Harvard University’s Amabel B. James Professor of History Peter E. Gordon will speak on his new book, Walter Benjamin: The Pearl Diver (Yale University Press, 2026), at Boston College on April 14 at 5 p.m. in Devlin 101. Gordon, who specializes in modern European intellectual history from the late 18th to the late 20th century, is also Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Department of Government, and Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. A frequent contributor to periodicals such as The New York Times Book Review, The Boston Review of Books, The London Review of Books, and The New York Review of Books, Gordon has published major works on Heidegger, the Frankfurt School, Jürgen Habermas, and Theodor W. Adorno. The subject of his latest book, Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the 20th century. Esteemed for his literary acumen and capacious imagination, Benjamin developed a unique style of criticism―his friend Hannah Arendt called it pearl-diving―that sought out fragments of redemption in the ruins of bourgeois civilization. In his book, Gordon tells Benjamin’s story in a vivid and poetic style, inviting the reader to look beyond the image of Benjamin as a tragic figure of German-Jewish history and portraying him as a complex personality of unique and multifaceted gifts. The event is cosponsored by the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning and the Political Science, German Studies, and Philosophy departments.
Peter E. Gordon
Burns Scholar Ray Cashman
Provost Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University Bloomington Ray Cashman, who is serving this semester as BC’s Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies, will deliver a lecture on April 8 at 6 p.m. on “Exploring Belief in Spirits of the Dead Among Contemporary Irish Death Care Workers.” Cashman is a folklorist trained first in religious studies and anthropology. His current book project, “The Dead Don’t Bury Themselves”: Irish Funerary Traditions in a Changing World, explores Irish wakes, funerals, and the specialists who make these rites of passage possible. According to Cashman, among those in Ireland who facilitate funeral home visitations, home wakes, removals, funerals, and burials or cremations, stories about spirits of the dead making themselves known are a significant portion of shared occupational lore that is informed by long-established beliefs and practices. These stories (termed ‘memorates’ by folklorists), combined with ethnographic observations of how death care workers perform their jobs, reveal a range of belief, disbelief, and hedged positions on the existence of spirits, an afterlife, and more mysterious aspects of reality in a supposedly disenchanted world. Cashman is the author of the award-winning books Storytelling on the Northern Irish Border: Characters and Community and Packy Jim: Folklore and Worldview on the Irish Border. A reception before the lecture will begin at 5 p.m. The reception and lecture will take place in Burns Library. (Photo by Matthew Healey)
Posted in Guest Authors
Tagged Burns Library, Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies, foklore, Ireland, Irish Studies
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Margaret Burnham
Renowned legal scholar, civil rights advocate, and former judge Margaret A. Burnham will deliver a talk on her acclaimed book By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners on April 8 at 7 p.m. in Gasson 100. By Hands Now Known is a “paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow-era violence, the legal apparatus that sustained it, and its enduring legacy.” A University Distinguished Professor of Law at Northeastern University, Burnham is the founder of Northeastern University School of Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ). Through CRRJ, Burnham has led teams of law students in investigating acts of racial violence in the Jim Crow era, including hundreds of unsolved murders of Black people among other historical failures of the criminal justice system. In 1977, she became the first African American woman to serve in the Massachusetts judiciary, when she joined the Boston Municipal Court bench as an associate justice. She was among four scholars appointed to serve on the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, a national initiative charged with reviewing the records of murders and other acts of racially motivated violence that occurred between 1940 and 1979. Her appearance is presented by the Lowell Humanities Series and cosponsored by the PULSE Program for Service Learning and Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics. The lecture is fee and open to the public, but registration is required.
Posted in Lowell Humanities Series
Tagged American history, civil rights, law, racism
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Joyce Vance: Giving Up Is Unforgivable
Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law Joyce Vance, author of the bestseller Giving Up is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping A Democracy, will speak at Boston College on March 26. Vance’s book is an expert look at American democracy and how the sweep of legal history informs the understanding of it today. In Giving Up is Unforgivable, Vance informs readers about how government works and what it takes to preserve democracy. Vance also writes “Civil Discourse,” one of country’s leading Substack newsletters. Vance’s lecture, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics. It will take place at 4 p.m. in the Heights Room of Corcoran Commons. Doors open at 3:30 p.m.
