Research
The latest findings from Boston College.
Photo: Lee Pellegrini
BOOKS
The World Is Always Coming to an End
The latest book by Carlo Rotella, professor of English, American studies, and journalism, was 20 years in the making. We asked him to tell us about the project.
Summer 2019
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“This book is about South Shore, the neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago where I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s. It has journalistic aspects, archival aspects, sociological aspects, and there’s a memoir element. The thing I was after was the way that people live in a neighborhood—the different layers of relationships—and just as important, the way the neighborhood lives in people, its imprint on their sensibilities.
I also wanted to look closely at the hollowing out of the middle class through the lens of a neighborhood. South Shore has long been a first-house neighborhood. David Mamet is from South Shore, so are Kanye West and Michelle Obama. It’s where a family makes its move up into the middle class and aims even higher for its kids. What happens when that robust middle class, which was the main force for solving the neighborhood’s problems, gets replaced by a population of haves and have-nots?
Our shrinking middle class is a topic that’s been reduced in punditry to a question of who voted for Donald Trump. Digging deep into a neighborhood was a means of moving it away from the typical electoral questions and toward the texture of daily life—how families imagine themselves moving up, or not.” ◽
Book Briefs
The Heart is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marraige in Mumbai
By Elizabeth Flock ’08
Flock delivers an intimate chronicle of the marriages of three middle-class Indian couples, her observations informed by the many years she spent living in Mumbai. The New York Times called her portrait of romance and marriage in modern India “deeply engrossing.”
The Power of Sports: Media and spectacle in American culture
By Michael Serazio
Serazio, an associate professor of communication, interviews scores of influential media figures to skewer the notion that big-time sports in this country represent an apolitical escape from our hot-button social issues. Serazio, a former journalist, argues that modern sports are actually saturated with messages of militarism, sexism, violence, and racial and economic inequality. “I think sports tells us what America is today,” he writes.
Covert Regime Change: America’s secret cold war
By Lindsay O'Rourke
O’Rourke, an assistant professor of political science, looks at the dark art of covert regime change, examining seventy American-orchestrated interventions during the Cold War. The book details the different motives for pursuing covert strategies, and the unanticipated consequences of such actions.
Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric
By Robert Bartlett
In this fresh translation of the seminal book on the theory and practice of persuasive argument, Bartlett, the Behrakis Professor in Hellenic Political Studies, provides an interpretive essay along with extensive annotations.
Wolves of Eden
By Kevin McCarthy ’91
In his richly detailed historical novel set in the Dakota Territory during the late 1860s, McCarthy tells the story of four men whose paths collide at Fort Phil Kearney: the O’Driscoll brothers, Irish immigrant enlistees fighting in Red Cloud’s War, and two hardened U.S. Army veterans sent to investigate a murder. The novel was selected by Amazon as one of its 20 Best Books of 2018.
Navigating Toward Adulthood: A theology of ministry with adults
By Theresa O’Keefe
O’Keefe, an associate professor in the School of Theology and Ministry, draws on the disciplines of developmental psychology, sociology, and Catholic theology to articulate the forces that confront growing adolescents. She also provides parents with a framework for helping young people make the transition from the self-oriented world of childhood to a successful adulthood that includes external relationships.
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