Inventing the Truth

This post was written by Sara Phenix, a Humanities Center faculty fellow.   A recent conversation with a close friend forced me to reconsider the value of what I do as a literature professor. This woman has a house full of young children—five total, the oldest only ten when the youngest was born—and, while she …

Language is not a Small Victory

This post was written by Zach Stevenson, a Humanities Center student fellow “Language is not a small victory. It was out of this last, irreducible possession that the Jews made a counter-world of words, the Irish vanquished England, and Russian poetry bloomed thick over Stalin’s burial grounds. And in a single book one woman managed …

Transversing the Linguistic Bridge

This post was written by Chris Rogers, a Humanities Center faculty fellow.   In my experience, language is a bridge (or link) between so many things. For example, it is a communicative bridge between a speaker and a hearer (or two signers); it is a bridge between generations as parents pass on a functional linguistic …

In Defense of the (Digital) Humanities

This post was written by Emma Belnap, a Humanities Center student fellow.   A couple of weeks ago, one of my professors asked us to read Sophie Raux’s article “Virtual Explorations of an 18th-Century Art Market Space: Gersaint, Watteau, and the Pont Notre-Dame”. I was captivated by this piece, most especially Raux’s methodology—she and her …

Where Do the Humanities Belong?

This post was written by Ansley Morris, a Humanities Center student fellow.    When I tell someone I’m an English major, the first question they ask me is always the same: “Oh, so you want to be a teacher?” Aside from the instructor who asked me to read aloud on the day I got retainers …

“What does that do exactly?”: On Granular Humanities

This post was written by Gabbie Schwartz, a Humanities Center student fellow and the BYU Humanities Center Intern.    It was 4:30 p.m., and I was getting dinner with a friend at the Olive Garden—which is how all great stories start. Excitedly, my friend told me about her senior capstone, an electrical engineering project in …

Creativity and Resilience

This essay was written by Rex P. Nielson, BYU Humanities Center Director, as an extension of the Statement from the Director, which can be read here.   This past summer, I found myself thinking about transformation and healing while visiting a large street art installation in Amsterdam at the newly opened Straat Museum. There, I …