February 8, 2012

James T. Fisher: A “Fallen-Away” Catholic's Monastic Vocation in Autismland
Devlin 101
7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
 

This year’s annual Candelmas Lecture features James T. Fisher, who holds a PhD from Rutgers University and is a professor of theology at Fordham University. Fisher’s research interests include the cultural history of religion and ethnicity in the United States as well as American Catholic studies. His most recent book, On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York, not only offers a fresh reading of Kazan’s famous film but also gives a detailed social history of the New York/New Jersey waterfront. Fisher is also an autism advocate, and was one of the organizers of the recent Autism and Advocacy conference at the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham.

February 15, 2012

The Lowell Humanities Series and Fiction Days Present Junot Diaz
Murray Function Room
7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Junot Díaz was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and is the author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao which won the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, African Voices, Best American Short Stories (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000), Pushcart Prize XXII, and The O'Henry Prize Stories 2009.

March 1, 2012

The Lowell Humanities Series and Poetry Days Present Billy Collins
Gasson 100
7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Billy Collins is an American phenomenon. No poet since Robert Frost has managed to combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal. His work has appeared in a variety of periodicals including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The American Scholar; he is a Guggenheim fellow and a New York Public Library “Literary Lion.” In June 2001, Billy Collins was appointed United States Poet Laureate for 2001-2003.  In January 2004, he was named New York State Poet Laureate for 2004-06. Billy Collins is a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York, as well as a Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute at Rollins College.

March 21, 2012

Claudia Kinmonth: Rural Ireland – The Inside Story
Devlin 101
7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

In 2012, in collaboration with the University’s Irish Programs, Boston College’s  McMullen Museum will present an exhibition, "Rural Ireland: the Inside Story," inspired by Claudia Kinmonth’s groundbreaking scholarship in Irish Rural Interiors in Art (2006). Her work reveals that, contrary to earlier assumptions, artists working in Ireland did turn to the lives of the country’s rural poor for subject matter. Kinmonth has discovered dozens of previously unknown works, including some depicting an impoverished peasantry. These constitute an insufficiently recognized tradition of Irish genre painting warranting further investigation by social historians, archaeologists, and scholars of visual culture.

March 28, 2012

Téa Obreht: The Tiger’s Wife
Devlin 101
7:00 p.m. – 8:30 pm.

Téa Obreht is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller The Tiger's Wife. She was born in 1985 in the former Yugoslavia, and spent her childhood in Cyprus and Egypt. Her family immigrated to the United States in 1997, and she attended the University of Southern California and received her M.F.A. from Cornell. Her fiction debut—an excerpt from The Tiger's Wife in The New Yorker—was selected for the 2010 Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her short story “The Laugh” was published in The Atlantic, and appears in the 2010 Best American Short Stories. She has also published nonfiction about vampire hunting in Harper's. She was the youngest writer named to The New Yorker's "Best 20 Writers Under 40" and was also named a "Best 5 Writers Under 35" by the National Book Foundation. She lives in Ithaca, New York.

April 11, 2012

Brenda Wineapple: On the Brink of War – Literary Boston in 1860
Devlin 101
7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Brenda Wineapple’s most recent book, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2008), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, a winner of the Washington Arts Club National Award for arts writing, and a New York Times "Notable Book"; it was also ranked among the best nonfiction of the year in The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, among other publications. She is also the author of Genêt: A Biography of Janet Flanner; Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein; and Hawthorne: A Life, which received the Ambassador Award of the English-speaking Union for the Best Biography of 2003 and the Julia Ward Howe Prize from the Boston Book Club. Currently Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at The Graduate School, City University of New York, Wineapple also teaches in the MFA programs at The New School and Columbia University's School of the Arts. This event is presented in conjunction with the Forgotten Chapters project.

April 25, 2012

Rebecca Skloot: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Murray Function Room
7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Award-winning science writer Rebecca Skloot has made a career of probing the intersections between hard science and human experience; the resulting stories have been as varied as cellular research and cancer, medical care for pet goldfish, and the science behind personal motivation. In her bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010), Skloot tells the story of a young black woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951 and left behind an inexplicably immortal line of cells known as HeLa. Skloot spent more than ten years researching Henrietta Lacks, whose cells—harvested without her knowledge or consent—contributed to scientific advancements as varied as the polio vaccine, treatments for cancers and viruses, in-vitro fertilization, and our understanding of the impact of space travel on human cells. Part detective story, part scientific odyssey, and part family saga, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks raises fascinating questions about race, class, and bioethics in America. This event is presented in partnership with the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics.