BUniverse

The Promise of Change: Vision and Reality in Obama's Presidency

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Howard Zinn, a College of Arts & Sciences professor emeritus of political science, joins novelist Mary Gordon, author James Carroll, and Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman for a discussion of the Obama administration’s successes and disappointments as part of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series. The event, which kicks off Alumni Weekend 2009, focuses on Obama’s foreign policy promises, his actions thus far, and whether he can live up to the public’s high expectations.

Zinn speaks first, offering the harshest criticisms of Obama’s “many compromises” on foreign policy issues. He faults the president for keeping the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan and blames a political culture in which Democratic presidents historically have been just as aggressive as Republicans. Carroll follows Zinn, putting Obama’s young presidency into the historical context of a nation often obsessed by military growth. He applauds Obama’s early efforts, saying, “I think the Nobel Prize went to the right person.” Goodman then argues that the president is almost doomed to fail in the eyes of America’s polarized public, which seems to want both a peacemaker and a strong commander-in-chief. Gordon concludes the discussion optimistically, noting that Obama, like FDR and JFK, has already “changed the American imagination.” Like his visionary predecessors, she says, Obama has already altered our perception of the role of “America in the world.”

The Howard Zinn Lecture Series, supported by a gift from Alex MacDonald (CGS’70, CAS’72) and Maureen A. Strafford (MED’76), is an annual talk on contemporary issues from a historical point of view.

October 22, 2009, 7 p.m.
Tsai Performance Center

Video length is 01:43:20.

About the Speakers:
James Carroll is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Residence at Suffolk University, a columnist for the Boston Globe, and a contributor to the Daily Beast. He served as the Catholic chaplain at BU from 1969 until 1974, when he left the priesthood. He has written several books, including Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (2001), the inspiration for the 2007 documentary of the same name, and Practicing Catholic (2009).

Ellen Goodman, a columnist for the Boston Globe since 1974, received the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1980. Her columns are syndicated in 375 newspapers nationwide and have been published in six collections. In 2007, Goodman was a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy.

Mary Gordon, the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor in English and Writing at Barnard College, is the author of six novels, three memoirs, a collection of stories, and, most recently, Reading Jesus: A Writer’s Encounter with the Gospels (2009). The recipient of the 1997 O. Henry Award, the 2006 Story Prize, and a Guggenheim fellowship, she currently serves as the official state author of New York.

Howard Zinn is a College of Arts & Sciences professor emeritus of political science, who taught at Boston University from 1964 to 1988. A world-renowned activist, scholar, and playwright, his book A People’s History of the United States, first published in 1980, has sold more than two million copies and has been translated into a dozen languages. It, and Zinn’s Voices of a People’s History, is the basis of a new film, the History Channel’s documentary The People Speak.

Theology as a Living Discourse: The Future of Feminist Practical Theology

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:30:00 EDT

Eight women theologians from Boston-area universities and beyond explore the balance of feminist thought, practical application, and theological tradition that informs their work in feminist and practical theology. Throughout the panel discussion, which concludes the weeklong celebration of School of Theology Dean Mary Elizabeth Moore’s scholarly work in the discipline, the speakers seek to answer three questions: What makes feminist practical theology feminist? What makes it practical? And what makes it truly theology?

The panelists speak in pairs, with a more-junior scholar reflecting on the work of a senior colleague, who then responds to the questions raised about specific issues in feminist practical theology. Susan Abraham, of Harvard Divinity School, engages Amy Hollywood, also of Harvard, on how to bring more theological and academic legitimacy to the field. Renee K. Harrison, of Payne Theological Seminary, addresses the themes of suffering and freedom, found in both Christian texts and black women’s history, in the womanist writings of M. Shawn Copeland of Boston College. Donna Freitas, of BU’s College of Arts & Sciences, tells how she was inspired by Harvard’s Stephanie Paulsell to write broadly and engage wider audiences with her academic work, saying that to free feminist practical theology from the confines of academia “we must profane it.” Finally, the School of Theology’s Shelly Rambo addresses the work of Dean Moore, framing her talk with a look at the prefaces to works of feminist theology and the stories they tell. Moore concludes the event by discussing her own struggles throughout her career as a feminist practical theologian, and urges women scholars to keep asking the big questions about their work and its meaning: “We need to be realistic analysts of the world without having the same old conversations.”

