Think clearly. Act well. Appreciate life.
This post was written by Benjamin Jacob, HC Student Fellow, Interdisciplinary Studies major One of the most poignant moments in the wonderful new film “La La Land” occurs as the aspiring actress Mia (played by Emma Stone) auditions for a part in a movie. She auditions by singing the story of her aunt, an eccentric …
The following post was written by Brittany Bruner, a former Humanities Center intern. I spent a semester in Jordan during a fraught moment in history. The Syrian refugee crisis is rampant all over the world. It is especially troubling in the Middle East, and in Jordan, a country that houses over one million Syrian refugees, …
Next week, I’m introducing Alexander Sukorov’s Francofonia, a history about the Louvre under Nazi occupation and a philosophical inquiry into art and historical consciousness, at BYU’s International Cinema. In this genre-defying film, the figure of Marianne, the French iteration of Lady Liberty who emerged during the Revolution, is occasionally shown flitting about the empty and …
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” –Brené Brown, TED Talk “Listening to shame” March 2012 In a TED talk I watched recently, Brené Brown talks about life being a compilation of individuals seeking connection. The whole point of life, she says, is to make meaningful connections with people, and we strive to …
This post was written by Carlee Schmidt, HC Undergraduate Fellow I didn’t know the Creature had a voice. I also grew up thinking the towering green figure was named Frankenstein, when actually that’s the name of the doctor who created it. My visual memory is encapsulated in a large plate my mom used during Halloween …
In his 1929 lecture “What Is Metaphysics?” Martin Heidegger laid out a series of propositions regarding scientific attitudes, and specifically how the sciences assess their objects of study. “What should be examined are beings only, and besides that—nothing; beings alone, and further—nothing; solely beings, and beyond that—nothing.” Science, that is, should take up only those …
This post features the recent research of Dr. Greg Thompson, Spanish and Portuguese Department One of the challenges in learning a foreign language, especially in the first years, is communicating with native speakers of the target language. Given the limited contact that many foreign language students have with native speakers of that language, they are …
In the current political climate, and in conjunction with certain personal experiences, it is relevant to have a blog post about “the woman question.” There has been quite the uproar especially with the leaked tapes and Donald Trump’s reputation with women and Hillary Clinton being the first woman to win a major party nomination. Heather …
Last night I lay awake worrying about a canceled pizza-bake off we had planned for a church Young Men’s activity. As I lay there in bed, my mind wandered to the election, then to Vladimir Putin, and then to the people of Aleppo who are at this moment being disintegrated and incinerated along with the …
Last week, the Humanities Center sponsored its annual lecture. Our theme this year is “After Suspicion …”, through which we take up the long aftermath of the sporadic, eclectic, but unmistakable shift away from the constitutional skepticism associated with the work of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud (and the extraordinary influence of their work across the …