Irish novelist Eimear McBride will talk about her acclaimed book, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, on Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. in Gasson Hall, Room 100. Her novel was awarded the Goldsmiths Prize, Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize), Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, Desmond Elliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. McBride is also the author of The Lesser Bohemians, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. Co-sponsors: Lowell Humanities Series and the Irish Studies Program. | Interview with McBride in the Guardian
A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
New journalism minor at BC
Associate Professor of English Angela Ards, who joined Boston College this fall, will help develop and direct a new interdisciplinary minor in journalism expected to debut in the fall of 2018. Ards is a former editor and writer at The Village Voice and The Nation and contributor to Ms. Magazine and other publications. She is the author of the book Words of Witness: Black Women’s Autobiography in the Post-Brown Era, which examines how the memoirs of Melba Beals, Rosemary Bray, June Jordan, Eisa Davis, Edwidge Danticat and other civil rights activists diverge from presumptive “official” accounts of the era. Ards’ experience as a journalist and work as a scholar in the fields of literature, history and cultural studies will be equally important in BC’s effort to recast journalism in a modern, multidisciplinary liberal arts framework while retaining awareness of its tradition and tenets. Read more from BC News.
Dr. Philip Landrigan, children’s health advocate
Dr. Philip Landrigan, one of the world’s leading advocates of children’s health whose pioneering research on the effects of lead poisoning in children contributed to the U.S. government’s decision to remove lead from gasoline and paint, will present “The Impact of Pollution on Planetary Health: Emergence of an Underappreciated Risk Factor” on Oct. 12 at 7:00 p.m. in Gasson Hall, Room 100. A pediatrician, epidemiologist, and leader in public health and preventive medicine, Dr. Landrigan is a professor of environmental medicine, public health and pediatrics and dean for global health in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His leadership of a National Academy of Sciences Committee on pesticides in children’s diets generated widespread understanding that children are uniquely vulnerable to toxic chemicals in the environment and helped to secure the passage of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. It also led to the establishment of EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection. He was a leader in developing the National Children’s Study, the largest epidemiological study of children’s health and the environment ever launched in the US. A Boston College graduate, he is the co-author of Raising Healthy Children in a Toxic World: 101 Smart Solutions for Every Family; Raising Children Toxic Free: How to Keep Your Child Safe From Lead, Asbestos, Pesticides and Other Environmental Hazards, and the upcoming Children and Environmental Toxins: What Everyone Needs to Know. Sponsor: Park Street Corporation Speaker Series.
Roman Katsman
Professor Roman Katsman of Bar-Ilan University in Israel will present a lecture titled “New Literary Geography: Demarginalization of Russophone Literature in Israel” on Oct. 12 at noon in Lyons Hall 207. Katsman is the author of six books and numerous articles about Hebrew and Russian literatures, and Jewish-Russian and Russian-Israeli literature and thought. His most recent book, Nostalgia for a Foreign Land, examines the Russian-language literature in Israel. His other major publication include Literature, History, Choice: The Principle of Alternative History in Literature, At the Other End of Gesture. Anthropological Poetics of Gesture in Modern Hebrew Literature and The Time of Cruel Miracles: Mythopoesis in Dostoevsky and Agnon. Sponsors: Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures, the Jewish Studies Program, the Heinz Bluhm Memorial Lecture Series, and the East European Studies Minor.
Family time
American families are busy and often find themselves overcommitted and exhausted. In their new book, Reclaiming Family Time: A Guide to Slowing Down and Savoring the Gift of One Another (Word Among Us Press, 2017), Boston College alumni Tim and Sue Muldoon offer a way to spend time, both individually and collectively, to build a strong foundation of lasting family relationships. The parents of three teenagers, the Muldoons take both a meditative and practical approach to this issue, examining the ways that contemporary American society tends to compromise family time and sharing basic principles that have served their family well. They are also authors of Six Sacred Rules for Families: A Spirituality for the Home and The Discerning Parent: An Ignatian Guide to Raising Your Teen.
