-
Dispatches from 21st-Century Europe
As a specialist in the literature of Britain’s Romantic period, I had little occasion during graduate school or the first twelve years of my professorial career to venture outside the Anglophone world in my teaching and research. This suddenly changed, though, in 2012, when I began a five-year stint running BYU’s European Studies program. Besides providing regular opportunities to learn more about the history and politics of individual nations and the continent as a whole, this position brought new course assignments requiring me to expand my literary horizons in a hurry. Eight years later, I am now teaching my fifth iteration of a European Studies course that uses contemporary fiction as a lens for examining major social, political, and aesthetic trends in modern Europe. Although I still have much to learn on the subject, I thought I would use this crack at writing the Humanities Center blog to recommend five newish titles that my European Studies students have especially appreciated. Here they are, then, in descending chronological order: Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009 in Polish; English transl. 2018). Few contemporary writers better illustrate the hit-and-miss nature of what gets translated and when than Tokarczuk, whose works were only just beginning to appear in English when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. Along with her memoir-fiction hybrid Flights (also published in English in 2018), Drive Your Plow has been one of the breakout books of European “literary” fiction in recent years. A thoroughly engaging “eco-thriller” – and an all-too-rare example of a tale narrated by an elderly woman – this is a must-read for fans of William Blake (the protagonist...
Read More -
Unorthodox Academia
Here’s a question: could the mediated essay be an underutilized opportunity to expand the scope of academia? >> Intro music and graphics Hey guys, welcome back to the channel! Huge shout out to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode, and of course, thank you to all the patrons who support the channel. Without all of you, this kind of content would literally be impossible. If you enjoy what you see here today be sure to like and subscribe, or you can check out the links for our Patreon in the description below. Today we’re collaborating with the Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellowship at BYU to give some final thoughts before we wrap up this series on the Humanities. Now, if you’ve hung around the show for very long you’ve probably noticed that we’re really interested in the formation of questions, themes, and innovations that materialize in the overlap between art and the realities of student life. But those discussions have always had an inherent assumption—that the functioning voice of the episode was that of a student within an academic institution. What happens if we removed that assumption? What if the individual speaking about interdisciplinarity, tradition, or pedestrian readings was neither matriculated student nor tenured professor? Could an agent external to and independent of the academic orthodoxy be allowed room to express similar thoughts and feelings? To answer this, let’s turn to the growing enclave of content online and in new media (which for our uses here will narrowly refer to alternatives to traditional broadcast media) consisting primarily of video essays and podcast audio. Though the quality and breadth of these formats differs broadly in their numerous iterations, usually found...
Read More -
“Affected by the Things We Study”: Professor Marie Orton on Merging Scholarship and Service
If you ask Professor Marie Orton for her philosophy on life, she will answer, “In my family, we say for most any experience: it’s either a good time or a good story.” She exudes a contagious fervor for her work, for mentoring, and for life in all of its complexities. And she captures this fervor in her scholarship, which focuses on the literary productions by migrants to Italy and the larger cultural implications of migratory movements. Dr. Orton herself is a labor migrant of sorts, a relative newcomer to BYU. She arrived in 2016 from Truman State, a small liberal arts college in Missouri, where she taught with her spouse, Brent, whose doctorate is in the History of Culture. “We were living the dream,” she recalls, “We had planted fruit trees!” But she and her family uprooted that life and headed west. When she interviewed at BYU, Dr. Orton felt drawn to the university in a way that she had never felt before—impressed by its well-supported language programs and committed faculty. And, while she appreciates the spiritual atmosphere, she admits, “Gospel values are ethical values; anywhere you are, everything you do, you live your values and teach your values.” Her research interests were certainly inspired by these ethical values. During her graduate program at the University of Chicago, she served with the youth in the Hyde Park ward, many of whom were growing up amid the violence and poverty of the inner-city. She became concerned with the way these teens talked about their future—in terms of “if I grow up,” not “when I grow up”—and so she became involved with a charitable trust founded by several members in the...
Read More -
Rereading, Revisiting, Refining
Over Christmas break, I made the pilgrimage with my mom and sisters to see the latest Little Women adaptation. I found the film absolutely brilliant; director Greta Gerwig reimagines and restructures the story in a way that translates beautifully for a twenty-first century audience. I (a Jo, through and through) began crying right around the halfway mark and did not stop until the credits rolled. Even my youngest sister (an absolute Amy at eleven years old), whom we had to persuade to join us, admitted that she “didn’t even get bored!” Before we saw the movie, I made a point to read the novel because the last time I had attempted it was in elementary school, and Alcott’s 1800s moralistic plot line didn’t captivate me the way the then-new Harry Potter series did. Quite frankly, I thought Little Women was dull, so I gave up halfway through. This time around, however, I was awestruck—in both the novel and the latest movie rendering—by the realistic family relationships, the characters’ genuine goodness (without seeming saccharine), and the simple assurance of knowing the plot before it happens. The difference, of course, was not in the text, but in myself. I’ve been doing a lot of this kind of revisiting lately. This year I’ve assisted in teaching British Literary History and Intro to Literary Theory, two courses I took myself when I began the English major several years ago. In preparing for this work, I’ve had the opportunity to revisit texts that I had not read since the first time I encountered them. And, because I’m an avid margin-writer and digital hoarder, I’ve also delved into my textual comments and (deeply embarrassing) previous...
Read More
Events
Colloquium: Cherice Montgomery
When: Thursday, Feb 27, 2020
Where: JFSB 4010
more event details ->
Colloquium: Nick Mason
When: Thursday, Mar 12, 2020
Where: 4010 JFSB
more event details ->
Colloquium: Caroline Weber
When: Thursday, Mar 19, 2020
Where: 4010 JFSB
more event details ->
Humanities Center Blog
Dispatches from 21st-Century Europe
As a specialist in the literature of Britain’s Romantic period, I had little occasion during graduate school or the first twelve years of my professorial career to venture outside the Anglophone world in my teaching ...
continue reading ->
Unorthodox Academia
Here’s a question: could the mediated essay be an
underutilized opportunity to expand the scope of academia?
>> Intro music and graphics
Hey guys, welcome back to the channel! Huge shout out to Squarespace
for sponsoring this episode, and ...
continue reading ->
"Affected by the Things We Study": Professor Marie Orton on Merging Scholarship and Service
If you ask Professor Marie Orton for her philosophy on life, she
will answer, “In my family, we say for most any experience: it’s either a good
time or a good story.” She exudes a contagious fervor ...
continue reading ->
Media Gallery