From Baltimore to Beirut
Sherene Seikaly, an associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will present a talk on her current book project “From Baltimore to Beirut: On the Question of Palestine” at Boston College on March 25. Her book will follow the trajectory of a peripatetic medical doctor, Seikaly’s great grandfather, to place Palestine in a global history of race, capital, slavery, and dispossession. Seikaly is author of the award-winning book Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine, which examines British-ruled Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s through a focus on economy. She is the director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UCSB, editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and co-editor of Jadaliyya. This event is presented by the Lowell Humanities Series and cosponsored by the Boston College History Department. The lecture, to be held in Gasson 100 starting at 7 p.m., is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
A united Ireland?
Journalists Fintan O’Toole (Irish Times) and Sam McBride (Belfast Telegraph) will give a presentation on their new book, For and Against a United Ireland (Notre Dame Press, 2026), on March 18 at Boston College’s Yawkey Center, Murray Room. Both authors will each argue the case for and against unity, questioning received wisdom and bringing fresh thinking to one of Ireland’s most intractable questions. For and Against a United Ireland was commissioned by the ARINS Project (Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South), a joint initiative of the University of Notre Dame’s Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and the Royal Irish Academy. The 5 p.m. event is sponsored by BC’s Irish Institute. Registration is required.
Politics and governance in the digital era
Rogers Brubaker, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at University of California, Los Angeles and UCLA Foundation Chair, will speak on “Politics and Governance in the Digital Era: Between Populism and Technocracy” at Boston College on March 18 at 7 p.m. in Devlin Hall 110. Brubaker has written widely on social theory, citizenship, nationalism, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, populism, and digital hyperconnectivity. His books include Grounds for Difference; Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities, and, most recently, Hyperconnectivity and Its Discontents, where he explores the pervasive and unsettling changes brought about by digital hyperconnectivity. His address is presented by the Lowell Humanities Series and cosponsored by the Sociology Department and the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy. The event is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required.
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Another adventure for Benny
Bestselling author Jen Calonita, a Boston College graduate, is back with book two in her Isle of Ever series. In the series’ first installment, Benny figures out the clues her ancestor set out for her in her will and reaches the Isle of Ever. But, the game is far from over. In book two, The Curse Breaker (Sourcebooks Young Readers, 2026), Benny has to find the lost piece of pirate treasure needed to break the curse once and for all. Kirkus Reviews calls The Curse Breaker “thrilling and filled with twists.” Calonita has written more than 40 books for teens and middle grade readers. Her books have sold more than a million copies and have been translated into 15 languages.
Irish Romanticism
Former Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies Claire Connolly (University College Cork) will return to Boston College on March 11 at 5 p.m. to discuss her new book, Irish Romanticism: A Literary History (Cambridge University Press). In her book, Connolly proposes that Romanticism is a temporally and aesthetically distinct period in Irish culture, during which literature flourished in new forms and styles, evidenced in the lives and writings of such authors as Thomas Dermody, Mary Tighe, Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, Thomas Moore, Charles Maturin, John Banim, Gerald Griffin, William Carleton and James Clarence Mangan. Elisa Cozzi (University of Notre Dame) and Colleen Taylor (Boston College) will join Connolly to discuss Irish Romanticism. The book event, sponsored by BC Irish Studies, will be held in Connolly House.
‘Fire Weather’
John Vaillant, whose journalism, fiction, and non-fiction explore collisions between human ambition and the natural world, will speak at Boston College on March 11 at 7 p.m. in Gason 100. Vaillant is the author of the acclaimed book Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, a stunning account of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire in Alberta, Canada that illustrates the devastation wrought by forest fires in a world of intensifying climate change. The Fort McMurray wildfire was a multi-billion-dollar disaster that melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Fire Weather was winner of the British Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, and a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. It was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, TIME, NPR, Slate, and Smithsonian. Vaillant’s lecture is presented by the Lowell Humanities Series and cosponsored by the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, the University Core Curriculum, and Environmental Studies. The lecture is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
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