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A presentation next week by award-winning cultural critic and historian Richard Slotkin launches the spring Lowell Lectures Humanities Series, which for decades has brought prominent authors, journalists, artists and others to the Boston College campus.
Directed by Professor of English Carlo Rotella, American Studies Program director, the series also will feature an award-winning science writer, accomplished novelist Chang-rae Lee discussing his most recent book, a BC theologian and scholar, a noted historian, an accomplished soldier-poet and an acclaimed novelist, among others.
This Tuesday, Jan. 25, Slotkin, who has devoted his career to the study of American violence, will present “After the Fact: Writing the Battle of the Crater (1864) as Fiction and as History.”
Best known for his award-winning trilogy on the mythology of the American frontier — Regeneration Through Violence, The Fatal Environment and Gunfighter Nation — he has also written three historical novels: The Crater: A Novel of the Civil War, The Return of Henry Starr and Abe: A Novel of the Young Lincoln, which received the 2000 Michael Shaara Award for Civil War Fiction and a 2000 Salon Book Award.
Other Humanities Series events this semester:
Feb. 8: Science writer Rebecca Skloot, presented in partnership with the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics. Her debut book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks — on the legacy of a young black mother who died of cervical cancer in 1951, and whose cancerous cells, taken without her knowledge, launched a biomedical revolution — became a New York Times bestseller and is being made into an HBO movie co-produced by Oprah Winfrey. Skloot is guest editor of The Best American Science Writing 2011 as well as an NPR and PBS correspondent.
Feb. 14: School of Theology and Ministry Dean Mark Massa, SJ, will deliver this year’s Candlemas Lecture, “A Pox on Both Your Houses: Moving beyond the ‘Liberal’ and ‘Conservative’ Labels in Catholic Theology,” in which he will explore a theme from his new book The American Catholic Revolution: How the ’60s Changed the Church Forever. A respected theologian, scholar and culture critic whose research has focused on the Catholic experience in the US since World War II, Fr. Massa has authored books including the award-winning Catholics and American Culture: Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day and the Notre Dame Football Team.
Feb. 28: Cultural critic and Holocaust historian Christopher Browning will speak on “Holocaust History and Survivor Testimonies: The Starachowice Factory Slave Labor Camps.” The author of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution of Poland, he served as an expert witness in “Holocaust denial” cases in 1988 and 2000, and as a scholar at the US Holocaust Memorial.
March 15 (rescheduled from last semester): Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist. A New York University associate professor of journalism, he is working on a nonfiction book about immigrants in contemporary NY, has written an original screenplay for “The Goddess,” starring Tina Turner, and “Mission Kashmir,” a Bollywood movie.
March 22: Korean-American award-winning novelist Chang-rae Lee, author of Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, Aloft and The Surrendered. He has written for high-profile publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times and Time (Asia), and directs and teaches in Princeton University’s creative writing program.
April 12: Poetry Days presents Brian Turner, a soldier-poet who served seven years in the US Army. His debut book of poems, Here, Bullet won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection that year, and won the 2006 Pen Center USA “Best in the West” award and the 2007 Poets Prize. His second book of poetry, Phantom Noise, was published in 2010. Selected one of 50 United States Artists Fellows for 2009, Turner is a contributor to a New York Times blog that features the writing of men and women who have returned from wartime service in the US military
April 29: Chuck Hogan ’89 speaks on “Prince of Thieves and The Town: A Boston Crime Story as Novel and Movie.” He is the New York Times bestselling author of several acclaimed novels, including Devils in Exile, The Killing Moon and The Standoff. His novel Prince of Thieves was awarded the Hammett Prize and in 2010 was adapted into the film The Town, directed by and starring Ben Affleck. He is also the co-author, with Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, of the international bestsellers The Strain and The Fall, published worldwide in 29 languages. This event is presented in conjunction with the BC Arts Festival and co-sponsored with the Alumni Association and BC Arts Council.
Complete series details are available at www.bc.edu/lowellhs. The series is sponsored by the Lowell Institute, BC’s Institute for the Liberal Arts and the Provost’s Office.