October 22, 2009, 4:30 p.m.
George Sherman Union

Video length is 02:00:50.

About the Speakers:
Susan Abraham, an assistant professor of women studies and ministry studies at Harvard Divinity School, is the author of Identity, Ethics, and Nonviolence in Postcolonial Theory: A Rahnerian Theological Assessment (2007) and co-editor of Frontiers in Catholic Feminist Theology: Shoulder to Shoulder (2009).

M. Shawn Copeland, an associate professor of theology and of African and African diaspora studies at Boston College, recently published Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being (2009). She also serves as an adjunct associate professor at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana.

Donna Freitas is a College of Arts & Sciences visiting scholar of religion. Her books include Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America’s College Campuses (2008) and the novel The Possibilities of Sainthood (2008).

Renee K. Harrison, an assistant professor of African American religious practices and culture at Payne Theological Seminary, is the author of Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum America (2009).

Amy Hollywood holds the Elizabeth H. Monrad Professorship of Christian Studies at Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History (2002) and is currently editing the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism.

Mary Elizabeth Moore is the dean of the School of Theology, as well as a professor of theology and education. She is the author of several books, including Teaching as a Sacramental Act (2004), and co-edited Children, Youth, and Spirituality in a Troubling World (2008).

Stephanie Paulsell, the Houghton Professor of the Practice of Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School, previously served as the school’s associate dean of ministry studies and as associate dean for faculty and curricular affairs. She is the author of Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice (2003).

Shelly Rambo is a School of Theology assistant professor of theology. Her book Trauma and Redemption: Witnessing Spirit between Death and Life will be published in 2010.

Solving the Health Care Reform Puzzle: How to Balance Cost, Access, and Quality

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EDT

The first Discoveries Lecture of the 2009 academic year focuses on solutions for the health-care crisis. The BU panelists sharing their insights are Gary Young, chair of the department of health policy and management at the School of Public Health, Arlene Ash, a School of Medicine research professor of medicine and public health, and Stephen Davidson, a School of Management professor of business, policy, and law. Randall Ellis, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of economics moderates.

The speakers agree that the U.S. health-care system is broken and that solutions must help it to run more efficiently and at lower costs. One way to do this is to offer incentives to physicians and hospitals to provide quality care and prevent unnecessary and costly hospital visits and readmissions. Panelists also suggest that a more efficient system would include much more collaboration among physicians who are treating the same patient.

October 8, 2009,  7 p.m.
George Sherman Union

Video length is 01:16:40.

About the Speakers:
Gary Young is chair and professor of health policy and management at the School of Public Health. He also is associate director of the Center for Organization, Leadership, and Management Research in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which is affiliated with Boston University. His writings and research have appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Health Services Research, Inquiry, Health Affairs, Medical Care, and Strategic Management Journal, among other publications. He was awarded the John D. Thompson Prize for Young Investigators from the Association of University Programs in Health Administration and an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Arlene Ash is a School of Medicine research professor of medicine and public health, a School of Public Health adjunct research professor, and an expert in the application of statistical methods to questions of public policy. Her areas of interests include researching the differences in health-care service delivery and outcomes by race, sex, and age, Medicare, and systematic problems in health delivery systems. She is a fellow of the Academy of Health and of the American Statistical Association and past chair of the association’s health policy statistics section. Ash’s current research projects focus on racial disparities in health-care services for Medicare beneficiaries and on risk assessment of military populations to predict health-care cost and utilization.

Stephen Davidson is a School of Management professor of business, policy, and law. He also researches the management of health-care organizations. Davidson is the author of In Urgent Need of Reform: Saving the U.S. Healthcare System.

Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture: Carl Phillips

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:30:00 EDT

Award-winning poet and BU Creative Writing Program alumnus Carl Phillips (GRS’93) reads from his new collection, Speak Low, for the semiannual Lowell Lecture. He is joined by poets Brandy Barents (GRS’06) and Rosanna Warren, BU’s Emma Ann MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities.

