Lecture Series - Online
Please join us as BC Beyond Lifelong Learning presents our Spring 2025 Lecture Series!
The purpose of this series is to provide lifelong learning opportunities with Boston College faculty and administrators on a wide variety of topics, including local and world history, science, technology, social issues, the arts, and more. We are pleased to offer a series of lectures and conversations each Fall and Spring semester to Boston College alumni, friends, and community members.
Spring 2025 Lecture Series - Online
Wednesdays, 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. ET
- Online participants are required to have a computer with video and audio capability.
- Participants must create a Zoom account in advance according to Boston College security requirements.
- All programs offered online via Zoom will be recorded; recordings will be available to registrants for two weeks following each lecture.
- These programs have a maximum capacity to allow for participant engagement.
Registration Options:
- Register for individual lectures for $15 each or register for the entire lecture series for $90.
Register
Register early to avoid disappointment!
Online via Zoom, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenter: David Hopkins
Educational attainment is swiftly becoming the most consequential dividing line in American politics, as voters without college degrees shift dramatically toward the Republican Party while college-educated citizens move correspondingly toward the Democrats. The growth of this so-called diploma divide has redefined the popular coalitions and communication style of both major parties. It also holds important implications for each side’s approach to governing and relationship with major social institutions such as the educational system, the mainstream media, and the scientific community.
Online via Zoom, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenter: Patrick Conway
This presentation highlights the Boston College Prison Education Program. Since 2019, Boston College has offered a degree-granting program for incarcerated students at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Shirley, MA (MCI-Shirley). Students in the program pursue an Applied Liberal Arts BA degree through the Woods College of Advancing Studies, studying the humanities, as well as the natural and social sciences. The program has expanded dramatically since its inception, enrolling 80 students across five cohorts while also becoming a national leader in higher education in prison. Highlights will include reflections on the inaugural graduation at MCI-Shirley in September 2024, the launch of a "College Success" reentry class at the Chestnut Hill campus, and the achievements of BCPEP students both inside prison and on campus.
Online via Zoom, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenter: Erick Berrelleza, SJ
In July 2024, Messina College officially opened as the newest two-year residential college of Boston College, welcoming 100 first-generation and financially under-resourced students into the BC community. As the ninth school within Boston College, Messina is uniquely positioned as the first to confer associate’s degrees, equipping students to either transition into bachelor’s degrees programs (including at Boston College) or to embark on professional careers. Rooted in the tradition of excellence that defines one of the nation’s leading universities, Messina College is grounded in a comprehensive student success model that provides robust resources and support to foster academic achievement and a sense of belonging. As its inaugural academic year concludes, Founding Dean Erick Berrelleza, SJ reflects on the key lessons learned, the initiatives driving the greatest impact, and the vision for Messina’s future.
Online via Zoom, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenter: Michael Serazio
In recent decades, authenticity has become an American obsession – from reality TV to corporate brands to social media influencers to political campaigns. But, ironically, authenticity's not actually real: It's as fabricated as it is ubiquitous. In this talk, we’ll take you behind the scenes with those who make “reality” – and reveal all the ways they try to influence us. Drawing upon dozens of rare interviews with campaign consultants, advertising executives, tech company leadership, and entertainment industry gatekeepers, we’ll investigate the professionals and practices that make people, products, and platforms seem "authentic" in today's media, culture, and politics. We’ll spotlight the power of authenticity in today's media-saturated world and show the strategies to satisfy this widespread yearning.
Online via Zoom, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenter: Mary Murphy
The Irish Institute of Boston College was established in 1998 to support the developing peace process in Northern Ireland. Through a series of partnerships, programs, and events, the Institute promoted meaningful ties between the United States and Ireland which were supportive of efforts to realize a long-term and sustainable peace in Northern Ireland. This lecture will trace the history of the Irish Institute of Boston College. It will also consider the contemporary context for the Institute’s work and discuss how, against the backdrop of a changing Irish and international political, economic, and security landscape, the Institute aims to assist the ongoing consolidation of peace, prosperity, and reconciliation, across Ireland, north and south.
Online via Zoom, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Presenter: Richard Kearney
A paradigm shift is needed if we are to see the earth as a host that nurtures rather than a commodity to be consumed. For real change to occur, we must heed the cry of the earth and embrace a radical ecological hospitality toward all living beings. For we are, deep down, guests of the earth as well as hosts, receivers as well as perceivers. Such a shift would require us to move from the Anthropocene of relentless human domination—which has brought us to the brink of climate catastrophe—to a Symbiocene of deep interdependency between humans and nature.
