BC Associate Professor of History Cynthia Lynn Lyerly and BC alumna Bethany Jay of Salem State University have won the American Historical Association’s James Harvey Robinson Prize for their co-edited book, Understanding and Teaching American Slavery (University of Wisconsin Press, 2016). The James Harvey Robinson Prize recognizes the teaching aid that has made the most outstanding contribution to the teaching and learning of history in any field for public or educational purposes. The award will be presented to the editors at a ceremony in January in Chicago. More from BC News.
James Harvey Robinson Prize
Posted in Alumni Authors, Awards/Honors, Boston College Authors
Tagged American history, History Department, slavery
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Invisible
Croatian playwright and screenwriter Tena Štivičić will present “Invisible: A Conversation about Migration” on Oct. 18 at 4 p.m. in Robsham Theater in advance of the U.S. premiere of her play “Invisible” that evening at BC. “Invisible,” which explores the many sides of migration, is described as a “funny, moving and topical portrayal of the world in flux.” Štivičić has written plays in both her native Croatian and in English and is a winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her major works in English include: “Can’t Escape Sundays,” “Perceval,” “Goldoni Terminus,” and “Fireflies.” Co-sponsored by the Theater Department and the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics. Guardian review
CWBC presents Reshma Saujani
Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Girls 
Who Code, will be the featured speaker at the Council for Women of Boston College Colloquium on Oct. 18. Girls Who Code works to inspire, educate, and equip girls for opportunities in computer programming through summer immersion programs, afterschool clubs, and other initiatives. Saujani is the author of the books, Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World, which shares real-life stories of women working at places like Pixar and NASA, and Women Who Don’t Wait in Line: Break the Mold, Lead the Way, in which she advocates for a new model of female leadership based on sponsorship. Her forthcoming book, Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder, is inspired by her popular TED talk. The CWBC Colloquium will be held in Yawkey Center’s Murray Function Room beginning at 6 p.m., with doors opening at 5 p.m. More from BC News.
Alumnus poet C. Dale Young
BC alumnus C. Dale Young, a poet and writer, will read from his work on Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. in Devlin Hall, room 101. Young is the author of four poetry collections, including Torn and The Halo, and his novel in stories, The Affliction. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He also is a recipient of the Hanes Award given by the Fellowship of Southern Writers to recognize a distinguished body of work by a poet in midcareer. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including The Best American Poetry, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, American Poetry Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and POETRY. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series.
Divorce in the time of Joyce
Was divorce a realistic possibility for Leopold and Molly Bloom? Peter Kuch, the Eamon Cleary Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand, will give a talk Oct. 16 on his groundbreaking book, Irish Divorce/Joyce’s Ulysses (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), which challenges the long-held conviction that prior to 1995 Irish people could not obtain a divorce that gave them the right to remarry. Kuch writes of a forgotten Irish practice of petitioning the English courts for divorce, which casts Ulysses and Ireland’s identity in a new light. Kuch has published widely on Yeats, Joyce, Eliot, Irish theater, Irish and Australian film, literary theory and Irish/Australian history. His talk will take place in Connolly House at 4:30 p.m. Sponsor: Irish Studies.
John Paul II Lecture
Amy-Jill Levine will present “Christian Privilege, Christian Fragility, and the Gospel of John: How American Race Relations Inform Jewish-Christian Dialogue” on Oct. 14 at 4 p.m. in Stokes Hall South Auditorium S195. Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science; she is also Affiliated Professor, Woolf Institute: Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge University. Her authored and co-authored books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus; The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us; The New Testament: Methods and Meanings; The Gospel of Luke, and Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi. The sixth annual John Paul II Lecture is sponsored by the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning.
Posted in Guest Authors
Tagged Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, New Testament, religion
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Playwright Marcus Gardley
Poet-playwright Marcus Gardley will present a talk on “The Black God,” at Robsham Theater on Oct. 11 at 7 p.m. Gardley’s plays and musicals — which often center on African American history and allegory — have been performed around the country and internationally. His works include “Every Tongue Confess,” winner of the 2010 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, “The Gospel of Lovingkindness,” winner of the 2014 Black Theater Alliance Award for best play/playwright, and “The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry,” a finalist for the 2014 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History. Gardley’s talk is part of the Matthew R. DeVoy and John H. DeVoy IV Perspectives on Theatre Series, which bring leading professionals and major creative forces in theatre and the performing arts to Boston College. More from BC News.
What happened to the dead?
In the time of the Great Famine in Ireland, the rituals surrounding wakes and burial were often abandoned. Centenary University Associate Professor of History Breandan Mac Suibhne will discuss “Mortuary Practice in the Time of the Famine: Ireland, 1846-52” on Oct. 11 at 4 p.m. in Devlin Hall, room 101. Mac Suibhne is an expert in society and culture in modern Ireland, particularly Ulster, with special interests in the politics of identity in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Great Famine, migration, oral history, Irish America, and the Atlantic. His most recent book is The End of Outrage: Post-Famine Adjustment in Rural Ireland, named the Irish Times Irish Non-Fiction Book of the Year in 2017. He is a co-founder of Field Day Review, a journal of political and literary culture, and co-editor of Ireland’s Great Famine and Popular Politics. Sponsor: Center for Irish Programs.
Canonization in America
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.
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.
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