Fragile Beauty

December to me means Christmas, and of all the elements of the Christmas story, the one that fascinates me most is the story of the magi. It astonishes me that learned individuals would set out and travel to another land guided only by a star, and that somehow that star would help them recognize a …

Learned Living

Regarding Hamlet, Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that “knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.”1 He was quick to outline that Hamlet’s knowledge did not consist of an overabundance of choices or possibilities, which then made it impossible to choose between them. Rather, Nietzsche surmised that “true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth, outweighs …

Winter 2019

All Colloquia will take place in JFSB 4010 at 3:00 PM unless otherwise specified. ​​ January 17 Marlene Esplin, Rex Nielsen, & Jamin Rowan Scholarship & Activism Roundtable January 24 Rico Vitz (Azusa Pacific University) Mencius, Hume, and the Virtue of Humanity: A Comparative Analysis of Benevolent Moral Development January 31 Kirk Belnap (Asian & Near Eastern …

Fall 2018

The big symposium our Humanities Center hosted in September introduced a range of perspectives pertaining to the theme of vulnerability.  This follow-up event will attend primarily to what vulnerability means relative to our teaching practices, especially regarding the interplay of faith and intellect. Our guest, Bo Karen Lee (of the Princeton Theological Seminary), will give a brief …

2018

  The Humanities Center in coordination with BYU’s Office of Research and Creative Activities (ORCA) will hold its annual ORCA Symposium on Friday, October 26th at 3:00 PM in 4010 JFSB. Blake Perry Smith – Open Source Consistency Evaluation for Chinese Word Segmentation Chinese in its written form does not separate its characters by spaces. Imagine …