The Boston College
Chronicle Published by the Boston College Office of News & Public Affairs january 30, 2014 VOL. 22 no. 10
•Wellness Group: ‘You’re not alone,’ page 2 •BC international population continues to rise, page 2 •Kobe comes to class, page 2 •DeCapua takes associate dean of students post, page 3
•Math’s Chen receives NSF CAREER Award, page 3 •BC Libraries undertakes digitization projects, page 4
Legal Scholar and Theologian Kaveny Is New Libby Prof. By Kathleen Sullivan Staff Writer
Lee Pellegrini
INSIDE
Cathleen Kaveny, a legal scholar, moral theologian and nationally noted expert on the intersections of law, morality and religion, has joined Boston College as the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor. With an appointment in the Law School and Theology Department in the College of Arts and Sciences, Kaveny is the first person to hold a faculty appointment in two schools at the University. The author of the award-winning book Law’s Virtues: Fostering Autonomy and Solidarity in American Society and a columnist for Commonweal Caitlin Cunningham
Cathleen Kaveny
magazine, Kaveny has written for America and authored approximately 100 journal articles and book chapters. She has also been interviewed by
SONG OF FREEDOM
various media outlets, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, National Catholic Reporter, and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” among others. She is currently at work on her next book, tentatively titled Prophesy without Contempt: An Ethics of Religious Discourse in the Public Square. “I am delighted and honored to be joining Boston College’s distinguished faculty. I am also very excited about the possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration in this academically rich and diverse community,” said Kaveny, who teaches a graduate theology course on Faith, Morality and Law this semester. In
BC Law Authors Take a Practical View of Obamacare Chirba and Noble focus on compliance and implementation of ACA
•King Scholarship Ceremony is Feb. 12, page 4 •BCDS director Emery feeling at home, page 5
By Sean Hennessey Staff Writer
•Studying the moral view of suicide, page 5
For the first time, millions of previously uninsured Americans now have access to health insurance, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. Now there’s a one-stop resource for health care professionals needing help to navigate the 900-page law, thanks to Law School Professor Mary Ann Chirba and Adjunct Lecturer Alice Noble, authors of Health Reform: Law and Practice. Rather than focus on the various well-documented political and social controversies surrounding the ACA, Chirba and Noble offer a more practical view of the law. “The book deals with implementation and compliance,” says Chirba. “It’s not headed for the New York Times bestseller list. It is two volumes and 2,000 pages, intended for those charged with complying with the statute: law firms, attorneys, compliance officers, hospitals, physician practices, insurance companies, state
•Q&A: with A&S Dean David Quigley, page 5
United Voices of Freedom, a collaboration of the student ensembles Against the Current, Liturgy Arts Group and the Voices of Imani, performed as part of the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Gathering on Jan. 20 in Robsham Theater. More photos on page 8.
Keeping Memories Alive
•City Connect receives funding support, page 6 •Lowell Humanities Series spring line-up, page 7 •Robsham schedule, page 8 •McMullen to host ‘Paris Night & Day,’ page 8
the fall, she will teach contracts at the Law School and a seminar cross-listed with the Theology Department. Kaveny said she plans to connect with Boston-based stakeholders on issues such as health care ethics and the law and as president of the Society of Christian Ethics will focus on the law and Christian ethics. Prior to her arrival at Boston College, Kaveny was the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, where she had been on the faculty since 1995. She also held visiting professorships and fellowships at Yale UniContinued on page 3
Documentary is latest effort by Ramsay Liem to pass along survivors’ stories from a ‘forgotten war’ By Sean Smith Chronicle Editor
One of the ironies of referring to the Korean War as “the forgotten war,” says Professor Emeritus of Psychology Ramsay Liem, is that it technically has never ended, since no formal treaty between the antagonists has ever been signed. But for many Koreans, the war is not forgotten, says Liem, coproducer and co-director of a recent documentary that depicts the
human costs of military conflict through personal accounts by four Korean-American survivors. “Memory of Forgotten War,” which Liem produced and directed with his sister-in-law Deann Borshay Liem, was shown at Boston College earlier this month. The program also featured a Q&A with the filmmakers and cultural music and dance presentations that included BC student performers. “As Koreans, so much of our Continued on page 6
QUOTE:
Law School faculty members Alice Noble, left, and Mary Ann Chirba. (Photo by Caitlin Cunningham)
regulators, and so on. It’s very technical.” In fact, Noble and Chirba, both specialists in health care law, didn’t come up with the idea for Health Reform themselves. They were invited to help write the book by a major legal publisher. “As an academic, this law was something I had been eagerly awaiting for many years,” says Noble. “I’m very interested in the topic, so when an opportunity comes along as this one did — to take the statutes and actually read them, analyze them, understand them in a way that most Continued on page 4
“We do an exercise at the library where we pass around a book from the 15th century to students at a table. At first, they all look like scared fathers who have just been handed a baby. I tell them, ‘this book has held up for 500 years and when we’re all dead and gone, it will still be here strong.’” —Burns Library Rare Books Librarian and Senior Cataloger David Richtmyer, page 4
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A ROUND
C AMPUS
KEEPING WELL – TOGETHER If you are facing a serious illness or disease or caring for someone with a chronic illness, Wellness Support Group co-coordinator Carol Pepin wants you to know you are not alone. “Feeling isolated is the worst feeling,” said Pepin, associate director for data management in the Office of Institutional Research, Planning & Assessment. Every month at 129 Lake Street on the Brighton Campus, the University’s Wellness Support Group meets to offer information, camaraderie and resources. Organized by Human Resources, the group is open to any faculty or staff member touched by a chronic illness or disease, either as a patient or as a caregiver. Held at noon on the second Wednesday of the month, the meetings are conducted in a confidential atmosphere. No advanced registration is required. Some meetings are organized as an open discussion, while others feature guest speakers from on and off campus. “We’ve had presentations on diet, acupuncture, yoga and stress reduction,” noted Pepin.
Members of the BC Wellness Support Group, founded in the mid-1990s: (L-R) Richard Jefferson, Ruth Chobit, Emily Kane, Maria Alvarez, and Carol Pepin. “I don’t want someone on campus suffering and not knowing about our group,” says Pepin, who is a coordinator. (Photo by Lee Pellegrini)
The Wellness Support Group was founded in the mid-1990s by Human Resources Services Assistant Director Ruth Chobit, a two-time cancer survivor, now retired, and the late Fran Sawin. Later, Chobit ran the group with the Office of Residential Life’s Ellen Hominsky, who died in 2010. Today, Pepin serves as a coordinator for the Wellness Support Group. The Wellness Support Group is a great network of resources that can really help, said Pepin. There is also the convenience
and familiarity of having a support group like this at work, she added. “The BC community is kind of special that way. “I know the value of this group,” said Pepin, who was a member before becoming a cocoordinator. “I don’t want someone on campus suffering and not knowing about our group.” To see the schedule of meetings or to contact Pepin, see http://www.bc.edu/offices/hr/resources/programs/wellness.html. –Kathleen Sullivan
NOT JUST ANY VISITOR Carroll School of Management faculty member Nick Nugent was teaching the first class of the semester in his popular International Marketing course on Jan. 16 when an unexpected guest walked into his classroom. “I had just begun the class with an example of the how the NBA is a model of successful international marketing and how Kobe Bryant is its biggest star,” recalled Nugent, “when suddenly the door opened and in walked Kobe. It was surreal.” The NBA All-Star and fivetime MVP – who is out with an injury but accompanied his Los Angeles Lakers team on their annual trip to Boston – sat down among the students and took notes, followed the PowerPoint presentation and even asked a question, to the delight of Nu-
NBA star Kobe Bryant with CSOM’s Nick Nugent.
gent’s 40 undergraduate students. At the class break, Bryant approached Nugent to say he was enjoying the class when a student asked if the two knew each other. “I know of him,” Bryant declared, a line that Nugent said was obviously not true but will “elevate his teaching reputation to stardom.”
