The Moral Imagination, Crises of Conscience, and the End(s) of Literature

As the humanities and, more narrowly, literary studies suffer through something of a present-day identity crisis—as the number of majors dwindle, and as literary scholars migrate into media studies, the environmental humanities, and other fields—literary traditionalists seem increasingly given to creative defenses of the value of their work. This has been brought to mind recently …

Urban Narratives and the Provo City Planning Commission

In 2013, Dr. Jamin Rowan of the BYU English Department attended a neighborhood meeting to discuss the proposed routes for the new Bus Rapid Transit line that will soon connect the Provo and Orem Frontrunner stations. Although he had never imagined that he would be involved in city politics, participating in this meeting helped him …

American Food Trucks in the World: Street Food and Food, the Public Humanities and the Humanities

The following post was written by Brian Russell Roberts, a Faculty Fellow at the Center.  14 September 2015 In April 2014, one of the BYU Humanities Center’s research groups hosted Yale English professor Wai Chee Dimock. During Professor Dimock’s visit to campus, she graciously sat down for an interview with our Humanities Center Director, Matt …

Tree berries next to the JFSB

Fall 2015

All Colloquia will take place in JFSB 4010 at 3:00pm unless otherwise specified. November 19 Mark Davies (Linguistics) October 30 Mari Yoshihara (American Studies; University of Hawaii, Manoa October 15 Brian Price (Spanish & Portuguese) Mexico in the Key of Rock: Thoughts on Music, Literature, and Film October 8 Translation Studies Group October 1 Dee Gardner …

Battling Gender Bias

Edith Sand and Victor Lavy of Tel Aviv University conducted a study about unconscious gender bias in teachers grading elementary students. They concluded that teachers, who obviously know the gender of their students, give lower grades to girls and higher grades to boys than outside graders who do not know the gender of those they …