conor Kelly, an assistant professor at Marquette University, will talk about poverty and Christian discipleship at an event celebrating their new book Poverty: Responding Like Jesus (Paraclete Press in cooperation with the Church in the 21st Century Center, 2018). The conversation luncheon will be held in Gasson Hall, room 100 on Sept. 25 beginning at noon. (RSVP to church21@bc.edu). Books will be available for purchase. Edited by Fr. Himes and Kelly, Poverty: Responding Like Jesus focuses on the biblical and theological roots of the Church’s commitment to care for the poor. The volume features a chapter written by BC’s Joseph Professor of Catholic Spirituality Pheme Perkins. Sponsor: Church in the 21st Century Center.
Blacks and Irish in 19th-century Boston
Boston College alumnus Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, a historian of race, politics, and the law in U.S., will present “Politics, Power, and the Past: Black and Irish Political Alliances in 1880s Boston” on Sept. 26 at 4:30 p.m. in Burns Library. Bergeson-Lockwood is the author of the new book Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston, which examines how Black and Irish Bostonians forged a powerful political coalition in the 1880s that was centered on growing urban political power, a mutual struggle against oppression, and a shared place in the story of American independence. In his book, Bergeson-Lockwood offers a new narrative of the Reconstruction era centered in the urban North, and shows how in their activism Black Bostonians tested the promise of equality in America’s democracy. Sponsor: Office of the Provost with BC Libraries and the Center for Irish Programs.
Posted in Alumni Authors, BC Libraries
Tagged African American history, Boston, history, politics
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Book launch: Cambridge History of Ireland
Boston College will host a launch of The Cambridge History of Ireland on Sept. 20 at Burns Library. Written by a team of more than 100 leading historians from around the world, The Cambridge History of Ireland is the most comprehensive and authoritative history of Ireland to date. Four volumes bring together the latest scholarship, setting Irish history from 600 to the present within broader Atlantic, European, imperial and global contexts. Boston College contributors to the volumes are historians Kevin Kenny and Robert Savage. A reception will be held from 6 to 7 p.m. Following the reception, Liz O’Donnell, former Irish Minister of State in the Department of Foreign Affairs, will offer remarks on the Northern Ireland peace process, the advancement of women in Ireland, and contemporary political issues, including diversity and inclusion. The event will conclude with a panel discussion and audience Q&A with O’Donnell and the four volume editors: Thomas Bartlett (a former Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies), James Kelly, Jane Ohlmeyer, and Brendan Smith. Sponsors: Boston College Libraries, the Global Leadership Institute, and Cambridge University Press, in collaboration with the Center for Irish Programs and Consul General of Ireland in Boston.
Posted in BC Libraries, Guest Authors
Tagged book launch, Burns Library, Irish history
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GroundTruth Project
Award-winning journalist Charles Sennott will present “GroundTruth in the ‘Post-Truth’ Era” on Sept. 19 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. A former Middle East Bureau Chief and Europe Bureau Chief for the Boston Globe, Sennott has reported on the front lines of wars and insurgencies in at least 15 countries, including the 2011 revolution in Cairo and the Arab Spring. Sennott is the founder and executive director of The GroundTruth Project, dedicated to training the next generation of international journalists for the digital age. Sennott is also the co-founder of GlobalPost, an acclaimed international news website. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series
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