Matthew Shaer is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and a fellow at New America. His longform reporting regularly appears in Esquire, National Geographic, The Atlantic, and Harper's, among other magazines. He is also the host of the new weekly podcast Origin Stories, which explores the creative processes of some of the world's best novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, and journalists. Shaer lives in Atlanta with his family and a beagle named Salty Dog.

Historically, America’s cultural identity has become inextricably linked to the automobile. However, what began as a convenient, and often essential, mode of transportation has morphed into an unhealthy tyrannical obsession, which symbolizes success and power. Some would say we have a national addiction with cars – and big ones especially.

In the past twenty years, cars have grown larger, heavier and more intimidating. Mimicking the appearance of military vehicles with names to match, massive SUVs dominate the landscape and the statistics are not pretty. Globally, cars directly take the lives of more than a million people annually they also kill others through air pollution and environmental hazards, including their use as attack weapons.

Our increasing dependency on cars is draining earth’s natural resources, their carbon emissions drive climate change and they create unsafe streets and congestion which make the planet unlivable. We know much of this, yet we continue to ignore the negative consequences of our indulgent behavior and worship at the altar of the auto. Cars dominate our lives and we just love the personal comfort and distraction afforded by the gadgets behind the wheel. But for how long can we ignore the true costs of our driving habits on others and the planet, without paying the price?

Join the discussion on BIG CARS - at what cost? Register on Zoom, and meet our panel and new moderator, Daniel Berger-Jones on October 14 at 5 pm.

Daniel Berger-Jones is an historian and Boston-based entrepreneur. He founded BHC and has 15 years experience conducting. He has won several awards,and worked with the Huntington. ART, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and others. He hosts several successful podcasts including A People’s History of Food and Drink but his interests span a plethora of fields including science, math and astronomy.

The Boston University School of Theology is proud to present the bi-annual Lowell Lecture, which features renowned speakers in fields related to theological studies.

This Lowell Lecture features Rev. Dr. Micah L. McCreary. He will explore the transformative journey of becoming a trauma-responsive leader by embracing, understanding, and transcending personal and collective wounds.

Join the Boston Public Library for a conversation with trailblazing costume designer Ruth E. Carter, the first Black woman to win two Academy Awards in Costume Design—for Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Over a four-decade career, Carter has brought history and Afrofuturism to life on screen through iconic collaborations with filmmakers like Spike Lee and Ava DuVernay. Her work on films such as Malcolm X, Selma, and Amistad has cemented her legacy as a master of visual storytelling.

Carter will be in conversation with former BPL Board Chair, Dr. Priscilla H. Douglas.

After the main program, in-person audience members can meet Carter in the Connector Space located just outside of Rabb Hall.

Ruth E. Carter is the 2019 Academy Award winner in Costume Design for Marvel’s Black Panther, making history as the first African-American to win in the category. Carter wows audiences and dazzles critics alike with Afro Future looks that empower the female form and turn a superhero into an African King.

Caitlin Dickerson is an award-winning investigative reporter and feature writer for The Atlantic. She won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Over nearly 15 years in journalism, Dickerson has also been awarded a Peabody, Edward R Murrow, Livingston, and Silvers-Dudley Prize for her writing and reporting. Before joining The Atlantic, she spent nearly five years as a reporter at The New York Times and five years as a producer and investigative reporter for NPR. Dickerson has reported on immigration, history, politics, and race in four continents and dozens of American cities. She is currently writing a book about the systemic impact of deportation on American society.

Cosponsored by the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics.

The Lowell Humanities Series is sponsored by the Lowell Institute, Boston College's Institute for the Liberal Arts, and the Provost's Office.

Philip Metres is the author of twelve books, including Fugitive/Refuge, Shrapnel Maps, The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance, Sand Opera, and I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky. His work—poetry, translation, essays, fiction, criticism, and scholarship—has garnered fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Watson Foundation.

He is the recipient of the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Lyric Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. Metres has been called “one of the essential poets of our time,” whose work is “beautiful, powerful, magnetically original.” He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. He lives with his family in Cleveland, Ohio.

Cosponsored by the Boston College Poetry Days Series.

The Lowell Humanities Series is sponsored by the Lowell Institute, Boston College's Institute for the Liberal Arts, and the Provost's Office.

Tiya Miles is the author of eight books, including four prize-winning histories about race and slavery in the American past. Her latest work is the biography Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People. Her 2021 National Book Award winner All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, was a New York Times bestseller that won eleven historical and literary prizes, including the Cundill History Prize and the Frederick Douglass Prize. All That She Carried was named a best book of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, NPR, Publisher’s Weekly, The Atlantic, Time, and more. Her other nonfiction works include Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation, The Dawn of Detroit, Tales from the Haunted South, The House on Diamond Hill, and Ties That Bind. Miles has published essays and reviews in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and other publications, and she is the author of the time-bridge novel The Cherokee Rose, a ghost story set in the plantation South. She has consulted with colleagues at historic sites and museums on representations of slavery,

African American material culture, and the Black-Indigenous intertwined past, including, most recently, the “Fabric of a Nation” quilt exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Her work has been supported by a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Miles was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and she is currently the Michael Garvey Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University.

Cosponsored by Boston College History Department, American Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, Women’s Studies, Environmental Studies, the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, and the Forum for Racial Justice in America.

The Lowell Humanities Series is sponsored by the Lowell Institute, Boston College's Institute for the Liberal Arts, and the Provost's Office.

The United States faces a world of challenges, dangers, and uncertainties. With conflict and disorder becoming an ever more prevalent component of global politics, we are left with many questions. Questions such as: What is America's role on the global stage? What are the decisions, risks, and opportunities that lie ahead in an increasingly tumultuous international landscape? And how can American foreign policy adapt to the new challenges that the world faces? The answers to these questions could shape American foreign policy and the global order for decades to come.

Join WorldBoston for a timely discussion of this topic with Michael Poznansky, Associate Professor and Author on International Relations. This program will feature an expert presentation, live audience Q&A, and time for networking and discussion with other globally-oriented participants.

Disclaimer: All views expressed at this event are the speaker's own and do not represent those of the U.S. Naval War College, the Department of the Navy, or the Department of Defense.