Resources for Teachers and Students
We are pleased to offer the following online resources to encourage teachers and students to enhance their engagement with the Lowell Humanities Series. We encourage you to adopt our speakers' most recent book as well as shorter essays and contextual material as part of your syllabi. Additionally, the resources below can be paired or used separately to fit a single class or a longer unit. These links allow students to watch a Youtube video, or read a short essay or interview, before or after one of our events. Teachers might also consider using these resources in conjunction with evening reflection activities, or opportunities for reviews/reports during or beyond class-time. For speakers book titles, please see their bios. Articles in academic journals are available to members of the BC community through the library webpage.
Dina Nayeri
Fiction Days Presents: The Ungrateful Refugee
October 20, 2021
7:00 p.m. • Virtual Event
Reviews:
- The New York Times: “She Fled the Iranian Revolution, but Her Troubles Didn’t End There”
- Star Tribune: “Review: ‘The Ungrateful Refugee’ by Dina Nayeri”
- Michigan Quarterly Review: “In Exile: A Review of The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri”
- Kirkus: “THE UNGRATEFUL REFUGEE: WHAT IMMIGRANTS NEVER TELL YOU”
Essays/Public Work:
- The Guardian: “The ungrateful refugee: ‘We have no debt to repay’”
- Los Angeles Times: “Op-Ed: For a refugee in the U.S., the sharpest sting is the everyday shame of being foreign”
- The New York Times: “After London Attack, Living Between Cultures”
- The Guardian: “Accepting charity is an ugly business’: my return to the refugee camps, 30 years on”
- The Guardian: “Yearning for the end of the world”
- The Guardian: “I wouldn’t be the refugee, I’d be the girl who kicked ass’: how taekwondo made me”
Interviews:
- Los Angeles Review of Books: “Picking Children’s Pockets: An Interview with Dina Nayeri”
- Nylon: “Interview: Dina Nayeri Doesn’t Want to Miss Anyone’s Pain”
- Rebel Book Club: “Interview with Dina Nayeri: Author of the Ungrateful Refugee” (video)
- Image: “It Is Your Duty to Answer Us: An Interview with the Author of The Ungrateful Refugee”
- Guernica: “Dina Nayeri: The Craft of Writing the Truth about Refugees”
Excerpt:
Isabel Wilkerson:
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
September 8, 2021
7:00 p.m. • Virtual Event
Reviews:
- The New York Times: "Isabel Wilkerson’s ‘Caste’ Is an ‘Instant American Classic’ About Our Abiding Sin"
- The Guardian: "Caste: The Lies That Divide Us by Isabel Wilkerson--review"
- NPR: "‘Caste’ Argues Its Most Violent Manifestation Is In Its Treatment Of Black Americans"
- The Wall Street Journal: "‘Caste’ Review: The High Cost of Feeling Superior"
- Foreign Policy: "Feeling Like An Outcast"
- The New Republic: “Is America Trapped in a Caste System?”
- Los Angeles Review of Books: “The Work of Analogy: On Isabel Wilkerson’s ‘Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents’”
Interviews:
- Isabel Wilkerson, “Caste” (with Bryan Stevenson)
- Ken Burns and Isabel Wilkerson: In Conversation
- TED: “Isabel Wilkerson: The Great Migration and the Power of a Single Decision”
- C-Span: “Q&A with Isabel Wilkerson” (w/transcript)
(Audio/ Audio & Transcript)
- PBS: “‘Caste’ author Isabel Wilkerson on America’s race and class hierarchy”
- Vox: “Isabel Wilkerson wants to change how we understand race in America”
Excerpts:
Beth Lew-Williams
“The Chinese Must Go: A History of Anti-Asian Violence”
September 29, 2021
7:00 p.m. • Virtual Event
Reviews:
- International Migration Review: “Book Review: The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America”
- Humanities And Social Sciences Online: “Carrigan on Lew-Williams, ‘The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America”
- Slate: “The Idea of the Unassimilable Alien”
- The American Historical Review: “BETH LEW-WILLIAMS. The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America”
- Pacific Historical Review: “The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America”
Interviews:
- WNYC: “The Deep History of Anti-Asian Violence in the US” (audio & transcript)
- The World: “For a child migrant, days feel like a lifetime when you’re imprisoned and alone” (audio & transcript)
Dina Nayeri
Fiction Days Presents: The Ungrateful Refugee
October 20, 2021
7:00 p.m. • Virtual Event
Reviews:
- The New York Times: “She Fled the Iranian Revolution, but Her Troubles Didn’t End There”
- Star Tribune: “Review: ‘The Ungrateful Refugee’ by Dina Nayeri”
- Michigan Quarterly Review: “In Exile: A Review of The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri”
- Kirkus: “THE UNGRATEFUL REFUGEE: WHAT IMMIGRANTS NEVER TELL YOU”
