Best-selling author Michael Pollan, an expert in food, farms, gardens, and eating habits, will be interviewed by BC Sociology Professor Juliet Schor on Nov. 2 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, room 100. Pollan is the author of In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, The Botany of Desire, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, and Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. Documentaries on PBS and Netflix have also showcased Pollan’s work. His essays have appeared in Harper’s, Mother Jones, Gourmet, Vogue, Travel + Leisure, Gardens Illustrated, and The Nation, among other publications. He is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley. He was named one of the top 10 “New Thought Leaders” by Newsweek magazine in 2009 and to the 2010 Time 100, the magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Sponsor: Park Street Corporation Speaker Series.
A conversation with Michael Pollan
The war poets at Rapallo
Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies Lauren Arrington will present “‘Shell-shocked Walt Whitmans’: W.B. Yeats and the War Poets at Rapallo” on Nov. 1 at 4:30 p.m. in Burns Library’s Irish Room. Arrington’s lecture will revisit W.B. Yeats’s attitude toward the younger generation of poets, take aim at his pejorative description of them as “shell-shocked Walt Whitmans,” and reassess Richard Aldington and Thomas MacGreevy’s writings about the war during their visits to Rapallo. Arrington is the author of Revolutionary Lives: Constance and Casimir Markievicz and W.B. Yeats, the Abbey Theatre, Censorship, and the Irish State: Adding the Half-Pence to the Pence. She is a frequent BBC commentator and writes articles and reviews for the Irish Times and Times Literary Supplement.
The Holy Spirit
The School of Theology and Ministry will hold an event on Nov. 2 to celebrate the publication of The Holy Spirit: Setting the World on Fire (Paulist Press, 2017), co-edited by School of Theology and Ministry professors Rev. Richard Lennan and Nancy Pineda-Madrid. All of the contributors to The Holy Spirit are STM faculty members. At the book launch, which will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Cadigan Alumni Center, Francine Cardman, Andrea Vicini, S.J., and Pineda-Madrid offer reflections on the Holy Spirit in light of their own area of expertise.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Catholicism, School of Theology and Ministry
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Iceland Poppies
Boston College alumna Katherine St. Germain Smith applies her experience as a physician specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry into her new fantasy book for middle school readers. Life and therapeutic insights are woven into Iceland Poppies (Yorkshire Publishing, 2017), a story of a young girl who has the ability to help others understand the power of choices. Smith’s book dedication includes a nod to her History Department mentor, Fr. Murphy.
If you could hear a painting
The Leonardo Electronic Almanac has published a volume that surveys artist Mary Sherman‘s work, a combination of painting, sculpture, installation, and mechanics that explores the relationship between painting and sound. Sherman is a Boston College alumna and teaches in the Art, Art History, and Film Department. The volume, “Mary Sherman: What if You Could Hear a Painting,” captures a turning point in Sherman’s work, when her paintings came off the wall and sound became an integral component of her work. She talks about her artistic journey and her teaching in a BC Libraries video.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged art, Art Art History & Film Department, painting
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The decriminalization of white America
Khalil Gibran Muhammad will speak on “Erasure: The Decriminalization of White America” on Oct. 25 at 7:00 p.m. in Gasson Hall, Room 100. Muhammad is a professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. His scholarship and teaching examine the broad intersections of race, democracy, inequality and criminal justice in modern U.S. History. He is the author of the award-winning book The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime and the Making of Modern Urban America, which explores the roots of the popular conception of black criminality in America. His work has been featured in the New York Times, New Yorker, and Washington Post, among other media. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series.
Posted in Guest Authors, Lowell Humanities Series
Tagged criminal justice, inequality, race
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The evolution of learning environments in higher ed
Educator Carney Strange will present “By Design: The Evolution of Learning Environments in Higher Ed” on Oct. 23 at 3 p.m. in the Heights Room of Corcoran Commons. An emeritus professor of higher education and student affairs at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University, Strange will present highlights of his research on incorporating inclusion, security, engagement, and community into campus development. He is the co-author/editor of five books, including (with James H. Banning) Designing for Learning: Creating Campus Environments for Student Success. His scholarship includes the design impact of educational environments, student development in post-secondary education, the dimensions of student spirituality, and methods of qualitative research. Sponsor: The Division of Student Affairs.
Understanding Ukraine-Russia: Anne Applebaum
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Anne Applebaum will give a talk on her new book, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, on Oct. 23 at 10:30 a.m. in the conference center at 2101 Commonwealth Ave., Brighton Campus. In Red Famine, which spans the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917 to the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, Applebaum reveals the central clues for understanding today’s troubled Ukrainian-Russian relations. A Washington Post columnist, Applebaum has written extensively about communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the author of Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, as well as Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956, which won the 2012 Cundill Prize for Historical Literature. She is a professor of practice at the London School of Economics’ Institute of Global Affairs, where she runs Arena, a project on disinformation and 21st century propaganda. Sponsors: The Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures, Institute for the Liberal Arts, Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, and Heinz Bluhm Memorial Lecture Series. | Read the New York Times book review of Red Famine.
Book launch for Fr. Stegman’s new book
The School of Theology and Ministry is hosting a book launch on Oct. 19 to celebrate the publication of STM Dean Thomas Stegman, S.J.‘s latest book, Written for Our Instruction: Theological and Spiritual Riches in Romans (Paulist Press, 2017). The event will be held from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. in the Heights Room of Corcoran Commons. Written for Our Instruction sheds light on central aspects of the theology and spirituality Paul sets forth in his Letter to the Romans. At the event, Fr. Stegman will talk about how the book invites readers to make Paul’s teaching more relevant to their own lives. Copies of the book will be available for sale at the event.
An elegy for Russia’s Jewry
A richly journalistic portrait of Russia’s dwindling, but still vibrant and influential Jewish community, is presented in a new book by Boston College Professor Maxim D. Shrayer. Based on new evidence and a series of interviews, With or Without You: The Prospect for Today’s Jews in Russia (Academic Studies Press, 2017) is both an exploration of the texture of Jewish life in Putin’s Russia and an émigré’s moving elegy for Russia’s Jews—a group which 40 years ago constituted one of the world’s largest Jewish populations. With or Without You yields insights into the complex situation of Russian Jews today: about the minority who have remained, against all odds, in their mother country and about Russia, a country continuously losing its Jews. Shrayer has authored and edited more than 15 books of criticism, biography, nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and translation, including the memoirs Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration and Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story (2013 National Jewish Book Award finalist) and the story collection Yom Kippur in Amsterdam. More from BC News.
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