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 …

Why Support Research at BYU?

As an undergraduate I didn’t have much feeling for research, not as such, although I did have an affection for ideas and a deep gratitude to teachers who helped foster and allowed me to express them. At some point in my education I began to recognize subtle distinctions between “learning” and “research”—the former being, in …

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 …

Festival, Chaos, and Creativity

During Halloween last year, I decided to dress to the nines. With the help of a friend, I donned a blue cardigan, a red cape, a few dyed cloth strips, and a pocket-watch-necklace in order to become Marvel’s Doctor Strange. (For those who know me, there was really no better option, and I’m discovering that it’s hard …

On Vulnerability and (Vicarious) Experience

On May 2, 2018, my view of life and my role within it was transformed when I received a phone call from the emergency room at Utah Valley Hospital. My 14-year old daughter had been hit by a car. The distracted driver had failed to notice her in the crosswalk. Though he only clipped her …

Literary Arboretum

While visiting my longtime friend and former roommate Ella1 at her home in Folsom, California this past summer, her family graciously took me along with them to visit the nearby Muir Woods National Monument. Ella and I were catching a redeye out of San Francisco that night, but had quite a bit of time to …