Katherine McKittrick, a professor of gender studies and Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, will present “A Poetics of Declension” at Boston College on March 19 at 7 p.m. in Gasson 100. McKittrick is author of Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle and Dear Science and Other Stories. She also edited and contributed to Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis and co-edited Black Geographies and the Politics of Place. Her current project looks at NourbeSe Philip’s poem “Meditations on the Declension of Beauty by the Girl with the Flying Cheek-bones.” Her talk is presented by BC’s Lowell Humanities Series and cosponsored by African and African Diaspora Studies. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Katherine McKittrick
Poetry honors for alumna
“Little Skate at Ballston Beach,” a poem by Lynne Spigelmire Viti, earned Second Place honors in the regional category of the 12th Annual Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest. The contest is sponsored by WOMR, a public broadcasting community radio station based on Cape Cod, and is named in honor of the late Cape Cod poet laureate. Viti holds a Ph.D. and a J.D. from Boston College. She serves as the poet laureate for Westwood, Mass., and has published the poetry collections, The Walk to Cefalù and Dancing at Lake Montebello. Her other publications include the chapbooks Baltimore Girls and The Glamorganshire Bible and the short fiction collection Going Too Fast.
Your Time to Rise
Boston College graduate Arivee Vargas tapped into her personal experience as Latina who overcame limiting cultural and societal expectations for her new book Your Time to Rise: Unlearn Limiting Beliefs, Unlock Your Power, and Unleash Your Truest Self. In Your Time to Rise, Vargas provides actionable strategies and tools to help women, specifically women of color, break free from expectations and get honest with themselves about how they want to live and work. She shares with readers her four-part framework for navigating personal and professional inflection points. The host of the Humble Rising podcast, Vargas is a certified executive coach, writer, speaker, and mother. She earned a bachelor’s degree and a law degree from Boston College and was awarded an honorary degree in 2022.
Reading Shakespeare to respond to illness
University of Calgary Professor Emeritus Arthur Frank, Professor II at VID Specialized University in Oslo and a visiting professor at Columbia University, will present “Polyphonic Suffering: Reading Shakespeare to Respond to Illness” at Boston College on March 12 at 7 p.m. in Gasson 100. Frank, who writes and lectures on the experience of serious illness and the ethics of care, is the author of King Lear: Shakespeare’s Dark Consolations. His focus is on stories of illness and suffering, and how those who suffer can benefit from telling their own stories and hearing others’ stories. His other publications include the memoir At the Will of the Body and the acclaimed The Wounded Storyteller, among others. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he is a recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Bioethics Society. Frank’s lecture is presented by the BC Lowell Humanities Series and cosponsored by the BC Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
History and adventure await
Michael Cloherty O’Connell, who earned a master’s degree from Boston College in 1998, is the author of two new books: Lady Liberty’s Treasure Hunt and Riley’s Treasure Chase. Lady Liberty’s Treasure Hunt is a memoir combined with an intricately crafted treasure hunt. The title is a tribute to the author’s wife, Laurel, a BC grad he calls “Lady Liberty.” In the book, O’Connell interweaves memories of family trips, friendships, and significant life events with his passion for history. O’Connell’s narrative also invites readers to embark on a treasure hunt across the states of New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The quest encourages readers to explore these regions, learn about their historical significance, and find hidden treasures. Riley’s Treasure Chase is a smaller scale adventure book set in Massachusetts and designed for families, youth leaders, and educators. It mixes a treasure hunt journey with explorations of historical landmarks and nature. Riley, the author’s dog, serves as both a mascot and guide.
Unjustly convicted
In his recently republished book, Justice Under God: How Faith, Hope, and Charity Freed an Innocent Man and Helped Save a Thousand Lives, Boston College Law School Adjunct Professor Christopher J. Muse, a retired Superior Court judge, chronicles his and his father’s intervention in the life of Bobby Joe Leaster. Leaster was imprisoned for more than 15 years for a 1970 murder and armed robbery in Dorchester he didn’t commit. Working pro bono, Christopher Muse and his father Robert Muse (BC Class of 1942), started in 1977 to right the wrong; Leaster was freed in the winter of 1986. The book describes the crucial impact of the Leaster case in thwarting the reinstitution of capital punishment in Massachusetts during the 1990s, and unlocking compensation opportunities for people who were unjustly incarcerated. Following his release from prison, Leaster worked for decades steering at-risk kids in Boston away from gangs and toward school or jobs. Leaster maintained a close friendship and connection to the Muse family, until his death in 2020. Read more in BC News.
