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Upcoming Events

Burns Library will be hosting the following events during the Spring 2024 semester. We invite you to join our mailing list to receive announcements directly. Most events are free and open to the public as well as our Boston College community.

Directions, parking, and accessibility information are available on our website.

Selected events are videorecorded and added to the Burns Library Lectures playlist on the Boston College Libraries YouTube channel.

Cartoons and the Irish: “Twist a Few Tails’”
Felix Larkin

Wednesday, April 10
5:00pm reception, 6:00pm lecture
Burns Library

Irish historian Felix Larkin will outline the history of Irish cartoons, from Mathew Carey’s Volunteers’ Journal to Martyn Turner, and cartoons about the Irish, from Daniel O’Connell to Brexit.

Cartoons tend to be undervalued as historical sources. While good history – like good journalism – must be nuanced, reflecting the complexity of issues and situations, good cartoons cut through the verbiage with simple truths that override complexity and get to the heart of the matter. Cartoons can provide great insight into contemporary perceptions of past events, and the arguments – and passions – engendered by those events, as well as opportunities for historians to enhance their work with engaging images.

Felix M. Larkin is a former chairman of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland, and has published widely on the history of the press in Ireland and other topics.

Light refreshments will be served following the presentation.

Senior Creative Writing Concentrators Reading

Hosted in conjunction with Boston College Arts Festival and Department of English

Friday, April 26
1:00pm - 3:00pm
Burns Library

Graduating seniors from the Creative Writing Concentration program will read from their portfolios. Light refreshments will be served.

A Double Poetry Launch: Eric Weiskott and Maxim Shrayer

Sponsored by Boston College Libraries, English Department, Department of Eastern, Slavic, and German Studies, East European and Eurasian Studies Program, and Boston College Bookstore.

Tuesday, April 30
5:00pm - 6:30pm
Burns Library

Burns Library is pleased to host a celebration of two recent collections of poetry by Boston College faculty. Eric Weiskott will read from Chanties: An American Dream (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and Maxim D. Shrayer will read from Kinship (Finishing Line Press, 2024). Fellow faculty poets Allison Adair and Andrew Sofer will offer introductions and Burns Librarian Christian Dupont will moderate the program and discussion. Refreshments and book sales and signings will follow.

Eric Weiskott is Professor of English at Boston College. He grew up in Greenport, New York, a whaling village on the east end of Long Island. Weiskott is the author most recently of the poetry chapbook Chanties: An American Dream (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and the scholarly monograph Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350–1650 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). His poems appear in Fence, Texas Review, and Exacting Clam.

Maxim D. Shrayer is Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College. He was born in Moscow and emigrated in 1987. Shrayer is the author of over twenty-five books in English and Russian. He has published four collections of poetry in Russian, most recently Stikhi iz aipada (Poems from the iPad, Tel Aviv, 2022) and two collections in English, Of Politics and Pandemics (2020) and Kinship (2024).

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