People
Mary T. Crane
Thomas F. Rattigan Professor
Director, Institute for the Liberal Arts
Institute for the Liberal Arts at Boston College
10 Stone Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
617-552-6952
ila@bc.edu
The following members of the Boston College faculty make up the Institute for the Liberal Arts' governing board:
Jonathan Laurence
Professor, Director of the Clough Center
Catherine Cornille
Professor; Newton College Alumnae Chair of Western Culture
The Executive Board will help ILA Director Mary Crane with strategic decisions about future programming.
James Keenan, S.J.
Vice Provost for Global Engagement
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The ILA Journalism Fellowship, inaugurated in 2013, brings a distinguished journalist to Boston College each year. The fellow teaches one course per semester on a topic of his or her own choosing, which frees significant time to work on a book or some other project that's difficult to pursue when working full-time as a reporter. The fellow also holds office hours, takes part in panel discussions and other events on campus, and otherwise participates in the life of the Journalism Program and the wider university. Past fellows, some of whom have returned to BC to teach after the fellowship year, include David Daley, Mark Feeney, Maura Johnston, Toby Lester, Carla Murphy, James Parker, and Charles Sennott.
Janelle Nanos
For the 2024-2025 year, the ILA and BC’s Journalism Program are delighted to welcome Janelle Nanos, who is an award-winning business reporter at The Boston Globe, where she also serves as the assistant business editor for news innovation. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature reporting for her decade-long investigation into a woman's allegations of childhood sexual abuse, and is now working on a book, to be published by Crown, based on that reporting. She is a graduate of Boston College, and has worked at Boston Magazine, National Geographic Traveler, and New York Magazine.
Rebekah Waalkes
Bekah Waalkes is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for the Liberal Arts at BC. She graduated with a PhD in English from Tufts University in May 2024. Her research focuses on connections between technological discourse and contemporary novels. Bekah’s work has been published by public and academic venues alike, including recent book reviews in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Nation, Cleveland Review of Books, and The Brooklyn Rail. She can be reached by email at waalkesr@bc.edu