Speaker Series Event! A Short Border Handbook: A Journey Through the Immigrant's Labyrinth

Fall into Your Favorite Book

Compiled and Presented by Blaire Hiebsch, Senior Evening Library Assistant

A couple of weeks ago we had a question on the white board in Sawyer library asking students what their favorite book is, and it was so cool to see the wide range of books the students loved (some I knew and some I had never heard of). I thought wouldn't it be great if we had some of these books and we could show them off to our students. Sometimes university libraries are seen as just stuffy places to do scholarly research or a place to study but it isn't it nice to know libraries also provide a lot of fun reads as well. Some of these books were chosen because they were listed as being a students favorite books, some are just good reads that everyone should read in their life, and some purely looked intriguing. I tried to pull books that would appeal to a large range of people (and not just historical fiction which is my favorite). I tried show off the library's wide range of books to be enjoyed. With the changing of the season it feels like a good time to curl up with one's favorite hot beverage and a great book... especially now with it being mid-terms time it is an excellent moment for a little self-care and escape into a story.

Here is a list of the titles selected for the display. Click the hyperlink to see if the book is available, or already checked-out.

1. The alchemist / Paulo Coelho; translated by Alan R. Clarke
2. Love in the time ofcholera / Gabriel Garci­a Marquez ; translated from the Spanish by EdithGrossman
3. Atonement: a novel / Ian McEwan
4. The autobiography of Malcolm X / with the assistance of Alex Haley; introduction by M.S. Handler ; epilogue by Alex Haley ; afterword by OssieDavis
5. Beloved : a novel / by Toni Morrison ; [with a new foreword by theauthor]
6. The bone people : a novel / by Keri Hulme
7. The book thief / by Markus Zusak
8. Cat's cradle / Kurt Vonnegut
9. Dracula / Bram Stoker
10. Fight Club / by Chuck Palahniuk
11. Hamilton : the revolution : being thecomplete libretto of the Broadway musical, with a true account of its creation,and concise remarks on hip-hop, the power of stories, and the new America / byLin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
12. The help / Kathryn Stockett
13. High fidelity / Nick Hornby
14. The hobbit, or, There and back again / by J.R.R. Tolkien
15. Magic for beginners / Kelly Link ; illustrated by Shelley Jackson
16. Middlesex / Jeffrey Eugenides
17. Naked / David Sedaris
18. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency / Alexander McCall Smith
19. Pride and prejudice / Jane Austen ; with an introduction byMargaret Drabble ; and a new afterword by Eloisa James
20. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage : a novel /Haruki Murakami ; translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
21. Something to tell you : a novel / Hanif Kureishi
22. State of fear : a novel / Michael Crichton
23. To kill a mockingbird / Harper Lee
24. Vamped / David Sosnowski
25. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West : anovel / Gregory Maguire ; illustrations by Douglas Smith

Speaker Series Event! Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict

Speaker Series Event! Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict

When: Thursday, April 6, 4:30 PM

Where: 73 Tremont Street, Sawyer Library Poetry Center 

The Women & Gender Studies Program and The Sawyer Library Speaker Series present a book talk by Professor Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber.
Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict examines bias within the state of Israel and the media at large, through the lens of the news coverage of the Yemenite Babies Affair. The Yemenite Babies Affair is the emotionally laden, yet still unresolved, story of the alleged kidnapping of hundreds of Yemenite babies upon their arrival to Israel during the 1950s. In analyzing fifty years of public narratives, Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber argues that the media played a major role in the concurrent framing and silencing of this story. This eye-opening study exposes the clash between the European Zionist ideology of unity and the reality of Israel’s diverse society, where at least half of the Jewish population is of Arab descent.

“Few books today raise more profoundly disturbing questions about identity, internal orientalism, modes of unofficial censorship, and the government of Israel than this brave and important book.”—Steven C. Caton, Professor of Contemporary Arab Society and Director, Center for Middle East Studies, Harvard University

“This brilliantly written and meticulously researched book explores one of the darkest chapters of those oppressive relations…This book belongs on your bookshelf in the small but ever-growing library of Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jewish) independent and alternative writing on the history of the Jews in modern times”—Sami Shalom Chetrit, Israeli poet and scholar, Queens College, CUNY

Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber is an Associate Professor of Journalism and Media at Suffolk University in Boston. She was born and raised in Israel to parents of Yemeni descent. She has worked as a freelance journalist in Israel for several newspapers; her book Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: the Yemenite Babies Affair was published by Palgrave Macmillan (2009/2014).

Speaker Series Event! Condition Critical: A Report Back on Gaza

When: Thursday, February 23, 2016

Where: 73 Tremont Street, Sawyer Library Poetry Center 

Speaker Alice Rothchild, MD, an obstetrician-gynecologist, has visited Gaza as part of an Israel/Palestine medical aid delegation. She will share images and impressions of the destruction and resilience that she has encountered and how ongoing siege conditions affect the lives of women and families. 

Her latest publication, Condition Critical: Life and Death in Israel/Palestine presents key blog posts and analytical essays that explore everyday life in Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza up close and with searing honesty. These eyewitness reports and intimate stories depict the critical condition of a region suffering from decades-old wounds of colonization and occupation. Condition Critical dares (and inspires) its readers to examine the painful consequences of Zionism and Israeli expansion and to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice. 

In Condition Critical Alice Rothchild grabs for the truth behind the lies, writing with extraordinary moral clarity and a sharp eye for the injustices, absurdities, and cruel historical ironies that define Palestinian life on both sides of the Green Line. (Ben Ehrenreich, Author of The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine) 

Rothchild is a physician, author, and filmmaker who has focused her interest in human rights and social justice on Israel/Palestine since 1997. She practiced ob-gyn for almost 40 years. Until her retirement she served as assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Harvard Medical School. She writes and lectures widely and also is the author of Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience and On the Brink: Israel and Palestine on the Eve of the 2014 Gaza Invasion. She directed a documentary film, Voices Across the Divide which premiered at the Boston Palestine Film Festival in 2013. Her latest trip to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza was in January 2017.

Sponsored by the Women's and Gender Studies Program and the Mildred F. Sawyer Library.

Speaker Series Event! Edward Bernays and Advent of Modern Public Relations

Q: Why do so many people eat bacon and eggs in the morning?

A: Ask Edward Bernays (via Assoc. Prof. Brian Conley)!

 Tuesday, January 31, 12:15 pm

Poetry Center, 3rd floor, Sawyer Library

Light Refreshments

Have you ever wondered why so many Americans eat bacon and eggs in the morning? Associate Professor Brian Conley will discuss the career of Edward L. Bernays, the man behind this famous ad campaign who was widely considered the founder of modern public relations theory and practice.

Conley will also discuss a lecture series hosted by Bernays at Suffolk University in the 1960s called "Europe's Contributions to the American Civilization." The Moakley Archive recently digitized documents and recordings from the series which featured diplomats from across Europe speaking about European-American relations and foreign policy.

Brian Conley is Associate Professor in the Government Department and serves as the Director of the Graduate Program in Political Science at Suffolk University. His research focuses on American Politics, Political Parties and Party Systems, Political Marketing and Branding, Public Policy, Social Movement Theory and Practice.