Director of NEWS & Public Affairs Jack Dunn Deputy Director of NEWS & Public AFFAIRS Patricia Delaney Editor Sean Smith
Contributing Staff Melissa Beecher Ed Hayward Sean Hennessey Rosanne Pellegrini Kathleen Sullivan Michael Maloney Photographers Gary Gilbert Lee Pellegrini
Bryant remained in the class for two hours until its conclusion, and then signed autographs and took photos with all the students in the class, including three students from Japan who told Bryant how popular he is in their home country. “I did not go to college,” Kobe told the BC students, “but I love to learn and international marketing is something I am interested in.” The next morning Bryant tweeted out a message “Learn, Learn, Learn. Thank you #BC #internationalmarketing, Education never stops.” Nugent, who has taught at BC for 27 years and also teaches marketing classes at Harvard, said it was a night that he and his students will never forget: “The only difficulty will be when I try to top our first class!” –Office of News & Public Affairs
The Boston College
Chronicle
www.bc.edu/chronicle chronicle@bc.edu
WORLD AT OUR DOOR Boston College’s international student population rose for the sixth consecutive year and continues to set new records, according to data released this month by the University’s Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS). BC this year has welcomed 1,277 undergraduate and graduate students, along with 220 research scholars and 307 persons taking practical training, from other countries. Adding dependents, the total international population is 1,974, 16 percent above the 2012-13 academic year. OISS noted that, with additional students, faculty and scholars expected to arrive this semester, the total international population will top 2,000. After having stayed in the 700s during the period of 1999 through 2008, the BC international student population has since then risen each year and is now at the highest ever recorded. OISS said this year’s 24 percent increase among undergraduates from abroad reflects “a cumulative effect” from admitting more international freshmen; this fall, BC enrolled its largest number of international freshmen, 157, comprising seven percent of the Class of 2017. Undergraduate and graduate students from China (366) and South Korea (183) represent almost 43 percent of the University’s international student population. Other most-represented countries include Canada (41), Spain (40), the United Kingdom (36), Australia (34), Italy (33) and India (32). “New offerings at BC, like the School of Theology and Ministry and programs like the Graduate School of Social Work’s international PhD, the Carroll Graduate School of Management master’s in accounting, the LLM at the Law School, all have contributed to the rise we’ve been seeing,” said OISS Director Adrienne Nussbaum. “Another big factor is that, until recently, Chinese undergraduates had not been allowed by their government to study in the US, but that has changed.” Added Nussbaum, “There’s a cumulative effect at work here, too: If one school has 10 more students than last year, or one program has 15 more students, those don’t seem like significant increases. But add them
all up with the other schools and programs over time, and the picture changes a lot.” The significant increases at BC among international faculty and scholars, as well as students working in the US after graduation, is due in part to more inclusive reporting, Nussbaum added: Many of these visitors arrive and depart during the academic year and “were not accurately captured in previous statistics.” Other highlights of the OISS report: •Asia, not surprisingly, is the largest world region represented in the BC international population – 57 percent – followed by Europe (20 percent) and Mexico/Central and South America (eight percent). •Female undergraduate international and exchange students outnumber males, 369 to 276. •Economics has the most international undergraduates, 103. Other most-enrolled fields include finance (73), communication (49), management (46) and political science (43). •The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences has the most international students enrolled, 214, followed by the Carroll Graduate School of Management (163) and Lynch Graduate School of Education (95). The most popular fields of study are management (62), economics (60), finance and theologyministry (54 apiece), accounting (52) and chemistry (40). The report is available at the OISS website, www.bc.edu/oiss. —Sean Smith It’s not the Winter Olympics, but Boston College’s annual “NRG” Games – which kicked off on Monday and run until March 3 – generate their own brand of excitement, and benefit the environment as well. The NRG Games are an annual competition aimed at lowering the energy/electric consumption across campus, by challenging students in BC residence halls to compete against one another to collectively conserve the most electricity. A weekly award will be given to the winning residential communities as well as a grand prize and trophy for the residence hall with the highest decrease in electrical usage at the end of the contest. For more information, see www.bc.edu/sustainability.
The Boston College Chronicle (USPS 009491), the internal newspaper for faculty and staff, is published biweekly from September to May by Boston College, with editorial offices at the Office of News & Public Affairs, 14 Mayflower Road, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 (617)552-3350. Distributed free to faculty and staff offices and other locations on campus. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, MA and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: send address changes to The Boston College Chronicle, Office of News & Public Affairs, 14 Mayflower Road, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467.
