In their new book, Keeping the Republic: A Defense of American Constitutionalism (University Press of Kansas, 2024), BC Professors of Political Science Dennis Hale and Marc Landy examine why the United States Constitution has come under fire throughout its history. Frustrated with perceived obstacles to achieving political or legislative aims, critics—from statesmen and pundits to ordinary citizens—complain that an obsolete or undemocratic Constitution hampers the process of governing. Landy and Hale argue that, by placing effective limits on the exercise of power, the Constitution is simply doing the job it was created to do: providing for a free government. According to Keeping the Republic, the key to the Constitution is that it establishes a republic, not a democracy—perhaps an underappreciated nuance but an important one, in that a republic guards individual rights against the will of the majority. The Constitution builds incentive to reach and broaden coalitions, say the authors. Keeping the Republic is the first book co-authored by Hale and Landy, longtime colleagues who have been friends since their undergraduate years at Oberlin College. Read more in BC News.
The U.S. Constitution
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged Political Science department, U.S. government
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Kinship
Kinship, a new poetry collection from Boston College Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies Maxim D. Shrayer, weaves together some of the principal themes in modern Jewish history, exploring such topics as ancestry in Eastern Europe, the Shoah, antisemitism, the refusenik experience, exile, displacement and immigration, and Zionism and Israel. “Shrayer’s richly orchestrated and formally elegant verse captures with poignancy and passion what it feels like to be a Jewish poet with Soviet roots, living in America during Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine,” the publisher, Finishing Line Press, notes of the 33-poem collection. Shrayer has authored and edited more than 25 books in English and Russian, including the poetry collection Of Politics and Pandemics and the memoirs Waiting for America, Leaving Russia, and Immigrant Baggage. Read more on Shrayer and Kinship in BC News.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged English Department, Jewish Studies program, poems, poetry
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Poet Solmaz Sharif
Solmaz Sharif, author of the poetry collection Customs, will give a public reading as part of a two-day residency at Boston College. Her reading will take place on April 25 in Devlin 101 beginning at 5 p.m. Look, an earlier poetry collection from Sharif, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award and the winner of the 2017 American Book Award for poetry. Sharif’s work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, the New York Times, and other publications. Her work has been recognized with a “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. She is currently the Shirley Shenker Assistant Professor of English at University of California, Berkeley. Sharif’s BC residency is co-sponsored by the American Studies Program, English Department, Literature Core and Institute for the Liberal Arts.
The gift of life
Tom O’Keefe, a 1995 Boston College graduate, has run the Boston Marathon five times. After noting a lack of diversity among the participants in various marathons and road races, he founded Stride for Stride, a non-profit organization dedicated to making races more accessible and diverse. Stride for Stride buys race bibs for immigrant, BIPOC, and low-income runners and since its launch in 2018 has grown to a team of more than 350 runners from some 25 countries. One of these Stride for Stride runners, Jorge Rosales, gave O’Keefe a life-giving gift earlier this year. Rosales donated a kidney to O’Keefe, who was living with end-stage chronic kidney disease. O’Keefe details the heartwarming story in the new book, Kindness: How a Simple Act of Kindness Can Save Your Life. More on their story from Boston’s ABC affiliate WCVB.
Growing up awkward in the ’80s
Fans of 1980s nostalgia and coming-of-age stories will find lots to like in Misfit (Flatiron Books/Macmillan, 2023), a memoir written by comedian Gary Gulman, who graduated from Boston College in 1993. In Misfit, Gulman takes readers through his school-age years, with stories about his family, neighbors, teachers, heroes, antagonists, and, generally, about being an awkward kid in the suburbs of Boston in the 1980s. Gulman, who has performed his comedy on numerous late night TV talk shows, is the creator of the acclaimed HBO comedy special, “The Great Depresh.” He spoke about his book on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” and with Vanity Fair, among other media outlets.
