Boston College Front Row

Brian Daley, S.J., the Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, discusses the restoration of unity among Christian communities. He focuses on sacramental, theological, and spiritual issues that have been the topic of dialogue among Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Mary Hughes is an adjunct professor in the Arts & Sciences Honors Program. In this “last lecture” she discusses thoughts prompted by the recent death of her husband. “Grief is a universal experience, and yet, it is intensely private,” she says. “What bridges that gap between the soul's profound solitude on one hand and the human community on the other? That's the question I want to explore.”

Paul Sally '54 MS'56, a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago, describes a program he developed in Chicago to improve the teaching of mathematics in eighth grade. This lecture is part of the Mathematics Education Seminar series, a joint undertaking of Boston College’s mathematics department and the Lynch School of Education. It brings distinguished math educators to campus to provide a forum for discussions of math, education, and math pedagogy.

Larry Cox, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, discusses the importance of human rights activism, the current work of Amnesty, and how to relate the principle of thinking globally and acting locally to our lives.

Uwem Akpan, S.J., author of the <i>New York Times</i> bestseller <i>Say You're One of Them</i>, reads from his book and discusses the intersection in his life between spirituality and art.

Maxim D. Shrayer, professor of Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures at Boston College and the winner of a 2007 National Jewish Book Award, discusses his new collection of short stories <i>Yom Kippur in Amsterdam</i>.

This is the third of three sessions at a symposium titled "Soldiers and Citizens: Military and Civic Culture in America," sponsored by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and hosted by Boston College. The panelists are Rick Atkinson, a Pulitizer Prize-winning author; Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations and history at Boston University; and Sarah Sewall, a teacher of international affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. MSNBC news commentator Rachel Maddow is the moderator.

This is the second of three sessions at a symposium titled "Soldiers and Citizens: Military and Civic Culture in America," sponsored by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and hosted by Boston College. The panelists are Colonel Charles D. Allen (Ret.), a professor at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress; Paul Rieckhoff, founder and director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America; and Cullen Murphy, moderator, editor-at-large of <i> Vanity Fair</i>.

Boston College athletes' graduation rates rank among the national leaders, and the University is home to one of the most competitive athletics programs in the Atlantic Coast Conference. How do the Eagles do it? What are the challenges of upholding such a standard? Director of athletics Gene DeFilippo discusses the success of the Boston College athletics program and the role the University’s Catholic and Jesuit mission plays in it.

Sabina De Geest, professor of nursing and director of the Institute of Nursing Science of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Basel, Switzerland, discusses the Swiss health care system’s infrastructure, outlines the health benefits reaped by the Swiss population, and takes questions from the audience.

Ann Marie Mires teaches at Anna Maria College in Paxton, Massachusetts, and also at Bay Path College in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. She discusses the field of forensics, relating it both to analysis of ancient human remains as well as its application to current crime investigations.

Author Patrick McCloskey talks with Ben Birnbaum, editor of <i>Boston College Magazine</i>, about his book <i>The Street Stops Here</i> (University of California Press, 2009), a critically acclaimed account of a year at a Catholic high school in Harlem. McCloskey is an accomplished journalist, a senior fellow at the Statistical Assessment Service, and a senior consulting partner at Julius Capital Partners.

David Fromm '93 fondly recalls his undergraduate years at Boston College before reading two selections from <i>Expatriot Games: My Season of Misadventures in Czech Semi-Pro Basketball</i> (Skyhorse, 2008).

Liz McCartney '94, co-founder of St. Bernard Project, a not-for-profit organization devoted to rebuilding homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, discusses some of the lessons she has learned about effective leadership. For her work in New Orleans' St. Bernard Parish, McCartney was recognized as CNN's 2008 “Hero of the Year” and received the 2009 Ignatian Award from the Boston College Alumni Association.

Elizabeth McAlister is an associate professor of religion at Wesleyan University. She discusses the “conceptual and on-the-ground relationship” between U.S. evangelicals and Haitian evangelicals.

Chinese-American author, feminist, and peace activist Maxine Hong Kingston writes both fiction and nonfiction about the immigrant experience. The Woman Warrior (1976) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction. In this Lowell Humanities Series lecture, she reads from her essay collection Hawaii One Summer (1987).

David Adams, a co-director of Emerge, an organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that provides counseling and education related to domestic violence, discusses his research regarding domestic homicides. The program is sponsored by the Forensic Nursing Program of the William F. Connell School of Nursing.

What kind of spirituality can help Christians, particularly Catholics, to reach beyond sectarianism and yet be well identified as something more than just “one of the crowd”? As Catholics emerge from the ghetto—now called “life-style enclaves”—how can they avoid assimilation and maintain a distinctive religious identity? These and other questions are explored in the annual Evelyn Underhill Lecture in Christian Spirituality. Timothy Radcliffe, OP, is a Dominican friar of the English Province, and was a Master of the Order of Preachers from 1992-2001, the only member of the English Province to have held that office since the order’s founding in 1216. He was the 2007 winner of The Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing for his book <i>What Is the Point of Being A Christian?</i>(Burns and Oates, 2006).

Lectura Dantis, a public reading of Dante's <i>Divine Comedy</i>, presents “Paradiso IV” with Federica Anichini, assistant professor of Italian Language and Literature at Smith College. The discussion of the text is in English; the reading from the <i>Divine Comedy</i> is in Italian. This program is part of an ongoing public reading of the <i>Divine Comedy</i> organized by the Boston College Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the Center for Italian Culture in Newton, Massachusetts.

Political science professor Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, discusses his most recent book, <i>The Future of Liberalism</i> (Knopf, 2009), which <i>Publishers Weekly</i> described as “a passionate defense of why liberalism—broadly defined—continues to be relevant and essential.” Mary Sarah Bilder, professor of law, and Daniel J. Mahoney, professor of political science at Worcester's Assumption College, offer critiques.