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DeCapua Sees His Arrival at BC as Having Come ‘Full Circle’ By Melissa Beecher Staff Writer
Richard DeCapua, new associate dean of students. (Photo by Lee Pellegrini)
ogy – accepted leadership roles and graduated with a focus on a career in student affairs. He went on to earn a master of education degree in student personnel administration from Springfield College and a doctorate in educational leadership and policy from Johnson and Wales University. He held positions as assistant director of residential life at Wesleyan University, director of residential life at Brandeis University and associate dean of students at Suffolk University. He teaches finance and budget in higher education in the student affairs graduate programs at Northeastern, Suffolk and Salem State universities. When the position opened in BC’s Office of the Dean of Stu-
Chen Earns NSF Honor By Ed Hayward Staff Writer
Assistant Professor of Mathematics Dawei Chen, whose research focuses on topics in algebraic geometry, has received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, the agency’s most prestigious grant for junior faculty. The five-year, $429,359 grant will support Chen’s exploration of Teichmueller dynamics, a field that probes the geometry of points, their surface characteristics and their movement, or orbit, through certain spaces. Chen plans to use algebraic geometry and dynamical systems in an effort to identify previously unseen connections between these two branches of modern mathematics. “Dynamics is similar to advanced calculus and my expertise is more in the area of algebra,” said Chen. “I plan to use algebraic tools to describe this dynamic movement. So, in a sense, I hope to create a bridge between these two areas of mathematics.” Chen said he’s honored to receive the NSF award, which recognizes junior faculty for “innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology.” He said
the award will allow him to expand his research capacity, share findings through courses for undergraduate and graduate students, and host workshops and symposia on the topic. “This funding will give me the opportunity to travel to work with colleagues or to bring my colleagues to BC,” said Chen. “I will also be organizing workshops to encourage undergraduates, graduate students and post-docs in their research. We’ll also be working on some summer projects and programs for undergraduates and graduate students. It’s great to have the resources to be able to do these things.” Chen joined the BC faculty in 2011, after spending three years as a research assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Peking University and his doctorate from Harvard University. He also served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. His research has been published in journals including Geometry & Topology, Advances in Mathematics, and the American Journal of Mathematics. While Chen’s work is consid-
dents, DeCapua jumped at the chance. “I have always respected the student affairs program at BC, especially with an institutional commitment to examine conduct and civility issues on campus,” said DeCapua, noting that he was drawn to an institution that celebrates the philosophy he subscribes to: “Ever to Excel.” “It has really come full circle and I look to that conversation with Chris Darcy as lifechanging.” Dean of Students Paul Chebator said DeCapua’s varied experiences and drive made him an ideal addition to the staff. “Rich brings to BC a rich and diverse background in student affairs, specifically in the area of
“Every conversation should be viewed as an opportunity to connect with that student, to provide resources that will ultimately make him or her successful here.” In an effort to elevate the discussion further, DeCapua and Center for Student Formation Director Mike Sacco have started a Committee on Civility and Campus Culture. Both men will lead a group of faculty and administrators to address how to empower students to hold peers accountable for behaviors and examine the tenets of the University community. “We want to have the resources in place so that students are empowered to step in when they see a peer behaving in a way that runs counter to our values,” said DeCapua. “We want this community to self-regulate and have students remind each other that you should always be more today than you were yesterday.” During his first three months on the job, DeCapua said he has been overwhelmed by the support various departments – BCPD, Athletics and the academic deans, most notably – have shown. “I have felt a tremendous amount of support,” said DeCapua. “I’m looking forward to working with this unique community and our great student body.”
Kaveny Joins BC Faculty
Caitlin Cunningham
Boston College’s new Associate Dean of Students Richard DeCapua steadfastly believes that a single conversation has the potential to change a life. After all, it’s what happened to him. As a first-year student at Quinnipiac University, DeCapua faced disciplinary action after being written up for an infraction. “I was going down a bad road, one that many students face. That write-up was a wake-up call,” said DeCapua. It wasn’t the punishment, he added, but rather the conversation with a Quinnipiac administrator that helped bring about a change. The administrator was Christopher Darcy – now associate director of the University’s Office of Residential Life – who called on DeCapua to reflect on his current conduct and asked him to “be more.” “Reflection is what changes student behavior. You can’t make students choose the right decision; it has to come from within,” said DeCapua. “A little veer and I could have gone down a very different path.” DeCapua changed majors – doubling in psychology and sociol-
student conduct, community standards and civility. He is poised to bring our student conduct system to the next level,” said Chebator. “Rich is also a nationally known professional: He will serve as the director of Region 1 of the National Association of Student Affairs Professionals (NASPA) beginning in March. His position will put BC in a national spotlight.” DeCapua is the father of two and an avid runner – he has completed five marathons, often raising money for Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He is a sports enthusiast, and his office is well-adorned with Patriots memorabilia from over the years. All that, DeCapua says, is important when it comes to his professional role of chief administrator of the community standards on campus. “I need to be transparent so students know that they are dealing with a human being with a heartbeat,” said DeCapua. “My number one goal is for students to not view this as an adversarial process. In order for these interactions to be meaningful, we need to have better conversations. Policies should provide a road map, but are not meant to be prescriptive. I’ve told my team that we are not doing our job well if we know the sanction before meeting with the student.
Asst. Prof. Dawei Chen (Mathematics)
ered “pure” mathematical research, he hopes that his discoveries will ultimately find application in other scientific disciplines. Only time will tell, he noted. “This is theoretical work,” said Chen. “However, pure math may look very applicable in 10 or 20 years. You never know, but sometimes our results are surprisingly relevant to other subjects, like physics, astronomy or computer science. In the end, really good research in pure mathematics often turns out to have applications to our daily life. That is the beauty of doing this kind of research.” Contact Ed Hayward at ed.hayward@bc.edu
Continued from page 1 versity, Princeton University, University of Chicago and Georgetown University. Previously, Kaveny was an associate with in the Health Law Group at the law firm Ropes & Gray in Boston and clerked for Judge John T. Noonan Jr. in the US Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Kaveny graduated with a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Princeton University and earned a JD and PhD from Yale University. She is the incoming president of the Society of Christian Ethics, the major scholarly organization of Christian ethicists in North America. The society meets annually in conjunction with Jewish and Muslim ethicist groups. “Bringing Cathleen Kaveny to Boston College is a spectacular move for the entire University community and in particular, the Law School and the Theology Department,” said Founders Professor of Theology James Keenan, SJ, acting chairman of the Theology Department. “She brings the rare combined competency of vigorously mastering law and ethics and teaches and writes with wit and brilliance. It is simply great to have her here.”
Law School Dean Vincent Rougeau said, “Professor Kaveny’s appointment places Boston College at the forefront of scholarship in both law and theology, with her most recent work offering critical insights on how American law engages highly contested moral debates in an increasingly diverse society. “She will provide an exciting link between the Law School and the College of Arts and Sciences by offering cross-listed courses that explore the intersection of key legal and theological concepts such as justice, mercy, and complicity with evil. We are thrilled to have her join us.” The Libby Chair was established through a gift by the late Darald Libby JD ’55, and his wife Juliet. The chair honors the couple’s friend and mentor Rev. Michael G. Pierce, SJ, of the Jesuit Mission Bureau in Boston, who died in 1998. The inaugural holder of the Libby Chair was family law expert and longtime Law School faculty member Sanford Katz, now Libby Professor Emeritus. Contact Kathleen Sullivan at kathleen.sullivan@bc.edu
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“There are going to be a number of unintended consequences, some good, some not so good,” says Noble. “I think we’re going to see a move to revisit certain aspects of the law over time, so it’s really a work in progress.”
