Welcome! Burns Library hosts an array of academic, historical, and cultural events during the academic year, with the aim of showcasing our library's vibrant collections, celebrating achievements of the Boston College community members, and presenting local and international scholarship.
We hope you will join us for one of our many upcoming lectures and events, about which more details may be found below and on the BC Events Calendar. To view recordings of our previous lectures and events, visit our Youtube channel. To join our mailing list, click here.
For information regarding parking and visiting the library, see our Planning a Visit page.
Questions regarding upcoming events should be directed to Caroline Pace, Burns Library Administrative Assistant, at 617-552-3282, or caroline.pace@bc.edu.
5:00pm reception, 6:00pm lecture
Burns Library
Eve Watson (PhD, MICP) is involved in psychoanalytic practice, training, education, and research in Dublin, Ireland. She is a co-director of a busy Dublin city centre clinic, and is a psychoanalytic practitioner and clinical supervisor. She has published dozens of essays on psychoanalysis, sexuality, film, culture, and literature. She lectures on various programs in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and health and oversees a variety of research projects at graduate and undergraduate levels. Her co-edited books are Freud's Principal Case Studies Revisited: Freudian-Lacanian Psychoanalysts Reconsider the Legacy (2025, Routledge), Critical Essays on the Drive: Lacanian Theory and Practice (2024, Routledge), Clinical Encounters in Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Practice and Queer Theory (2017, Punctum), and in 2026 a forthcoming collection on James Joyce's writing and her own authored book on psychoanalysis and film. She is the academic director of the Freud Lacan Institute (FLi), and was the Editor of Lacunae, the International Journal for Lacanian Psychoanalysis from 2016-2024. She is a member of the Editorial Boards of Lacunae, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, and the European Journal of Qualitative Research in Psychotherapy. In 2022, she was the Erik Erikson Scholar-in-Residence at the Austen Riggs Centre in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She is the Burns Scholar in Irish Studies at Boston College in the Fall of 2025.
For further background on Professor Watson and her Burns Visiting Scholar residency, please visit the Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies web page.
Burns Library will host a complimentary beer, wine, hors d'oeuvres reception beginning at 5:00pm, with Prof. Watson's lecture to follow at 6:00pm. All are welcome.
4:30pm lecture recital, 6:00pm reception
Burns Library
A lecture-recital featuring Emerita Professor Jane Bernstein (Tufts), Prof Daniele Filippi (Turin, Italy), and specialist Dutch ensemble Cappella Pratensis.
In the 500th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, one of the most renowned of the composers of sacred music in the High Renaissance, the Burns Library celebrates its acquisition of a rare copy of Palestrina's Masses printed in Rome in 1570 and a book of motets printed in 1575. Experts on Palestrina and music printing in Rome will introduce the rare Palestrina volumes and singers from the visiting Dutch ensemble Cappella Pratensis will perform a selection of works reading from the original sixteenth-century notation. A reception at 6:00 pm offers the opportunity to meet Profs Bernstein, Filippi, and the singers of the visiting ensemble.
Burns Library will host a complimentary reception beginning at 6:00pm, following the lecture recital.
Sponsored by the Dean of MCAS, Institute for the Liberal Arts, Boston College Libraries, Music Department, Department for Romance Languages and Literatures, and the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies.
Free and open to the public.