As a young poet, Phillips “stepped forward with a voice of astonishing authority,” Warren says; since then, “he has been consistent and loyal to his talent and at the same time, in book after book, bold.” Phillips’ selections for the evening — from “The Plains of Troy,” a depiction of madness in Sophocles’ Ajax, to the ominous calm of the Mississippi River in “The Storm” — exemplify his long-time focus on the themes of “moral and psychological damage, regret, and freedom.” He also recalls his time at BU, thanking poetry professor Robert Pinsky in particular “for helping me to believe I could be this thing that is apparently called a poet.”

The Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture Series was established in 2005 to bring distinguished writers to campus to read their works alongside a member of the Creative Writing Program faculty and a recent program graduate. It honors Robert Lowell, the former BU professor who taught young poets Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and George Starbuck in the late 1950s. The series is funded by Nancy Livingston (COM’69) and her husband, Fred Levin, through the Shenson Foundation, in memory of Ben and A. Jess Shenson.

October 8, 2009, 7:30 p.m.

Photonics Center

Video Length is 00:55:43.

About the Speakers:

Brandy Barents (GRS’06) is a lecturer in the College of Arts & Sciences and at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, as well as the programs director of Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project. Her poems have appeared recently in Barrow Street.

Carl Phillips (GRS’93) is a professor of African and Afro-American studies and English at Washington University in St. Louis. He has won numerous fellowships and prizes, including the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize for his first collection of poems, In the Blood (1992). He recently published his tenth book of poetry, Speak Low (2009).

Rosanna Warren is a University Professor, the Emma Ann MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities, and a College of Arts & Sciences professor of English and Romance studies at Boston University. The author of several books of poetry and criticism — most recently Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry (2008) — she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Kieron Winn and Saskia Hamilton: "There Lives the Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things..."

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Award-winning poets Kieron Winn and Saskia Hamilton read excerpts from their poetry. The reading is followed by a question-and-answer period in which the poets comment on each other’s works, in addition to answering questions from the audience. The event is moderated by Christopher Ricks, the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University.

Hamilton reads from a yet-to-be finished book-length collection of poems called Nightjar, which is named for a species of bird that looks like a hawk and is active at night. Although it does not appear in every poem, the nightjar is a common theme throughout. She also reads a number of other new poems, grouped in a series of threes because of their common premise. Winn follows with a reading of approximately a dozen poems, about William Wordsworth, Victorian graves, the news, addiction, and a walk by a lake in England

October 5, 2009, 7 p.m.

765 Commonwealth Avenue

Video Length is01:27:12.

About the speakers:

Saskia Hamilton has written two books of poetry, As for Dream and Divide These, and has edited The Letters of Robert Lowell and Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. She has been awarded a Bunting Fellowship and a Guggenheim. She currently teaches at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Christopher Ricks is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University. He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 2004, and is known both for his critical studies and for his editorial work. At present he is undertaking a full critical edition of T.S. Eliot’s Complete Poems to be published by Faber & Faber.

Kieron Winn is an award-winning British poet whose work has appeared in several magazines, among them Agenda, The Dark Horse, The London Magazine, Oxford Magazine, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Review, The Rialto, and The Spectator and in the Carcanet anthology Oxford Poets 2007. The British television station BBC1 featured a short movie on his poetry. He received the University of Oxford’s English Poem on a Sacred Subject Prize in 2007.

Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars by Jay Wexler

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Jay Wexler, a School of Law professor of law and a humor writer, reads from his new book, Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars. After spending six months visiting the schools, towns, and landmarks that shaped important Supreme Court decisions on religious freedom, he says, “I’ve written what I like to call the first-ever First Amendment memoir-travelogue-comedy.”

Wexler reads from a chapter on prayer in schools, imagining a dialogue between feuding Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy about the constitutionality of a Rhode Island school’s graduation prayer and recounting his trip to a football-crazed East Texas high school whose traditional pregame “invocation” caused controversy.