BC Faculty Members Author Guide to New Health Care Law Continued from page 1 people won’t have the chance to – I jumped at it. This was really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Putting the book together took three years of research, not only of what made up the Affordable Care Act, but also how the law affected newly updated regulations. The level of detail involved was particularly challenging, according to Noble and Chirba. “It is very tedious work,” says Noble. “Legal work can be very dry, and you have to be really patient and persistent, and not really mind that’s it not the most exciting reading. But it’s very interesting if you’re trained to appreciate the law.” “It would take so long to read the law to really figure out how it was working – that was just for the statute itself,” says Chirba. “The same was true for the regulations. Then we had to integrate the two, even though the regulations were constantly coming out.” While the law has been the object of endless debate, rhetoric, a government shutdown, and a Supreme Court decision, Noble and Chirba say the ACA is about more than the much-maligned healthcare.gov website, which served as both a symbol and target for critics but has been significantly improved. “It is a much broader law than people realize,” says Noble. “There are three areas – cost, quality and access — that are really key elements to any rational health care system. The Affordable Care Act is designed to im-
prove the quality of care, decrease cost or at least decrease the rate of increase of the cost of health care, as well as improve access.” Adds Chirba: “It’s not a federal takeover by any means, and is really based on improving and preserving the market. What I liked about the ACA is that many parts of the statute take this philosophy: ‘We don’t know how to do this really well, and we don’t know how to do this really efficiently. So what we will do is set up goals and offer incentives and leave it to you to figure out how to do this, how to do it well in terms of improving quality, improving access to coverage and making it more cost-efficient.’ “The law puts the ball in the doctors’ court, in the hospital’s court, and they’ll set objectives.” Noble says the implementation phase of the ACA will bear watching: “There are going to be a number of unintended consequences, some good, some not so good. I think we’re going to see a move to revisit certain aspects of the law over time, so it’s really a work in progress.” The ever-changing legal and medical landscape means Chirba and Noble can’t afford to rest on their laurels, because Health Reform will need updating every six months – and in fact, their editor is expecting the first revision shortly. “I feel a sense of accomplishment,” says Chirba, “but I’m not going to sit back and enjoy it for very long.” Contact Sean Hennessey at sean.hennessey@bc.edu
Martin Luther King Scholarship Ceremony to Be Held Feb. 12 The annual Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Ceremony, one of the University community’s major events, will take place Feb. 12 at 5 p.m. in the Robsham Theater Arts Center. Highlighting the event will be the presentation of the King Scholarship by University President William P. Leahy, SJ, to a Boston College junior who exemplifies the life and philosophy of the legendary civil rights leader. This year’s featured speaker will be John H. Jackson, president and CEO of The Schott Foundation for Public Education, which seeks to ensure a high quality public education for all students regardless of race or gender. A former senior policy advisor in the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education during the Clinton administration, Jackson served as national director of education and later chief policy officer at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The ceremony, which is free and open to the public, will be followed by a reception. For more information, see www.bc.edu/mlk. –Office of News & Public Affairs
Their Job: Preservation and Renewal
Libraries staff not only keep past alive; they share it via digitization By Melissa Beecher Staff Writer
“We’ll take them.” It’s not often when a librarian has the opportunity to personally save a piece of history. Yet those three words set in motion a series of events leading to the preservation and digital renewal of an all but forgotten newspaper that chronicled Boston, the Catholic Church and the New England region during the turn of the 20th century. The digitization of the Sacred Heart Review is the latest project to bolster Boston College Libraries’ expanding digital collection, searchable by researchers and academics throughout the world. Published from 1888 through 1918, the Sacred Heart Review was edited by Rev. John O’Brien, pastor of the Sacred Heart Church in East Cambridge. Far from a church bulletin, each edition of the paper was 16 pages that reported on religious news, the church community, regional and world events and editorials that pointedly defended Catholicism. In February 2008, while preparing for the renovation of the School of Theology and Ministry library, Burns Library Rare Books Librarian and Senior Cataloger David Richtmyer was sent to review some of the materials held by the St. John’s Seminary library. Warmly greeted by the librarian, Msgr. Laurence McGrath, Richtmyer was ushered into a section of the library known as “the Cabinet Room.” There, amid the rare 15th and 16th-century treasures, was a collection of dusty, seemingly unremarkable bound periodicals: the Sacred Heart Review. “It was almost as an afterthought that Fr. McGrath asked me if I would be interested in these periodicals,” said Richtmyer. “I asked what would become of these volumes if I did not accept the offer and was told they’d be thrown away. When faced with that prospect, there is only one responsible reply for a rare book librarian to make: ‘We’ll take them.’” Richtmyer quickly saw historical significance within the pages, which provided a snapshot of Greater Boston prior to World War I. In addition to the front page articles – like that of Pope Benedict XV’s encyclical Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, which described his grief at the slaughter that had just begun to envelope Europe in 1915 – the Review’s advertisements illustrate the less notable events,
like the rise and fall of gas lighting vis-à-vis the Cambridge Gas Light Company advertisements. It took years for a small team at University Libraries to do the painstaking inventorying, assessment, cataloging and digitization required before making the collection available to the public [at http://newspapers.bc.edu]. Boston College is the only institution to have the complete holdings of the Review. Head Librarian of Digital Library Programs Elizabeth Post said this particular collection was digitized without compromising the original primary materials. Bookbindings typically need to be destroyed when digitization projects
from people desperate for information about family members in the Famine, conflicts or the migration from Europe,” said Williams. Other rich details are contained in the pages. Richtmyer points to an advertisement – what he calls a “Kickstarter campaign of the day” – in which a man solicits money to help develop a metal, mechanical tire to replace the unreliable rubber tires of the automobile. “What we, as librarians and archivists, do is quite noble work: the prevention of cultural Alzheimer’s,” said Richtmyer softly. “We do an exercise at the library where we pass around a book from the 15th century to students at a table. At first, they all look like scared
University Librarian Thomas Wall (center) talks with library and archival staff – including (L-R) William Donovan, David Richtmyer, Naomi Rubin, Bridget Burke and Betsy Post – about digitization projects. (Photo by Lee Pellegrini)
are undertaken, but Boston College archivists and staff took great care to preserve the primary materials, she said. In conjunction with the Catholic Research Alliance and the Catholic Newspapers Program, other religious periodicals are being catalogued, preserved and digitized at Boston College due to the high public, historic and academic interest. “When we undertake a project like this, there are key points that must be considered: if there is value to researchers; a thoughtful way to best present the materials; the quality of the materials; cost,” said Post. “We have been pleased to see that this collection has already been widely used with 1,400 visits per month online. In this case, it became very clear that we were preserving the history of the Church in Boston, and its story of immigrant life, especially Irish immigrant life.” Catholic periodicals, said Irish Studies Librarian Kathleen Williams, were used as a communication vehicle for Catholic families both in Ireland and America with “Letters to the Editor” showing individuals searching for missing family members. “You see the disruption that historical moments had on the lives of ordinary people through letters
fathers who have just been handed a baby. I tell them, ‘this book has held up for 500 years and when we’re all dead and gone, it will still be here strong.’ It’s wonderful to see that moment of recognition in their faces, when they feel the book – touch, smell and turn the pages – that these materials are really monuments to the people who created and owned them.” The Review online archive has already helped at least one family. Ellen Brewin, a 1976 alumna of Boston College Law School, recently wrote to Richtmyer to express gratitude in finally finding a genealogical link after years of searching with limited results. “Imagine my surprise to find that my search yielded information from several issues of the Sacred Heart Review which posted letters from young children living in Tawnytaskin in 1911-1912,” she wrote. “It gave me goosebumps to feel the years between us just slide away and feel almost as if it were the present.” The digitization of the Sacred Heart Review was made possible through the work of Bill Donovan, Betsy McKelvey, Brian Meuse, Naomi Rubin and Margaret Huang, and University Librarian Thomas Wall. Contact Melissa Beecher at melissa.beecher@bc.edu