Spiritual Grammar
Dominic Longo, an assistant professor of theology and director of the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), will lecture on his new book Spiritual Grammar: Genre and the Saintly Subject in Islam and Christianity on Oct. 5 at 5:30 p.m. in Devlin Hall, room 101. The salient characteristic of this genre of religious literature is that it makes constant references to the grammatical structures of language as a metaphor for how the self is structurally embedded in spiritual reality. Two medieval religious texts will serve as the main examples, The Grammar of Hearts (Naḥw al-qulūb) by Sufi shaykh and Islamic scholar ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī and Moralized Grammar (Donatus moralizatus) by Christian theologian Jean Gerson. An alumnus of Boston College, Longo also holds degrees from Harvard University. Sponsor: Heinz Bluhm Memorial Lecture Series.
Posted in Alumni Authors, Guest Authors
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A is for asteroids
An early fascination with horror films and decades of teaching courses on Gothic fiction inspired Boston College English Professor Paul Lewis to write A Is for Asteroids, Z Is for Zombies: A Bedtime Book about the Coming Apocalypse (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2017), a darkly comic fable that offers a vision of the apocalypse for every letter of the alphabet. Written in the popular genre of adult humor books that look like children’s literature, and accompanied by fantastically gory illustrations by Ken Lamug, the story begins when a young boy asks his father questions about asteroids and other global dangers. After the boy falls asleep, the father picks up and starts to read a book the boy was given that claims to offer “help for daddies and mommies [as] the first children’s book about end times and zombies.” The book-within-the-book, enumerates the many ways civilization might end and, according to the publisher, offers gallows humor for our doom-haunted times. An Edgar Allan Poe scholar, Lewis will give a reading from his new book at the Boston Public Library on Saturday, Nov. 4 from 3:30 – 4:30 p.m., in the Commonwealth Salon. He is also the author of Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict.
Poet Billy Collins
The Lowell Humanities Series will present former United States Poet Laureate (2001-03) Billy Collins on Oct. 4 at 7:00 p.m. in Gasson Hall, Room 100. Collins has published more than 10 collections of poetry, most recently The Rain in Portugal. His work has appeared in a variety of periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The American Scholar. Acclaimed by readers and critics alike, Collins has been called “the most popular poet in America” (New York Times) and “America’s favorite poet” (Wall Street Journal). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters and a New York Public Library “Literary Lion.”
Jesuit mysticism
In A Companion to Jesuit Mysticism (Brill Publishers, 2017), editor Robert A. Maryks presents 13 essays on the Jesuit mystical tradition, a somewhat neglected aspect of Jesuit historiography that stretches as far back as Ignatius of Loyola, his spiritual visions at Manresa, and ultimately the mystical perspective contained in his Spiritual Exercises. Maryks is an associate director of the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies and editor of Jesuit Sources at BC. Among the contributors to A Companion to Jesuit Mysticism are Professor Emeritus of Systematic and Mystical Theology Harvey D. Egan, S.J. and Assistant Professor of Theology Andrew Prevot. Fr. Egan’s essay is on “Karl Rahner (1904-84) and His Mystical Theology.” Prevot contributed “Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) and Contemporary Mystical Theology.” | Fr. Egan has also written a piece for The Renewal of Mystical Theology: Essays in Memory of John N. Jones (Crossroad Publishing, 2017), titled “The Eschatological Consciousness of the Christian Mystics,” and three essays for Nuovo Dizionario di Mistica (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2016). In addition, Fr. Egan is the presenter on two CD series: “Karl Rahner: Theological Giant of the Twentieth Century” and “The Christian Mystical Tradition.”
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Jesuit, Jesuit author, mysticism, Theology Department
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Pagan Kennedy: Inventology
Award-winning writer Pagan Kennedy will talk about her most recent book, Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change The World, on Sept. 27 at 7:00 p.m. in Devlin Hall, Room 101. In Inventology, Kennedy writes about inventors and the imagination and creativity behind their innovations. Kennedy has written 11 books and her writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times Magazine, where she wrote the “Innovation/Who Made That?” column. She is the recipient of NEA, a Smithsonian, and Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowships. Sponsor: Lowell Humanities Series.
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