In the question-and-answer period following his reading, he delves deeper into some of his trips, including a visit to an animal-sacrificing Santería cult in Florida and an Amish community in Wisconsin. He explains the importance of church-state debate, especially in schools, “the battlegrounds where we fight over how we’re going to transmit values to the next generation.” It’s precisely because people take the issue so seriously, Wexler says, that he wrote his book from a humorous perspective: “I wanted to make the point that it’s possible to talk about these issues without losing our temper.”

September 29, 2009, 7 p.m.
Barnes & Noble at BU

Video length is 00:48:08.

About the speaker:
Jay Wexler, a School of Law professor of law, teaches law and religion, administrative law, and environmental and natural resources law. In 2008, he taught at the Edouard Lambert Institute of Comparative Law in Lyon, France, and at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, as a Fulbright Scholar. Prior to joining the LAW faculty in 2001, he served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and to Judge David Tatel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and worked in the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. He is a graduate of Harvard University, the University of Chicago Divinity School, and Stanford Law School. An oil painter and writer in his spare time, Wexler is a regular contributor to McSweeney’s and other literary publications. Holy Hullabaloos is his first book.

Toward an Interreligious Practical Theology

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:30:00 EDT

The Center for Practical Theology at Boston University hosts its second annual dinner and lecture. Mary Elizabeth Moore, dean of the School of Theology and a professor of theology and education, speaks on the topic Toward an Interreligious Practical Theology, how practical theologians address and engage the issue and contexts of religious pluralism. Practical theologians have been slow to address interreligious issues, but now is the time for them to take charge of these concerns, she says. They need to look at different religions and religious practices, especially the clashing of religions, and examine how interreligious relationships work. Stating that religious issues often cause dissension between groups and wars between countries around the world, she argues that the future of the world depends on learning to share our deepest religious passions and that practical theologians have an important role in bringing about this sharing and understanding.

To contribute to understanding between religions, she says, practical theologians should study the complexity of lived religions, the interconnection of religious communities and their practices in local and global contexts, the histories and shared histories of religions, and the dynamic process of religious life. Practical theology, she says, must become an agent of interreligious meeting.

September 23, 2009, 6:30 p.m.

775 Commonwealth Avenue

Video length is 01:33:13.

About the Speaker:

Mary Elizabeth Moore has been dean of the School of Theology since January 2009 and is a professor of theology and education. Before coming to Boston University, she was director of the Women in Theology and Ministry program at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. She is an ordained deacon in the United Methodist Church and has written a number of books, including Teaching as a Sacramental Act, Ministering with the Earth, and Teaching from the Heart.

Out of the Blue: Order from Chaos

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Award-winning English poet Simon Armitage reads several of his poems, including a commemorative of September 11, 2001, and his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a well-known poem written before 1400 by an unknown author. After his reading, Armitage entertains questions about his poetry style and his thoughts on the craft from moderator Mark Feeney, Boston Globe Living/Arts reporter and winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, and from audience members.

Armitage says that while poem translation can be constraining at times, it also helps him bring “freshness” back into his poetry voice and gives him a new writing style. He also gives his opinion on the difference between poetry in the United Kingdom and in the United States, saying that a common reader still exists in the United Kingdom and that poetry is very much a part of modern, everyday culture. In the United States, he says, the common reader has been replaced by a special group of poetry enthusiasts and a wide poetry audience may no longer exist.

September 21, 2009, 7 p.m.

Photonics Center

Video Length is01:25:37.

About the Speaker:

Simon Armitage has published fourteen volumes of poetry, including Killing Time, Selected Poems, Out of the Blue, and The Not Dead. Armitage has received many of England’s top awards for his work, including the Sunday Times Young Author of the Year, a Gregory Award, and a Forward Prize. He has written a number of books, including Little Green Man and The White Stuff, and a best-selling memoir, All Points North. He has also authored a number of translations. He has also worked in film, radio, television, and theater. He has taught at the University of Leeds and the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, and he is currently a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The Future of Food: Closing Keynote Address

Sat, 09 May 2009 19:30:00 EDT

The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspective
Session I: From Farm to Fork: The Global Food Chain
Session II: The End of Cheap Food: Food and Geopolitics
Session III: What’s in What You Eat? Food Safety in a New Ecology
Session IV: Eating Green: Food and Climate Change
Session V: What Is “Good” Food? The Ethics of Eating
Closing Keynote Address

