Boston College Front Row

Astronomer Michael AHearn 61, principal investigator of NASAs Deep Impact Project, returns to campus as part of the Master Class: Alumni in Residence series. AHearn, also a professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland, led the team of physicists and engineers that in July 2005 intentionally collided a rocket with the comet Tempel 1, the first time humans had touched a comet in space.

AHearn is interviewed by Michael Naughton, a professor of physics at Boston College.

Speaker: Michael AHearn

Date: April 10, 2006

Length: 59:06

Mark Singer reads from his new book Character Studies: Encounters with the Curiously Obsessed (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), a collection of nine profiles, from Donald Trump to card illusionist Ricky Jay. Singer has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1974, and is the author of five books, including Funny Money (Knopf, 1985) and Somewhere in America: Under the Radar with Chicken Warriors, Left-Wing Patriots, Angry Nudists, and Others (Houghton Mifflin, 2004).

Singer is introduced by Michael Smyer, dean of the Graduate School of Arts Sciences.

Speaker: Mark Singer

Date: April 10, 2006

Length: 1:28:20

Dalia Feldman discusses how Jewish writers in Latin America, including Margo Glantz, Victor Perera, Moacyr Scliar, Ilan Stavans, and Jacobo Timerman, understand their identities as Jews and recent immigrants, and how that understanding is manifested in their literature. Feldman is a doctoral candidate in the modern Jewish studies program at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where she is researching the literature of Jewish diaspora communities.

Feldman is introduced by Dwayne Carpenter, professor of Hispanic studies and codirector of the Jewish studies program.

Speaker: Dalia Feldman

Date: April 4, 2006

Length: 1:04:28

Gary Okihiro gives the keynote speech during the opening ceremonies of Boston Colleges Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. Okihiro is the director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, and a past president of the Association for Asian American Studies. He has written nine books on U.S. and African history, including Common Ground: Reimagining American History (Princeton, 2001) and The Columbia Guide to Asian American History (Columbia, 2001).

Okihiro is introduced by Min Song, associate professor of English.

Speaker: Gary Okihiro

Date: March 31, 2006

Length: 1:02:12

Lawrence Joseph is a poet, critic, essayist, and professor of law at St. Johns University. His first three volumes of poetry are collected in Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos: Poems 1973-1993 (FSG, 2005). His most recent volume of poetry, Into It (FSG, 2005), was written in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowships.

Joseph is introduced by Paul Mariani, University Professor of English.

Speaker: Lawrence Joseph

Date: March 30, 2006

Length: 47:07

David Bethea gives the annual Heinz Bluhm Memorial Lecture in European Literature, a discussion of the adolescence of Alexander Pushkin, the Russian poet and novelist. Bethea is the Vilas Professor of Slavic Languages at the University of Wisconsin and the author of four books, including Realizing Metaphors: Alexander Pushkin and the Life of the Poet (Wisconsin, 1998) and Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile (Princeton, 1994).

Bethea is introduced by Cynthia Simmons, professor of Slavic and Eastern languages.

Speaker: David Bethea

Date: March 30, 2006

Length: 1:07:11

Joseph Bottum, Ph.D.93, presents What Death Is For: Mortality in Philosophy, Art, Political Theory, and Religion. Bottum, who earned his doctorate in philosophy, is the editor of First Things, a monthly journal published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life in New York City. He has also served as an arts and culture editor at the Weekly Standard and poetry editor at First Things. His books include The Fall Other Poems (St. Augustines, 2001) and, edited with David Dalin, The Pius Wars: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII (Lexington, 2004).

Bottum is introduced by Jorge Garcia, professor in the philosophy department.

Speaker: Joseph Bottum

Date: March 27, 2006

Length: 48:36

Ann Patchett reads from her novel-in-progress, Run, set in Boston. Patchett is the author of four novels, including Bel Canto (HarperCollins, 2001), winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recent book is Truth Beauty (HarperCollins, 2004), a memoir about her long and complicated friendship with the late poet Lucy Grealy.

Patchett is introduced by Elizabeth Graver, professor of English.

Speaker: Ann Patchett

Date: March 15, 2006

Length: 42:23

William Finnegan presents Whats the Story? Journalism and Power, a lecture on the relation between media and the power of ideas. Finnegan has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1987, traveling around the world to report on international issues. He is the author of four books, including Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country (Random House, 1998) and Crossing the Line: A Year in the Land of Apartheid (Harper Collins, 1986). Finnegans writing has also appeared in Harpers, The New York Review of Books, and Granta.

Finnegan is introduced by Carlo Rotella, professor in the English Department and director of the American Studies Program at Boston College.

Speaker: William Finnegan

Date: February 22, 2006

Length: 56:05

Gerardine Meaney, senior lecturer and Director of Irish Studies at University College Dublin, presents The Sons of Cuchulainn: Violence, the Family, and Irish Canons. Meaney is the author of (Un)like Subjects: Women, Theory, Fiction (Routledge, 1993) and serves as general editor of the Liverpool University Press series of new critical editions of Irish womens writing.

Meaney is introduced by Joseph Nugent, associate professor in the Boston College Departments of English and Irish Studies.

Speaker: Gerardine Meaney

Date: February 20, 2006

Length: 50:54