About the Presenters
Mary C. Murphy Mary C. Murphy
Mary C. Murphy
Mary C. Murphy joined Boston College in Fall 2024. She is a member of the Political Science Faculty and also Director of the Irish Institute of Boston College. Mary’s current research focuses on post-Brexit Northern Ireland and relations with the EU and US. Her latest book, co-authored with Jonathan Evershed, A Troubled Constitutional Future: Northern Ireland after Brexit, Agenda/Columbia University Press 2022, won the UACES Best Book Prize in 2023.
She is also the author of Europe and Northern Ireland’s Future: Negotiating Brexit’s Unique Case (Agenda/Columbia University Press 2018), which was one of the first book-length studies of Northern Ireland and Brexit. Her previous book, Northern Ireland and the European Union: The Dynamics of a Changing Relationship, was published by Manchester University Press in 2014.
Richard Kearney Richard Kearney
Richard Kearney
Richard Kearney holds the Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College and has served as a Visiting Professor at University College Dublin, the University of Paris (Sorbonne), and the University of Nice. He is the author of over 26 books on European philosophy and literature (including three novels and a volume of poetry) and has edited or co-edited 23 more. He was formerly a member of the Arts Council of Ireland, the Higher Education Authority of Ireland, and chairman of the Irish School of Film at University College Dublin.
As a public intellectual he presented numerous series on culture and philosophy for Irish and British television and broadcast extensively on the European and international media. He is currently the international director of the Guestbook Project–Hosting the Stranger: Between Hostility and Hospitality.
Erick Berrelleza, SJ Erick Berrelleza, SJ
Erick Berrelleza, SJ
Erick Berrelleza, SJ, is founding dean of Messina College at Boston College. A Los Angeles native and a member of the USA West Province of Jesuits, Fr. Berrelleza received a BA in philosophy from Loyola Marymount University, an MDiv degree in theology and ministry from Boston College in 2015, and a PhD in sociology from Boston University. He served as a visiting scholar in BC’s Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life from 2019-2021. The son of immigrants and a first-generation college student, Fr. Berrelleza’s scholarship and teaching has focused on urban sociology and immigration.
David A. Hopkins David A. Hopkins
David A. Hopkins
David A. Hopkins is associate professor of political science at Boston College, where he has taught since 2010. He is the author or co-author of four books on American politics, including Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats, which won the 2018 Leon Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the American Political Science Association. His latest book is Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics, co-authored with Matt Grossmann of Michigan State University in 2024.
Professor Hopkins has regularly written about contemporary political issues for news publications such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Vox, and
Bloomberg Opinion. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Erick Berrelleza, SJ Michael Serazio
Erick Berrelleza, SJ
Michael Serazio is a professor of communication at Boston College who studies media production. He has published in the Journal of Communication, the Journal of Consumer Culture, and Media, Culture & Society, and authored The Authenticity Industries: Keeping it ‘Real’ in Media, Culture, and Politics (Stanford University Press, 2023), The Power of Sports: Media and Spectacle in American Culture (NYU Press, 2019), and Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing (NYU Press, 2013). A former journalist, he has written essays for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other publications.
Patrick Filipe Conway Patrick Filipe Conway
Patrick Filipe Conway
Patrick Filipe Conway is the Ignacio Chair of the Boston College Prison Education Program. He earned his PhD in Education from Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development. He previously taught Composition and Literature courses in the Boston University Prison Education Program, as well as worked as a criminal defense investigator at the public defender office in Washington, DC and Boston, MA.
His research interests relate to the development and expansion of higher education opportunities in prison, including policy and media coverage analysis, effective teaching practices, and the exploration of student experiences in prison. His research and scholarship have appeared in the Harvard Educational Review, Educational Policy, the Journal of College Student Development, and The Review of Higher Education, among others.
Program Pricing
General Admission
General Admission for the Lecture series is as follows:
- Register for individual lectures for $15 each or register for the entire series for $90.
No discounts are available.
General Information:
You must be 18 years old to participate in the BC Beyond Lifelong Learning Lecture Series. All sales are final; we are not able to offer refunds. Registrations may not be transferred to another person or to another course, workshop, or program.
Online registration is required to participate in the program. The fee for individual lectures is $15 each; the fee for the entire lecture series is $90 to be paid by debit or credit card. Registrations will be processed upon receipt of payment. Payment is due in full in order to enroll.