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Emery Settles In As Dining Services Head By Michael Maloney Special to the Chronicle
Two months into her job as director of Boston College Dining Services, Beth Emery has found the sense of community that attracted her to BC in the first place is a very active ingredient. “Boston College has a reputation for a being a wonderful place to work,” she said. “In my short time on campus, I have already experienced a very warm welcome. I am excited to be able to focus my energy on one campus and be a member of this great community.” Emery came to BC’s awardwinning Dining Services division with a nutritional sciences degree from the University of New Hampshire, extensive training in Portland, Ore., as a registered dietician, as well as 25 years of experience with professional services provider Aramark in their education division. “Our biggest strength is our people,” said Emery of her staff, which includes more than 200 full-time employees. “We have an experienced and loyal Dining Services team with strong culinary talent across the campus, and a commitment to service. I am incredibly proud to lead this very special team of professionals.” In her first few months, Emery said the focus has been on across-the-board improvements
DIALOGUE DAVID QUIGLEY COLLEGE AND GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
“Our biggest strength is our people,” says Beth Emery, who became director of BC Dining Services in November. (Photo by Lee Pellegrini)
for Dining Services, utilizing a dining survey to assess which areas require the most attention. She is particularly interested in improving BCDS’ outreach, and has even hired several BC communication majors to support the initiative of boosting the division visibility around campus. Emery also has continued to review BCDS’ catering and operations, benchmarking with local caterers and other universities to ensure that BC’s program remains strong and competitive. Emery says she is passionate about the food business, and is always looking for opportunities to be innovative. She noted that the BCDS culinary team is constantly testing new menu options, including new pizza recipes; students will be invited in 2014 to par-
ticipate in focus groups to evaluate new options like naan bread pizza and Sicilian-style pizza. This semester, BCDS plans to introduce a Mediterranean wrap station, with options like gyro, Lebanese chicken and beef with homemade toppings like tabbouleh, feta, garlic sauce and tzatkiki. Dining Services also will continue its collaborations with other departments and offices, Emery said. Initiatives include the Nourish program with Health Promotions to provide healthy eating advice and options, as well as efforts to promote sustainability, such as increasing the use of china rather than disposable to-go containers. For news and updates on Boston College Dining Services, see www. bc.edu/dining.
Researchers Study Moral Views of Suicide Besides being a major public health issue — accounting for the deaths of more than a million people each year — suicide is widely considered immoral. Why do people so commonly believe it is wrong for people to take their own lives? A study published in a recent edition of the journal Cognition by researchers at Boston College and Boston University, finds that people – even non-religious people – make this moral judgment because they believe suicide taints the purity of a person’s soul. Philosophers have long debated whether suicide is considered immoral because it is harmful to others or because it is defiling and impure, said the study’s lead author Joshua Rottman, a doctoral student working with Assistant Professor of Psychology Liane Young and Deborah Kelemen, associate professor of psychology at Boston University. But beyond the speculations of philosophers, what do people actually believe about this issue? To find out, the researchers
Conversations with Boston College’s Academic Deans
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presented a sampling of American adults with obituaries describing suicide or homicide victims, and then asked them a series of questions regarding their reaction to what they had read. The responses showed that, while harm was associated with people’s judgments about the wrongness of homicide, it did not significantly explain why people thought suicide was wrong. Instead, regardless of their political and religious views, participants were more likely to morally condemn suicide if they believed it tainted the victims’ souls and if they demonstrated greater concerns about moral purity in an independent questionnaire. People’s tendencies to feel disgusted by the suicide obituaries, and to feel more disgust in general, also played a significant role. The findings also demonstrate that, while politically conservative and religious individuals find suicide more morally wrong than do secular liberals, even selfdescribed non-religious liberals consider suicide to be morally
wrong – and do so on account of concerns about moral purity and taint. “These results suggest that even if people explicitly deny the existence of religious phenomena, natural tendencies to at least implicitly believe in souls can underlie intuitive moral judgments,” said Rottman. These findings contribute to the scientific understanding of our moral judgments and shed light on the real-world issue of people’s psychological reactions to suicide by explaining why suicide is stigmatized and often considered a taboo topic of conversation. “A greater understanding of the processes relevant to the condemnation of suicide victims may prove useful for people worldwide who are affected by this widespread tragedy,” said Rottman. The study was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, John Templeton Foundation and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Read the full report at http://bit.ly/1b6s3Rl. —Patricia Delaney
The College of Arts and Sciences is BC’s oldest and largest school. How do you describe its mission, both as an institution in its own right and as a part of BC? The liberal arts have long stood central to Jesuit higher education, and the College of Arts and Sciences is the proud home to nearly 500 faculty and over 6,000 students who are committed to exploring the humanities and the natural and social sciences. Our 22 departments and numerous interdisciplinary programs introduce students to various ways of knowing, and to different approaches to finding truth. Our faculty is responsible for the vast majority of teaching in the core curriculum, helping to ensure a common conversation across the University community. Lee Pellegrini
There is considerable discussion nowadays, as there has been at other times in the past, about the value and relevance of a liberal arts education. What answers does A&S have for such questions? A recent e-mail brought news of the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ study that indicates the persistent and material benefits of a liberal arts education. All of us in Arts and Sciences are mindful of the significant pressures that our students and graduates face in the contemporary labor market. We continue to believe that the education we offer in A&S offers students a particularly valuable foundation for living lives of meaning and impact. One area of growth for the school over the past couple of decades would seem to be the natural sciences: biology, chemistry, physics, earth sciences. What impact has this had in terms of faculty, students and other aspects of A&S? It’s been one of the most significant changes since I arrived at Boston College as a junior faculty member in 1998. We should all be proud of what the scientists on campus have achieved in a relatively short time. Our students certainly have access to a growing number of world-class researchers. But the school has certainly maintained its commitment to the humanities. What are some prime examples of this? I’d point to several examples of how the humanities are thriving at Boston College. Stokes Hall is a tangible example of our commitment to humanistic study, and I’ve been thrilled to see the History Department’s “Making History” exhibitions on the third floor of the south wing. The persistent popularity of the PULSE and Perspectives programs indicates the central place of theology and philosophy in the education of many of our undergraduates. And each semester’s show at the McMullen Museum of Art gives evidence of the lively and interdisciplinary collaborations that occur regularly across our humanities departments. You mentioned Stokes Hall: Even though it has only been open a year, you see an impact? I’m teaching my second course in Stokes this semester and I’m very pleased with how the building works as a teaching space. A walk through Stokes in the evenings is inspiring, as so many students make use of the building to study and to collaborate. The liberal arts are very much alive in the classrooms and corridors of Stokes Hall. Talk about some of the more immediate goals and objectives of the school. We’ve been hiring a remarkable cohort of new faculty in the last half-decade and we’re working hard to support these new colleagues as scholars and teachers. We continue to work on the renewal of the undergraduate core curriculum, which I view as critical to Boston College’s continuing success over the next decade.