Essays/Public Work:
- The Guardian: “The ungrateful refugee: ‘We have no debt to repay’”
- Los Angeles Times: “Op-Ed: For a refugee in the U.S., the sharpest sting is the everyday shame of being foreign”
- The New York Times: “After London Attack, Living Between Cultures”
- The Guardian: “Accepting charity is an ugly business’: my return to the refugee camps, 30 years on”
- The Guardian: “Yearning for the end of the world”
- The Guardian: “I wouldn’t be the refugee, I’d be the girl who kicked ass’: how taekwondo made me”
Interviews:
- Los Angeles Review of Books: “Picking Children’s Pockets: An Interview with Dina Nayeri”
- Nylon: “Interview: Dina Nayeri Doesn’t Want to Miss Anyone’s Pain”
- Rebel Book Club: “Interview with Dina Nayeri: Author of the Ungrateful Refugee” (video)
- Image: “It Is Your Duty to Answer Us: An Interview with the Author of The Ungrateful Refugee”
- Guernica: “Dina Nayeri: The Craft of Writing the Truth about Refugees”
Excerpt:
Bryce Pinkham
Fear Into Fuel: A Gentleman’s Guide to Stage Fright and Other Scary Things like Climate Change
November 3, 2021
7:00 p.m. • Virtual Event
Interviews:
- BUILD Series: “Jefferson Mays & Bryce Pinkham on “A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder” (video)
- CBS New York: “Interview: Star Of ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” (video)
- Broadway World: “BWW Interview: Catching Up with HOLIDAY INN Star and Humanitarian Bryce Pinkham”
- Broadway World: “BWW Interview: Lisa O’Hare and Bryce Pinkham Share Why It’s ‘Loverly’ to Reunite for MY FAIR LADY”
Performances:
- 2014 Tony Awards: “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder -- I’ve Decided to Marry You”
- Chicago Tribune: “Bryce Pinkham sings “On The Street Where You Live”
Charity:
Samuel Moyn
Humane: How the US Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War
November 10, 2021
7:00 p.m. • Virtual Event
Reviews:
- The New York Times: "The False and Dangerous Promise of Humane Wars"
- Boston Review: "Slouching Toward Humanity"
- The New Republic: "The Case Against Humane War"
- Kirkus: “Humane: How The US Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War”
- Curtis Brown: “Humane War: Global Control and the Making of a Moral Crisis”
Op-Eds/Public Work:
- Plough: “Tolstoy’s Case Against Humane War”
- The New York Times: “Why the War on Terror May Never End”
- The New York Times: “How the Human Rights Movement Failed”
- The New York Times: “What Kind of Fear Is Stopping Joe Biden?”
- The New York Review: “The Trouble with Comparisons”
Interviews:
- The Lawfare Podcast: “Samuel Moyn on ‘How Warfare Became Both More Humane and Harder to End”
- Unregistered Podcast: “Unregistered 115: Samuel Moyn” (video)
- Jacobin: “We Can’t Settle for Human Rights”
- Yale Law School: “Q&A with Professor Samuel Moyn on Supreme Court Reform”
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: “The Review: Fascism and a Chat with Samuel Moyn”
- Dissent: “Know Your Enemy: Know Your Frenemies, with Samuel Moyn” (audio)
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
December 1, 2021
7:00 p.m. • Virtual Event
Reviews:
- Kirkus: “Braiding Sweetgrass”
- Colorado State University Center for Literary Publishing: “Book Reviews: Braiding Sweetgrass Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants”
- The New York Times: “Timing, Patience and Wisdom Are the Secrets to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Success”
- Brevity Magazine: “A Review of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass”
- Star Tribune: “REVIEW: ‘Braiding Sweetgrass,’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer”
- Forbes: “Forbes All-Star Book Club: Kit Crawford Reviews 'Braiding Sweetgrass’”
Interviews:
- The Guardian: “Robin Wall Kimmerer: ‘People can’t understand the world as a gift unless someone shows them how’”
- The Guardian: “Robin Wall Kimmerer: ‘Mosses are a model of how we might live’”
- The On Being Podcast: “Robin Wall Kimmerer: The Intelligence of Plants” (audio & transcript)
- Natural History Institute: “Reciprocal Healing: Interview with Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ph.D.”
- The Believer: “An Interview with Robin Wall Kimmerer”
- The Sun Magazine: “Two Ways Of Knowing: Robin Wall Kimmerer On Scientific Knowledge And Native American View Of The Natural World”
Op-Eds/Excerpts:
- Emergence Magazine: “Skywoman Falling”
- Emergence Magazine: “Corn Tastes Better On The Honor System” (multimedia)
- Emergence Magazine: “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance”
- Gratefulness: “Returning the Gift”
- Literary Hub: “Robin Wall Kimmerer: ‘Greed Does Not Have to Define Our Relationship to Land’”