Lowell Humanities Series</strong></a> has brought distinguished writers, artists, performers, and scholars to Boston College. Follow the series on Twitter at <a href=https://www.wgbh.org/forum-network/partners/"https://twitter.com/BCLowellHS">@BCLowellHS .</p>">
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Boston College

Boston College is a coeducational university with undergraduate and graduate students hailing from every state and more than 95 countries. Founded in 1863, it is one of the oldest Jesuit, Catholic universities in the United States.

Since its founding in 1957, the Lowell Humanities Series has brought distinguished writers, artists, performers, and scholars to Boston College. Follow the series on Twitter at @BCLowellHS .

http://www.bc.edu

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    Fintan O’Toole: “Political Heaney”

    Thu, Nov 16, 2023
    Fintan O’Toole, one of Ireland’s leading public intellectuals, is a columnist for The Irish Times and Leonard L. Milberg ’53 visiting lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University. He also contributes to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Granta, The Guardian, The Observer, and other international publications. His books on theater include works on William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Murphy. His books on politics include the bestsellers We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland; Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain; Ship of Fools; and Enough is Enough. In 2011, The Observer named O’Toole one of “Britain’s top 300 intellectuals.” He has received the A.T. Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism, the Millennium Social Inclusion Award, the Journalist of the Year award from TV3 Studios in 2010, the Orwell Prize, the European Press Prize, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the spring of 2023. In 2021, he published the #1 bestseller We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland, which won the Book of the Year Award at the Irish Book Awards and was selected for the New York Times's “10 Best Books of 2022.” O’Toole’s History of Ireland in 100 Objects, which covers 100 highly charged artifacts from the last 10,000 years, is currently the basis for Ireland’s postage stamps. He has recently been appointed official biographer of Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney.

    This Lowell lecture will herald the opening of Seamus Heaney’s Afterlives, Boston College’s international symposium marking the tenth anniversary of the poet’s death.

    Cosponsored by the Boston College Irish Studies Program and with the support of an ILA Major Grant.
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    Boston College
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    Kate Brown: "The Interminable Cycles of Chernobyl’s Catastrophes: War, Accident, and War Again"

    Wed, Oct 25, 2023
    Kate Brown is the Thomas M. Siebel Distinguished Professor in the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of several prize-winning histories, including Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford 2013). Her latest book Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future (Norton 2019), translated into six languages, won the Marshall Shulman and Reginald Zelnik Prizes for the best book in East European History, plus the Silver Medal for Laura Shannon Book Prize. Manual for Survival was also a finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pushkin House Award and the Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage.

    This talk is part of the Boston College Lowell Humanities Series and is cosponsored by the Boston College History Department and The Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.
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    Boston College
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    Dipesh Chakrabarty - Boston College Lowell Humanities Series

    Thu, Apr 13, 2023
    Dipesh Chakrabarty holds a BSc degree from Presidency College, University of Calcutta, a postgraduate Diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and a PhD in History from the Australian National University. He is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations. He is the Faculty Director of the University of Chicago Center in Delhi, a faculty fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, an associate of the Department of English, and by courtesy, a faculty member in the Law School. His publications include several monographs and many articles including Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, 2000; 2008); The Climate of History in a Planetary Age (Chicago, 2021); and One Planet, Many Worlds (Brandeis, forthcoming 2023). He is a founding member of the editorial collective of Subaltern Studies, a consulting editor of Critical Inquiry, a founding editor of Postcolonial Studies and has served on the editorial boards of the American Historical Review and Public Culture. He was one of the founding editors of the series South Asia Across the Disciplines. He served on the Board of Experts for non-Western art for the Humboldt Forum in Berlin and was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board to the Center for Global Cooperation Research (Bonn and Essen) for a few years from 2012. He is also an Associate in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney, 2018-2022. Chakrabarty is the recipient of the 2014 Toynbee Foundation Prize for his contributions to global history and of the 2019 Tagore Memorial Prize awarded by the Government of West Bengal for his book The Crises of Civilization. He was awarded the degree of DLitt (Honoris Causa) by the University of London (conferred at Goldsmiths) in 2010 and an honorary doctorate by the University of Antwerp, Belgium, in 2011. He was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta (conferred on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Institute in 2011). He was elected an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2006 and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.   Co-sponsored by The Park Street Corporation Speaker Series.
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    Boston College
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    Kim Stanley Robinson -Boston College Lowell Humanities Series