Read the full text at www.bc.edu/chronicle
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Memories That Remain from a War That Has Never Ended
Continued from page 1 lives are influenced by the war, no matter where we are from,” says Liem, who was born in the US of parents who had left Korea in the 1930s. “There needs to be an appreciation of the profound complications in this war, and how these affected generations of Koreans. Most of all, there has been a silence about the war among us, even within families. This film is an attempt to get conversations started, or at the very least to bring these stories of people’s lives to our community and the wider public.” The 38-minute film provides some historical and political context for the war, such as the Japanese occupation of Korea, the post-World War II division of the peninsula at the 38th parallel by the US and Soviet Union, and the ensuing three-year US Army military government in the South. It also touches on the conflict’s major events, including the Battle of Inchon, the entry of China and the negotiations for an armistice, and on some of its aftermath – Korean immigration to the US, NorthSouth relations, and reunion visits between relatives on opposite sides of the border. But the four survivors are at the core of the film. Their recollections, by turns stoic, poignant and heart-wrenching, point up a human cost beyond death or destruction of property. Military, political and geographical factors uprooted people and divided families, as battle lines shifted constantly. The fates of relatives and loved ones might be unknown for years, or never determined. Political polarization during and after the war has often exacerbated a quashing of ideals, even identity. Suntae Chun, a native of the border town of Kaesong, recalls a school outing on the very eve of the war’s outbreak in 1950. One day, he’s swimming in a reservoir with his friends; the next day, he awakes to bullets dropping in the water and the sound of machine guns and mortar fire, and discovers Kaesong is occupied by the North Korean army. When Kaesong is later sealed off for peace talks, Chun is left on the outside while his father is trapped inside the city; he never sees his father again. Kee Park, whose mother used silver spoons and chili powder to bribe guards into allowing them to cross to the South, accompanies her in an ultimately futile quest to find out what happened to Park’s father, who had been captured during the North’s initial invasion. Because one’s loyalty could be suspect if a family member was on the “wrong side” of the border, disavowing his or her very existence
“As I thought about the collective silence on the Korean War I’d long observed, I wondered if it would be possible to create an environment where people could talk about what they had experienced, seen and heard – and if we could bring those stories back to the community. The idea is to create public spaces of memory that are safe in which to listen, talk and observe.”
Prof. Emeritus Ramsay Liem (Psychology) and his sister-in-law Deann Borshay Liem, with whom he co-produced and co-directed “Memory of Forgotten War.” (Photo courtesy of Ramsay Liem)
was often a means to survive. Such is the experience of Minyong Lee, who sees three of his siblings move to the North and thus draws scrutiny from South Korean authorities. Even after the war, among friends and acquaintances, he seldom discusses his family or background: “I would be immediately ostracized by Korean society,” he says. “I hide everything about me, my identity. I hide myself.” Vivacious, animated Hee Bok “Grandma” Kim – in one scene she demonstrates how, as a child, she would use peanuts as earrings, and in another offers food to the film crew – talks of living in a hakkobang, or cardboard house, for three years as the war drags on. When the armistice is signed, she is able to go to Seoul, but her parents and siblings are in the North. Although Liem and his parents were in the US at the outbreak of the war, they were not spared its impact: Most of the family remaining in Korea were, and still are, in the North; it was not until many years later that reunion visits were allowed, and familial bonds could be reestablished. “Memory of Forgotten War,” which is funded partly through the Massachusetts Humanities Foundation, builds upon an oral history project and accompanying multimedia exhibit, “Still Present Pasts: Korean Americans and the ‘Forgotten War,’” Liem created about a decade ago. Much like that enterprise, the film’s website [http:// www.mufilms.org/films/memoryof-forgotten-war] includes resources to help spur further exploration of the Korean War and other related topics. Liem traces the inspiration for these projects to his familiarity with torture and abuse victims in Latin America. He saw a commonality in the struggles of the Latin American and Korean survivors to deal with their experiences in the face of per-
vasive silence and forgetting. “An important part of the healing process is to be able to talk about, to externalize, what you’ve been through,” he explains. “People can only speak about and share their stories in a ‘safe’ place: to an audience whose members are receptive and able to listen, and do not convey disbelief or their own vulnerability. “As I thought about the collective silence on the Korean War I’d long observed, I wondered if it would be possible to create an environment where people could talk about what they had experienced, seen and heard – and if we could
bring those stories back to the community. The idea is to create public spaces of memory that are safe in which to listen, talk and observe. ‘Memory of Forgotten War,’ like the oral history project and multimedia exhibit, is a step in that process.” Liem has been able to work on his Korean projects with a certain amount of professional and scholarly detachment, but there have been emotional moments nonetheless. As “Grandma Kim” described the end of the Japanese occupation, and the hope of all Koreans for genuine independence and national sovereignty, he recalls, she paused and said, “When are we going to feel that again?” “Everybody in the room started to cry,” Liem says. Liem says “Memory of Forgotten War” does not advance a specific ideological view, although
it is forthright about the US role in the division of Korea and conduct of the war. He advocates US willingness to engage in dialogue to replace the Korean War armistice with a peace agreement as a critical step toward enabling Koreans, from North and South alike, to share their stories and lives with one another and create their own path to reconciliation. “Minyong Lee talks about his family reunion and says, ‘After I met my siblings, I then knew who I was.’ Grandma Kim, whose brother was killed by North Koreans, says there shouldn’t be a taboo about visiting North Korea: ‘Go a lot, dialogue, interact, learn. That’s what’s needed.’ “Koreans have so much to gain from sharing these memories, because they are part of us.” Contact Sean Smith at sean.smith@bc.edu
City Connect Programs Receive Funding By Ed Hayward Staff Writer
City Connects, a student support program founded by Lynch School Kearns Professor of Urban Education Mary Walsh, has received approximately $2.6 million in funding from six foundations to advance its work with 15,100 students in schools in Massachusetts and Ohio. The funding will not only support the program, which works with teachers and school staff to connect students in need with tailored prevention, intervention, and enrichment services, but also be used to continue to study the effectiveness of City Connects’ approach to “optimized student support.” Developed in 2001, City Connects addresses the out-ofschool factors that can impede academic achievement, especially those factors exacerbated by poverty. Students in City Connects schools experience significant improvement in academic achievement and thriving.
“The statistical evidence of City Connects’ positive benefit reducing the high-school dropout rate provides an example of a benefit that has substantial social and economic return to students and to society,” Walsh said. The recently awarded grants include: •A three-year, $1.4-million grant from the Barr Foundation, a leading funder of City Connects over the years, to support the program in 18 Boston Public Schools. •A two-year, $150,000 grant from the GHR Foundation for a cost-benefit/social return on investment analysis of the program’s system of student support. •A 3-year, $530,000 grant from the Better Way Foundation to extend an early childhood system of student support to all City Connects schools and evaluate immediate and long-term impact on learning and development. •$250,000 from the New Balance Foundation, a founding supporter of the program, for implementation and research in Allston-Brighton schools with a
special emphasis on addressing student health. •$240,000 from the Mathile Family Foundation to adapt the City Connects intervention to older students at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, as well as expansion and evaluation of the program in Dayton and Springfield, Ohio, schools. •Funding from the Charles Hayden Foundation to support City Connects’ expansion to two Boston schools. “The New Balance funding continues their support of our work in Allston-Brighton schools with a special emphasis on student health and wellness,” said Walsh. “The awards from the Better Way and Mathile Family foundations will allow us to offer a cradle to college continuum for the City Connects system of student support, starting with our youngest learners and then supporting them through high school graduation and on to college.”
