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.
Emilie Townes
Annual Candlemas Lecture: Emilie Townes: Facing (In)Justice with the Power of Hope
February 04, 2026
7 PM | Gasson 100
Interviews and Talks
- LGBTran: “Hidden Histories: the faith activism of Black, lesbian religious leaders” oral history interview (transcript)
- The Memorial Church of Harvard University: Sunday Sermon (video)
Articles & Excerpts
Emilie Townes
Annual Candlemas Lecture: Emilie Townes: Facing (In)Justice with the Power of Hope
February 04, 2026
7 PM | Gasson 100
Interviews and Talks
- LGBTran: “Hidden Histories: the faith activism of Black, lesbian religious leaders” oral history interview (transcript)
- The Memorial Church of Harvard University: Sunday Sermon (video)
Articles & Excerpts
Yiyun Li
Techniques and Idiosyncrasies
February 25, 2026
7 PM | Gasson 100
Interviews
- The New Yorker: Yiyun Li on Writing from the Height or from the Depth of Experience
- The Paris Review: Space for Misunderstanding: A Conversation between A. M. Homes and Yiyun Li
- The New York Times: One Day, Yiyun Li Might Get Around to Reading Roald Dahl
- The Guardian: Yiyun Li: ‘I’m not that nice friendly Chinese lady who writes… Being subversive is important to me’
- The New Yorker: Yiyun Li on How We Remember the Dead
- Harvard Review: Writing Is a Second Life: An Interview with Yiyun Li
Reviews
- The New York Times: Writing Into the Abyss After the Death of Two Sons
- Los Angeles Review of Books: Children Die, and Parents Go On Living
- Chicago Review of Books: The Lingering Pain of Grief in Yiyun Li’s “Wednesday’s Child”
- NPR: “Wednesday’s Child” deals in life after loss
- The Atlantic: A Novel With a Secret at Its Center
- The New York Times: Why Write? Yiyun Li’s New Novel Explores Our Urge to Invent.
- The New York Review of Books: The Case of Yiyun Li
- The New York Times Magazine: How Yiyun Li Became a Beacon for Readers in Mourning
Articles
- The New Yorker: Any Human Heart
- The New Yorker: Techniques and Idiosyncrasies
- The New Yorker: What Gardening Offered After a Son’s Death
Excerpts
John Vaillant
Fire Weather
March 11, 2026
7 PM | Gasson 100
Reviews
- The Independent: LA was sitting on a powder keg ripe for a fire after months of drought. Then it was lit.
- The New York Times: In Canada’s Wilds, a Chilling Inferno Was Also an Omen.
- The New York Review of Books: Burning Up
- The Guardian: ‘We have given Earth a fever’: author John Vaillant on the firestorms coming for us all
Articles & Excerpts
- The Guardian: Hellfire: This Is What Our Future Looks Like Under Climate Change
- The New York Times: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Northeast Is Burning
- The New York Times: The Fires Sweeping Across Texas Offer a Terrifying Warning
- Smithsonian Magazine: The World’s First Wildfire Tornado Blazed a Path of Destruction Through Australia
- Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity: An Excerpt from John Vaillant's Fire Weather
Rogers Brubaker
Politics and Governance in the Digital Era: Between Populism and Technocracy
March 18, 2026
7 PM | Devlin 110
Interviews
Articles & Excerpts
- Theory and Social Inquiry: Gender Identity: The Career of a Category
- Sociological Science: Emerging Pronoun Practices After the Procedural Turn: Disclosure, Discovery, and Repair
- Thesis Eleven: Paradoxes of populism during the pandemic
- Theory and Society: Digital hyperconnectivity and the self
- Persuasion: The Danger of Race Reductionism
- Academic Freedom: The Global Challenge — Academic Freedom and Controversial Speech about Campus Governance
Sherene Seikaly
From Baltimore to Beirut: On the Question of Palestine
March 25, 2026
7 PM | Gasson 100
Interviews & Talks
- Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin – From Baltimore to Beirut: On the Question of Palestine (video)
- Rhizastance: Palestine and Nakba Today with Sherene Seikaly (video)
Reviews
Articles & Excerpts
- Jadaliyya: Can We Talk about Palestine? On Life
- Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East: How I Met My Great-Grandfather: Archives and the Writing of History
- Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes: Reading in Time
- Journal of Palestine Studies: In the Shadow of War: The Journal of Palestine Studies as Archive
- History of the Present: Pandemic Histories: Meditations and Migrations
- Jadaliyya: Nakba in the Age of Catastrophe
Margaret Burnham
By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners
April 8, 2026
7 PM | Gasson 100
Articles
- The Nation: Remembering Bob Moses, 1935–2021
- WBUR Cognoscenti: Lynching Memorial Forces Us To Confront Our Racist Past — And Present
- The New York Times: The Cold Cases of the Jim Crow Era
Interviews & Talks
- An Act of Justice Symposium: Decriminalization & Decarceration (video)
- Fresh Air: Law professor unearths cases of racial violence from the Jim Crow era
- Boston Review: A Record of Violence