Posted in Alumni Authors, Boston College Authors
Tagged Boston College Law School, justice, memoir
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Modernizing ‘Piers Plowman’
An experimental hybrid work, Cycle of Dreams (Punctum Books, 2024) by Boston College Professor of English Eric Weiskott pairs translation and original poetry. The translations, or adaptations, are of William Langland’s 14th-century dream vision, Piers Plowman, a politically radical English and Latin poem written in the wake of plague and divided into a prologue and 20 passūs or steps. Weiskott transposes the action from London and Worcestershire to New England and Long Island. The translations refashion and modernize Piers Plowman by disarticulating its continuous shape and rearticulating it as a collection of lyrics. The translation appears on the left and original poetry on the right in each page opening, so that the 14th and 21st centuries speak to one another as in a dream. Weiskott’s previous publications include the poetry chapbook Chanties and the scholarly monograph Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350–1650.
Translating Kracht
BC Associate Professor of German Studies Daniel Bowles has written the English translation of Swiss author Christian Kracht’s novel Eurotrash (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2024). The acclaimed novel, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was named one of the 12 Best Books of 2024 by The Times (UK), is described as a probing masterpiece-in-miniature of self-reflection and cultural reckoning. According to a review in The Washington Post, “Daniel Bowles has produced a glitteringly metaphorical translation, rich with delights.” Bowles was awarded the Goethe-Institut’s Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his 2015 translation of another Kracht novel, Imperium. Update: The translation of Eurotrash was longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, which recognizes fiction from around the world that has been translated into English and published in the U.K. and/or Ireland. Read an interview with Bowles in BC News.
Unaccompanied at the border
Poet Javier Zamora will discuss home, identity, and the immigrant experience—the focus of his acclaimed 2022 memoir Solito (Hogarth)—at Boston College on February 26 in Gasson 100 at 7 p.m. At age nine, Zamora embarked on a nine-week journey from his native El Salvador to the United States. He traveled unaccompanied by boat, bus, and foot along with other migrants and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety. Solito was awarded the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiography and named a winner of the American Library Association Alex Award and a finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. Zamora’s debut poetry collection, Unaccompanied, explores his experience emigrating from Central America, leaving behind his beloved grandmother to join parents he barely remembered. He has been published in Granta, the Kenyon Review, American Poetry, the New Republic, the New York Times, and Poetry, among other publications. Zamora’s lecture is presented by the BC Lowell Humanities Series and cosponsored by the Park Street Corporation Speaker Series and Boston College Romance Languages and Literatures Department. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Posted in Guest Authors, Lowell Humanities Series, Park Street Corporation Speaker Series
Tagged immigrant, memoir, poet, poetry
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Staging the Lyric
University of Dallas Assistant Professor of English Sarah Berry aims to explain the 21st-century resurgence of Anglophone verse drama in her new book, Staging the Lyric: Modern and Contemporary Experiments with Verse Drama (Bloomsbury, 2024). This modern verse drama differs from its ancient and Elizabethan antecedents as it is understood not as a genre in its own right, but as a hybrid of the lyric and the dramatic. While they differ in their ideology and form, Berry contends that they are united by exploring the relationship between lyric and dramatic elements on stage and what these two different modes afford. To demonstrate this continuity, Staging the Lyric traces a genealogy from contemporary plays by Joanna Laurens, Joyelle McSweeney, and David Grieg back to W.B. Yeats, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, and W.H. Auden, to reveal that the tensions that animate verse drama have stayed the same, even as the strategies for staging them have evolved. Berry graduated from Boston College with a master’s degree in English in 2012. She has published articles in Literature/Film Quarterly, Journal of Modern Literature, Christianity and Literature, and Twentieth Century Literature as well as reviews in Modern Drama and Modernism/Modernity.
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