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WELCOME ADDITIONS Carroll School of Management Lecturer Bridget Akinc brings a broad range of experiences as an executive and entrepreneur in the private and non-profit sectors to her marketing courses. Akinc’s resume includes marketing and sales leadership for Silicon Valleybased software companies like BEA Systems and an enterprise software start-up backed by Kleiner Perkins. During the past six years, she served as vice president and general manager of a retail business operating 35 stores in 12 states. Akinc was the founding chief technology officer for The New Teacher Project, which launched in 2000. While completing her Executive MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management last year, Akinc founded the Great Teaching Network, which is developing an online learning community for novice teachers at schools in low-income areas. Connell School of Nursing Clinical Instructor Jacqueline Sly’s specialties include medical/surgical care, pediatrics, rehabilitation, spinal cord injury and ventilated patients. She is currently a staff nurse at NewtonWellesley Hospital and a family nurse practitioner at Charles River Medical Associates. Prior to BC, she taught at Regis College. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Boston College and a master’s degree from Regis College. –Ed Hayward, Kathleen Sullivan Photo of Sly by Caitlin Cunningham “Welcome Additions,” an occasional feature, profiles new faculty members at Boston College. This is the final insallment for 2013-14.
Humanities Series Resumes Feb. 5 with Tracy Kidder New America on March 26. A New York Times bestseller, The Unwinding won the National Book Award for non-fiction last year. Haitian native Edwidge Danticat, a former National Book Prize finalist whose honors also include a Pushcart Short Story Prize and awards from The Caribbean Writer, Seventeen and Essence, will begin a three-day residency at Boston College with an appearance on April 1, sponsored in part through Fiction Days. Concluding the 2013-14 academic year Humanities Series will be a talk on April 9 by Dublin-born writer Emma Donoghue, “Slippery Characters: Writing Historical Fiction in the Information Age.” Donoghue is the award-winning author of the novels Room, The Sealed Letter, Landing, Hood and the forthcoming Frog Music; short-story collections Astray, Three and a Half Deaths and Kissing the Witch; and literary history including two anthologies that span the 17th-20th centuries. Donoghue’s lecture will take place in Fulton 511. For more on the Lowell Humanities Series, see www.bc.edu/ lowell. —Office of News & Public Affairs
The New York Times reported on research by Asst. Prof. Sara Moorman (Sociology) and Graduate School of Social Work doctoral student Jooyoung Kong which found that people who report having endured childhood maltreatment are particularly vulnerable to depression if they later care for their parents. Recent moves, such as the appointment of Cardinal Sean O’Malley, OFM Cap., to the pope’s committee to reform the Apostolic Constitution on the Roman Curia, have solidified the Boston archbishop’s status as a Vatican insider, according to School of Theology and Ministry Professors James Bretzke, SJ, and Thomas Groome, and Asst. Prof. Rev. James Weiss (Theology), in an interview with the Boston Herald. Asst. Prof. Peter Krause (Political Science) discussed security concerns related to the Sochi Winter Olympics in an interview with New England Cable News. Assoc. Prof. Marylou Sudders (GSSW) spoke with WGBH News about the controversy over the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families’ failure to protect children in its care.
(L-R) Julia Ho ’17, Raul Pareyon ’16 and Malakai Candido ’16 answered questions about their organization, Electronic State of Mind, during the Jan. 23 Student Involvement Fair held in Lyons Hall’s Welch Dining Room. (Photo by Lee Pellegrini)
Prof. Charles Derber (Sociology) published an op-ed in the Boston Globe on what he sees as a disinvestment in “public goods” – infrastructure, social welfare, public safety, and public education – that is occurring at an alarming rate.
BC BRIEFING It is inhumane to exile persons due to mental illness, but for some it is the inevitable outcome of the statutes in effect today, wrote Laura Murray-Tjan, director of the Law School’s Federal Appeals Clinic, in the Huffington Post. Seeling Professor of Philosophy Richard Kearney remarks on
NOTA BENE Lynch School of Education Associate Professor Mariela Paez has been appointed to the state’s new Early Literacy Expert Panel by Massachusetts Secretary of Education Matt Malone. The nine-member panel was created to provide advice and guidance to state officials as they undertake an initiative to ensure that all children are proficient in reading by the third grade. Paez’s research interests include bilingualism, literacy development, early language and literacy learning and early childhood education.
Lee Pellegrini
An evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder will be the first event in this semester’s Lowell Humanities Series. Kidder will come to campus on Feb. 5 to discuss his works, which include House, Among Schoolchildren, Old Friends, Mountains Beyond Mountains and, most recently, Good Prose — an entertaining treatise about writing and friendship. [All Humanities Series events take place at 7 p.m. in Gasson 100, unless noted otherwise.] Another Pulitzer Prize winner, poet Tracy K. Smith, will visit on Feb. 20 as part of the University’s annual “Poetry Days.” Smith’s collections of poems have received various honors, including from the New York Times and the Academy of American poets. On March 19, Michael Bérubé, whose books encompass cultural studies, disability rights, liberal politics, and debates in higher education, will present “Bioethics: Too Important to be Left to Bioethicists.” Bérubé is former president of the Modern Language Association. New Yorker staff writer George Packer will discuss his widely acclaimed book The Unwinding: An Inner History of the
Newsmakers
Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story, by Slavic and Eastern Languages Professor Maxim D. Shrayer, was named a finalist for a 2013 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. Established to recognize outstanding books of Jewish interest in various categories, the National Jewish Book Awards is the longest-running North American awards program in the field of Jewish literature and considered one of the nation’s premiere literary honors. The Graduate School of Social Work presented its 2014 Distinguished Alumni Awards – which recognize GSSW graduates who have made significant contributions to the social work profession – to Erin McAleer MSW ‘05, who serves as director of cabinet affairs for Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, and Amy Vosburg-Casey MSW/JD ‘01, an attorney at the Georgia Appellate and Educational Resource Center. Links to full bios of both award-winners are available at www.bc.edu/schools/gssw/newsevents/events/2014/ diversity-conference-alumni-award.html.
Ireland’s “traumas that were never named” – notably the Great Famine – at an Abbey Theatre symposium on the role of theater in commemoration were noted in the Irish Times. Kearney also appeared on the RTE programs “The Pat Kenny Show” and “The Marian Finucane Show.”