Art and fragility in eighteenth-century France
Eighteenth-century France witnessed a proliferation of materially unstable art, from oil paintings that cracked within years of their creation to pastel portraits vulnerable to the slightest touch or vibration. A Delicate Matter: Art, Fragility, and Consumption in Eighteenth-Century France (Penn State University Press, 2024), written by BC Assistant Professor of Art History Oliver Wunsch, links these artistic practices to the economic and social conditions that enabled them, revealing how the rise of consumer culture fundamentally transformed the relationship between art, time, and value. Drawing on sources ranging from eighteenth-century artists’ writings to twenty-first-century laboratory analyses, A Delicate Matter challenges the art historical tendency to see decay as little more than an impediment to research, instead showing how physical instability played a critical role in establishing art’s meaning and purpose. Wunsch has a background as a painter and printmaker, and much of his research looks at the history of artistic techniques, with a focus on European and American art in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He spoke about his book in this video from BC Libraries.
The Troubles, grief, and trauma
Martin Doyle will discuss his new book, Dirty Linen: The Troubles In My Home Place (Merrion Press, 2023), at Boston College on April 3 at 5 p.m. in Connolly House. Dirty Linen is an intimate, personal history of the Northern Ireland conflict told through the testimony of the friends and families of more than 20 victims who died violently in the author’s own rural parish in County Down. The book was shortlisted for a 2023 An Post Book Award for Best Non-Fiction Book. Doyle is Books Editor of The Irish Times. He wrote an essay for the Irish Times about writing Dirty Linen. Doyle’s appearance is sponsored by the Boston College Irish Studies Program.
Posted in Guest Authors
Tagged nonfiction, Northern Ireland, The Troubles, trauma, violence
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Christ, Caesar, and the Gospel
“Jesus is lord, not Caesar.” Many scholars and preachers attribute mistreatment of early Christians by Roman authorities to this fundamental confessional conflict, according to D. Clint Burnett, author of examines copious evidence—literary, epigraphic, numismatic, and archaeological—to more accurately reconstruct Christian engagement with imperial divine honors, with a focus on the cities of Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth. Burnett argues that early Christianity was not specifically anti-government but more broadly countercultural, and that responses to this stance ranged from conflict to apathy. His compelling argument challenges common assumptions about the first Christians’ place in the Roman Empire. Burnett earned a Ph.D. in biblical studies from Boston College. The book’s foreword was written by BC’s Joseph Professor of Catholic Spirituality Pheme Perkins.
The Shepherd’s Book of Visions
The Shepherd of Hermas (70–150 CE) is one of the oldest Christian writings and was enormously popular during the early centuries as a catechetical text used for moral formation. In her new book, Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry Professor of New Testament Angela Kim Harkins looks at the first section of the Shepherd known as the Book of Visions. In the An Embodied Reading of the Shepherd of Hermas: The Book of Visions and its Role in Moral Formation (Equinox Publishing, 2023), Harkins argues that enactive reading can help to generate immersive experiences of Hermas’s visions and explain the success of the Book of Visions among ancient readers. Cognitive approaches also highlight how modern scholars, who are trained to read apocalypses “against the grain” in their search for historical or theological information, fail to notice and appreciate the very things that made apocalypses engaging to a broad range of ancient readers and hearers.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged biblical studies, School of Theology & Ministry
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Accolades for ‘Kantika’
Professor of English Elizabeth Graver’s critically acclaimed novel, Kantika, is winner of a National Jewish Book Award in the category of Sephardic Culture. Kantika was inspired by Graver’s grandmother, who was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Istanbul and whose life journey took her to Spain, Cuba, and New York. The novel was also named a best book of the year by National Public Radio, Lilith Magazine, and Libby. The New York Times listed it as one of the 10 Best Historical Fiction novels and 100 Notable Books of 2023. Next month, Graver will receive the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, presented to a writer whose published work of fiction is deemed to have significance to American Jewish history and culture. Read more in BC News.
Posted in Awards/Honors, Boston College Authors
Tagged English Department, historical fiction, Jewish history, novel, novelist
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