    Wed, Mar 29, 2023
    Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the international bestselling Mars trilogy, and more recently New York 2140, Aurora, Shaman, Green Earth, and 2312, which was a New York Times bestseller nominated for all seven of the major science fiction awards—a first for any book. He was sent to the Antarctic by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers’ Program in 1995 and returned in their Antarctic media program in 2016. In 2008 he was named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine, and he works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and UC San Diego’s Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. His work has been translated into 25 languages, and won a dozen awards in five countries, including the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. In 2016 he was given the Heinlein Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction, and asteroid 72432 was named “Kimrobinson.” In 2017, he was given the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. A prolific writer and speaker, his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Nature, and Wired, among many others, and he has lectured at more than one hundred institutions over the last 25 years. His novel, The Ministry for the Future, was selected as one of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2020. His most recent book, The High Sierra: A Love Story (May 2022) is a non-fiction exploration of Robinson’s years spent hiking and camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains, one of the most compelling places on Earth. Cosponsored by the Boston College Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies Program, the Lynch School's Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics, and English Department ### Resources [INTERVIEW - The New York Times: Ezra Klein Interviews Kim Stanley Robinson (transcript and podcast) ](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-kim-stanley-robinson.html) [REVIEW: The Guardian: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson review – how to solve the climate crisis ](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/20/the-ministry-for-the-future-by-kim-stanley-robinson-review-how-to-solve-the-climate-crisis) [OP ED/ PUBLIC WRITTING: Bostonia: Kim Stanley Robinson on the Importance of Imagination ](https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/kim-stanley-robinson-the-importance-of-imagination/) [EXCERPT : EW: Sustainability is possible in this excerpt from climate change novel The Ministry for the Future]( https://ew.com/books/the-ministry-for-the-future-chapter-excerpt/)
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    Boston College
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    Natsu Saito: Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law: Why Structural Racism Persists

    Thu, Oct 06, 2022
    Taking Indigenous sovereignty seriously can help dismantle the structural racism encountered by other people of color in the United States. Natsu Taylor Saito's book, _Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law: Why Structural Racism Persists,_ provides a timely analysis of structural racism at the intersection of law and colonialism. Noting the grim racial realities still confronting communities of color, and how they have not been alleviated by constitutional guarantees of equal protection, this book suggests that settler colonial theory provides a more coherent understanding of what causes and what can help remediate racial disparities. By providing a functional analysis that links disparate forms of oppression, this book makes the case for the oft-cited proposition that racial justice is indivisible, focusing particularly on the importance of acknowledging and contesting the continued colonization of Indigenous peoples and lands. ([Book review on Perlego](https://www.perlego.com/book/1364570/settler-colonialism-race-and-the-law-why-structural-racism-persists-pdf?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&campaignid=15825112969&adgroupid=132780871355&gclid=CjwKCAjw7eSZBhB8EiwA60kCW0AkGCT0O6l1i5HilKV1s8cLAXB0Tk20XaCYvSIRbVyrLPK_c7BYnRoCL5IQAvD_BwE) ) Cosponsored by the [Boston College Center for Human Rights and International Justice.
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    Boston College
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    Drug Use for Grownups: A Human Rights Perspective

    Thu, Nov 14, 2019
    Dr. Carl Hart is currently investigating the behavioral and neuropharmacological effects of psychoactive drugs in human research participants. A major focus of his laboratory-based research is to understand factors that mediate drug self-administration behavior and to develop effective treatments.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston College
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    Michael Witmore: Civic Shakespeare

    Wed, Nov 06, 2019
    Witmore is a scholar of Shakespeare and early modern literature as well as a pioneer in the digital analysis of Shakespeare’s texts. Based in Washington, DC, the Folger Shakespeare Library is the world’s largest Shakespeare collection. Image: “Portrait of Shakespeare” by Thomas Nast (1840-1902), from the [Folger Digital Image Collection](https://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/allCollections)
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston College
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    Sandford Biggers: Negerplastic

    Wed, Nov 08, 2017
    A Los Angeles native working in New York City, Sanford Biggers will discuss his art, which integrates film, video, installation, sculpture, drawing, original music and performance. He intentionally complicates issues such as hip hop, Buddhism, politics, identity and art history in order to offer new perspectives and associations for established symbols. Through a multi-disciplinary formal process and a syncretic creative approach he makes works that are as aesthetically pleasing as they are conceptual.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston College
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    Ruth Rubio Marín: Reparations for Historic Institutional Violence

    Thu, Nov 01, 2018
    ###### Reparations for Historic Institutional Violence: Learning from Transitional Justice? Based upon a lifetime of working with harmed individuals in numerous countries, scholar Ruth Rubio Marín discusses her work and the efficacy of transitional justice. Marín’s lecture was part of a two-day conference entitled [“Transitional Justice, Truth-telling, and the Legacy of Irish Institutional Abuse”](http://https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/academics/sites/ila/events/towards-transitional-justice/#about_the_conference.html) supported by the ILA, Office of the Provost, Irish Studies Program, The Jesuit Institute, The Boston College Law School, and the Center for Human Rights and International Justice.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston College
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    GroundTruth: Reporting in the "Post-Truth" Era

    Wed, Sep 19, 2018
    Charles Sennott is the Founder and Executive Director of The GroundTruth Project. He is an award-winning foreign correspondent, author, and editor with 30 years of experience in journalism. Sennott has reported on the front lines of wars and insurgencies in at least 15 countries, including the 2011 revolution in Cairo and the Arab Spring. Drawing from his years of experience reporting and working to train the next generation of journalist, Sennott discusses the crisis in the journalism field, the gap in local reporting, and the importance of covering truth from the ground of local communities. Learn more about: [The GroundTruth Project](http://thegroundtruthproject.org/ "The GroundTruth Project") Image: Presentation Slide
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    Boston College
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