Michael Ableman, a farmer, author, and sustainability advocate, delivers the closing keynote address of the conference The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives. Ableman discusses his experience as a farmer in southern California — he founded one of the first organic farms in the region — and urges the need for all people, even city dwellers, to reconnect with nature and farming. Urban agriculture, he says, will be an essential component of feeding the world’s expanding population in the future. What we are experiencing today is much more than a food crisis, he argues — it is a crisis of awareness and participation. We forget, because we are so disconnected from our food, that farming should not be a “spectator sport,” he says. Structural changes to the world’s agricultural system will not happen, he concludes, until the impacts of our imperfect system become personal.

Ableman’s lecture ends a two-day conference of speakers, film screenings, and cooking demonstrations, held to examine the causes of the global food crisis while offering solutions for creating a sustainable food system. It was funded by the European Commission Delegation in Washington, D.C., with additional support from the Ford Foundation.

May 9, 2009 7:30 p.m.

765 Commonwealth Avenue

Video Length is 00:56:38.

About the Speaker:

Michael Ableman is the founder and executive director emeritus of the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens, a non-profit organization headquartered at one of the oldest organic farms in southern California. A photographer and author, he has published several books, including From the Good Earth: A Celebration of Growing Food Around the World (1993), On Good Land: The Autobiography of an Urban Farm (1998), and Fields of Plenty: A Farmer’s Journey in Search of Real Food and the People Who Grow It (2005). He received the Ecological Farming Association’s 2001 “Sustie” Award for his work in sustainable agriculture, the 1997 Environmental Leadership Award from the Governor of California, and Eating Well magazine’s 1995 Food Hero Award. At present, he farms on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia and is developing the Center for Art, Ecology & Agriculture.

Farm to Fork: The Global Food Chain

Sat, 09 May 2009 09:30:00 EDT

In the first session of the conference The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives, three panelists — author Mark Winne, sustainability activist Helena Norberg-Hodge, and College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of international relations Henrik Selin — detail the industrialization of modern agriculture. Moderated by James McCann, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of history, the discussion explores the failings of government programs and the free market to support sustainable, healthful food policies.

The panel discusses how large-scale farmers receive the most government subsidies, leaving small-scale and organic farmers with little assistance. In addition, they say, the marketplace fails low-income Americans by setting the price of organic and nutritious foods at too high a cost. Americans need to support the localization of food systems by pushing for the deregulation of trade, they argue, which will slow the systematic distancing between people and their food sources.

The discussion is part of a two-day conference of speakers, film screenings, and cooking demonstrations, held to examine the causes of the global food crisis while offering solutions for creating a sustainable food system. It was funded by the European Commission Delegation in Washington, D.C., with additional support from the Ford Foundation.

May 9, 2009 9:30 a.m.

765 Commonwealth Avenue

Video Length is 01:26:42.

About the Speakers:

Helena Norberg-Hodge is founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC). Her environmental and cultural work with the people of Ladakh, a poor Indian Himalayan region, earned her the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “alternative Nobel Prize.” She is the author of several articles and books, including Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh for a Globalizing World (1991; 2009).

Henrik Selin is a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of international relations, a core faculty member of the Center for Energy and Environment Studies, and a fellow of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. He also conducts research at the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research at Linköping University in Sweden. He is co-editor of Changing Climates in North American Politics: Institutions, Policymaking, and Multilevel Governance (2009) and Transatlantic Environment and Energy Politics: Comparative and International Perspectives (2009).

Mark Winne is the author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (2009). Previously, he was the executive director of the Hartford Food System in Connecticut, where he organized community self-help food projects and developed a commercial hydroponic greenhouse, the Connecticut Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, and several farmers’ markets. He now spends his time writing and speaking about community food systems.

J ames McCann, College of Arts & Sciences professor of history and associate director of development at Boston University’s African Studies Center, is an expert in the agricultural and environmental history of Africa. His book Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop (2005) won the 2006 George Perkins Marsh Prize for best book in environmental history. He has held fellowships at Harvard and Yale Universities and has served as a consultant for organizations such as Oxfam and the United Nations Environmental Program.