One Year Fellowships 2025-26

BYU’s Humanities Center sponsors two one-year faculty fellowships. Unlike the multi-year fellowships, these one-year fellowships will be awarded by application rather than appointment. The fellowship period will begin in the fall semester of 2025. Fellowships will come with a salary supplement of $2,500, a research stipend of an additional $2,500, and release from two courses …

In Praise of Wandering

This post was written by Rex P. Nielson, BYU Humanities Center Director.    I’ve just returned from attending the MLA annual convention, held this year in a very chilly and rainy New Orleans. Following a lengthy more-than-ten-year stretch in which I deliberately avoided the MLA convention, a hiatus that I freely admit was prompted by …

Winter 2025: Democratic Dispositions: Learning to Live together in a Post-Election World with Leonard McMahon

The BYU Humanities Center welcomes Leonard McMahon, Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care at Pacific School of Religion, as this semester’s Faith & Imagination lecturer. We hope you will join us on Thursday, March 27th at 3:00 pm in 4010 JFSB for his presentation. More information forthcoming. Title: “Democratic Dispositions: Learning to Live together in a Post-Election World” About our …

Winter 2025

All Colloquia will take place in 4010 JFSB at 3:00 PM unless otherwise specified. Please visit the event page for more details.   January 16 Timothy Hampton (UC Berkeley) “Make a Cheerful Noise: Joy and the Literature of Modest Passions” January 23 Matt Ancell “A World with Two Suns: Skeptical Faith in Calderón de la …

Safe in His Love

This post was written by Aaron Eastley, a Humanities Center faculty fellow.    On a recent research trip, I found myself in a place even quieter than the library archives I have sometimes visited. I was on Cranberry Island off the coast of Maine, following in the footsteps of Leslie Norris, a Welsh poet I …

A Series of Edges and What They’ve Taught Me

This post was written by Starly Pratt, a Humanities Center student fellow.    I sat on the edge of the cliff at Tintagel Castle as the wind pushed salty air into my lungs. To the right of me stretched miles of the Cornwall coast in all its cloudy glory, the soiled smell of the ten-minute-past …

Linguistic Ecosystems and the Creation

This post was written by Chris Rogers, a Humanities Center faculty fellow.    The first time I wanted to learn another language was because a new student, Edgar, had moved from Mexico into my fourth-grade classroom in Southern California. I asked my dad to teach me how to introduce myself to Edgar in Spanish (my …

Choosing to Build

This post was written by Sophie Hirtle, a Humanities Center student fellow.    For my family, staying in a hotel often means watching the home renovation channel together and mercilessly tearing apart the perky hosts and their design choices. We watch people enter a dilapidated, old home and, within the span of thirty minutes, transform …