Time and a Half Prof. Jeffrey Cohen (CSOM) ran the 2014 Auditing Doctoral Consortium of the American Accounting Association held in San Antonio. The theme of the consortium was creativity and diversity in audit research scholarship and was intended to promote multiple methodologies and perspectives in conducting research. Prof. Rachel Freudenburg (German Studies) gave a talk at Dartmouth College, where she presented her documentary film “FREYA: A Documentary about one Woman’s Struggle for Democracy.”
JOBS The following are among the most recent positions posted by the Department of Human Resources. For more information on employment opportunities at Boston College, see www.bc.edu/offices/hr: Administrative Assistant, Lynch School of Education Faculty & Academic Specialist, Office of the Provost/Dean Of Faculties Burns Librarian and Associate University Librarian Accounting Specialist, Student Services Licensing Associate, Technology Transfer & Licensing Assistant General Manager, Dining Services Senior Associate Athletic Director for Marketing Director, Annual Giving, Law School Grant Administrator/Sr. Grant Administrator, College of Arts & Sciences Service Center Provost and Dean of Faculties Technology Manager, Residential Life
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LOOKING AHEAD
New McMullen exhibition
When Photography Came of Age in Paris
By Rosanne Pellegrini Staff Writer
An upcoming exclusive exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art will present photographic masterpieces of post-World War I Paris, defining a moment when photography came into its own. “Paris Night & Day: Photography between the Wars,” on display from Feb. 15 through June 8, focuses on the period between 1918 and 1939, when Paris drew an extensive international community of artists and writers who fueled each other’s creativity to produce one of the richest cultural moments of the 20th century. In a city where social and artistic hierarchies were unsettled by the war, photographers played a central role in recording and defining a new vision of modern life. A free opening reception for Boston College community members and the public will take place Feb. 17 from 7-9:30 p.m. in Devlin 101. Comprising some 100 works, the images in “Paris Night & Day” show how groundbreaking photographers – including Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, JacquesHenri Lartigue, Ilse Bing, André Kertész, Bill Brandt, Lisette Model, Dora Maar and Brassaï – represented modern subjects in sometimes startling new ways and captured Paris at its most romantic and most sinister. Originally organized by art2art Circulating Exhibitions, the McMullen display of “Paris Night & Day” is curated by Fine Arts faculty member Ash Anderson, who organized this exhibition in conjunc-
Works displayed at the McMullen Museum’s “Paris Night & Day” exhibition – like Brassaï’s “Avenue de l’Observatoire” (above) and “Lovers, Bal Musette des Quatre Saisons, rue de Lappe” – show the groundbreaking photography of post-World War I Paris.
tion with his Art History course, Photography in Paris 1900–1945. Anderson used the exhibition photographs in the class as a starting point for in-depth exploration of the ideas and innovations they represent, and his students contributed label texts for “Paris Night & Day.” “The McMullen is pleased to present the research undertaken by Ash Anderson and his students on the superb photographs from the collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg,” says McMullen Museum Director and Professor of Art History Nancy Netzer. “The collection includes several master prints: the best examples of wellknown and celebrated 20th-century photographs.” With new equipment capable of capturing images on the fly, many post-World War I photographers
recorded the theater of Parisian streets with unprecedented freedom and spontaneity. To distance themselves from painting, and to define uniquely photographic compositions, they introduced unexpected angles and perspectives into their work. Others photographed the city at night, in the bars, dancehalls, and theaters that were the province of the city’s demimonde — those who lived a flagrant lifestyle. Still others abandoned the street to remain in the studio and darkroom, where they used new photographic techniques to produce imagery that bordered on the abstract and distanced their photographic practice from the medium’s traditional association with the documentary. In the process they created masterpieces of 20th-century photogra-
phy, many of which are represented in the exhibition. The display also includes a group of earlier photographs of Paris by Eugène Atget, Edouard Baldus and others, as well as selections from the museum’s permanent collection and local private collections. “‘Paris Night & Day’ offers the rare opportunity to consider both canonical and rarely seen photographs from this unusually rich period in the history of photography,” says Anderson. “These pictures illustrate a complex evolution in the ways photographers defined themselves in relation to art. We see them simultaneously looking to photography’s past for inspiration and playfully testing the limits of their medium. We are delighted to feature some exceptionally beautiful examples of these photographs.” This period, he adds, “is one in which photographers took real risks in their effort to produce modern images. In the wake of World War I they had an opportunity to break away from tradition and redefine photography’s relationship to art, and they did so with a combination of enthusiasm and endless experimentation.” The exhibition is underwritten by Boston College, the Patrons of the McMullen Museum, and the Newton College Class of 1964. Free docent-led tours will be available every Sunday at 2 p.m. starting Feb. 24; tours also can arranged upon request by calling (617)5528587. For more information on the exhibition or the museum, see www.bc.edu/artmuseum. Contact Rosanne Pellegrini at rosanne.pellegrini@bc.edu
BC SCENES
Photos by Lee Pellegrini
The Robsham Theater Arts Center spring schedule, which opened last week with the Theatre Department Workshop Production of Sarah Ruhl’s “The Clean House,” continues Feb. 20-22 with “Circle Mirror Transformation,” Annie Baker’s play about a creative drama class in a small, artsy town that becomes the setting for real-life drama. The Theatre Department Workshop Production, directed by Maggie Kearnan ’14, will be at Bonn Studio. Ntozake Shange’s series of poems — collectively called a “choreopoem” — on the struggles and obstacles in African-American women’s lives form the basis of 1976 Tony Award best play nominee “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf,” at Robsham’s Main Stage March 20-23. The joint Theatre Department/ Robsham Theater production will be directed by Associate Professor of Theatre John Houchin. From April 3-5 at Bonn Studio will be a Dramatics Society-Contemporary Theatre production of Brian Friel’s “Dancing at Lughnasa,” directed by Sarah Kelley ’14. Set in a fictional County Donegal town in 1936 Ireland, Friel’s popular play — later made into a film — is a young boy’s recollections of a memorable trip to his aunts’ cottage one summer, a time of hope and sadness. Closing out the spring slate April 23-27 is another Theatre/ Robsham Main Stage production, “The Drowsy Chaperone,” under the direction of Associate Professor of Theatre Stuart Hecht. Written by Bob Martin and Don McKellar, with music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison, “The Drowsy Chaperone” is one man’s musical fantasy come to life, telling the rambunctious tale of a brazen Broadway starlet trying to find, and keep, her true love. Robsham also will be the venue for other cultural and arts-related events taking place this semester. For more information, see www. bc.edu/robsham. —Sean Smith
CELEBRATING KING
Robsham Theater Arts Center was the venue on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 20, for the University’s annual memorial gathering to celebrate the memory and legacy of the civil rights leader. The event featured student performance groups including Sexual Chocolate (above), and talks by community activist and onetime Boston mayoral candidate Mel King (left), Rhonda Frederick, director of BC’s African & African Diaspora Studies Program (right), and senior Philip McHarris, winner of the 2013 Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Scholarship. The 2014 King Scholarship will be presented at Robsham on Feb. 12 [see story on page 4].